Robyn Ayres from ART+law writes about the changes and challenges facing the Indigenous Arts & Crafts industry including the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications, Technology and the Arts, which inquired into the state of Indigenous arts and craft in Australia and the National Association for the Visual Arts’ Indigenous Australian Art Commercial Code of Conduct.
Quoted from her article:
The recommendations suggest that there will be some form of compliance measurement. Arts Law asks whether a compliance body will also be established? Arts Law acknowledges that NAVA is currently grappling with some of these issues.
Arts Law is also concerned that the Indigenous arts and crafts sector is driven by consumers rather than collecting institutions, government departments and the Indigenous Visual Arts and Craft Resource Directory. However, the recommendations do not target the consumer’s market power. Accordingly, we query whether the recommendations are sufficiently powerful to enforce or even encourage widespread compliance with the Code.
Arts Law suggests that the Interdepartmental Committee develop a list of identifiable problems which can be assessed in two years from now. Furthermore, the Committee should set a date for the implementation of proscriptive regulation in the event that self-regulation fails to ameliorate identified persistent problems.
