What's the proper way to buy Aboriginal art?

Posted by Aboriginal Art Directory | 27.03.08

Jeremy Eccles examines the changing face of Aboriginal art.

There was a time when it seemed easy to answer the frequently asked question: What's the proper way to buy Aboriginal art?

I simply said go to a city gallery that's a member of Art.Trade, the association of galleries dealing specially in Indigenous art, and buy a painting you really like that's got a community art centre certificate of origin.

To be frank, that wasn't really ever the whole answer. Even as the only gallery association to attempt to do the right thing in Indigenous art, Art.Trade has had their ups and downs in persuading all the best galleries to join, and in the difficult task of checking out cases where their members have been accused of unethical conduct. Now Art.Trade and others have to grapple with a rapidly changing art market and increasing public demands for better ethics in dealing.

And the perfect paradigm of the Aboriginal art centre has always been threatened by the recurring forces of the art centre environment, the cruel pressures placed on art centre coordinators by the loss of corporate memory about gallery relationships each time a coordinator departed, by the presence of carpet-baggers prepared to deal directly and not always ethically with Aboriginal artists, and by the essential freedom accorded to an artist to walk out of his/her community, to operate freelance or sign up with a single dealer.

But it used to be a pretty good start.

The Stars of Aboriginal Art

These days, it's often the star who leaves their community in the latter case. Names like Tommy Watson (now with Agathon Galleries) and Dorothy Napangardi (Gallery Gondwana) spring to mind. The pressure on a star in a remote community of 100 or so people is immense - the widespread 'humbugging' for money, the sense that they are carrying other artists and being underpaid. It's a whole lot easier to live more anonymously in Alice or Cairns or on an outstation with chosen relatives. But it's not so easy to find the dealer who will care for such a distant artist constantly tempted to take minimum cash in hand rather than realise the real effect of inferior art and inferior payment on their career.

The impact of art dealers on art centres was explained by Mary Knights of Irrunytju Arts art centre when Tommy Watson's paintings turned up in other galleries: "it undermines the relationships developed between art centres and commercial galleries, which in turn undermines the stability of art centres".

Take the young artist Rosella Namok from the Lockhart River Art and Culture Centre on Cape York. She left Lockhart River when the first art coordinators she'd worked with set up shop in Cairns. Despite this, galleries like Hogarth Galleries in Sydney and Andrew Baker in Brisbane were happy to keep selling her popular paintings. Now Namok paints both ways - her ties to the elders in her community and the country itself as the source for her art were too strong to ignore.

Lockhart River has accepted the situation. Coordinator Camille Masson-Talansier explains: "the so-called 'Art Gang' lead by Rosella was young and hot. Now, through the art centre we've built inter-generational art making, with three generations at our recent show in Brisbane". As well as appearing in galleries - one in every capital city and two in Melbourne, where men and women artists are shown separately - Lockhart River art is also available on-line.

Unexceptional, you might say these days. But, while an overworked art centre like Tiwi Design offers product online that stays up there for 6 months but may have been sold earlier, Lockhart have got round this problem by using the services of Aboriginal Art Online for internet sales of its paintings.

Despite a marketing push that covers all Tiwi Islands art through the Tiwi Art Network, Coordinator Tim Hill at Tiwi Design admits he needs "a much more dynamic website to achieve anything better than bugger-all in sales - but we just don't have the resources to achieve it".

The Way Forward in Aboriginal art

How can anyone buy a painting they haven't seen in the flesh? I guess it has to be the norm with overseas buyers. But apparently even top local collectors do buy from a high-resolution image emailed with a recommendation from a trusted source like Tony Oliver, until recently Artistic Director at the Jirrawun Arts art centre. But then Jirrawun Arts, the Rolls Royce of Indigenous organisations based in Wyndham in the East Kimberley, seemed to have stopped exhibiting in Australia, expecting everyone who wanted to buy to come to distant Wyndham. Not so - it was just an hiatus around Oliver's recent departure and a series of tragic deaths associated with the Gija elders' painting company. They're back on track now with shows at Raft Artspace in Darwin and Grant Pirrie in Sydney organised. They're also developing a website.

Few people can realistically be expected to get out to steamy Wyndham. Mind you, equally remote communities like Lockhart, Maningrida in Arnhem Land and the Tiwi Islands are increasingly selling art tours or eco-tours with an art add-on.

Tiwi Art Network organises 9 art centre specialist tours each winter; but ATT Kings Tour company come to the Islands daily offering easy access to remote Aboriginal Australia on tours that won best Indigenous tour in the country in 2007. Less easy are the hundreds of kilometres of dirt road down to the dead end at Lockhart river, Cape York: "but with wilderness society encouragement we're getting surprisingly good numbers in the dry season" said Camille Masson-Talansier.

Mangkaja Arts Exhibition But if buyers haven't got the time to go all that way out to the art, the other trick is to bring it into town and hire a space (rather than an established gallery taking 40% of the sale price) to sell it. Mary Place and Danks Street are two such spaces in Sydney - and both Warmun Art Centre and Bidyadanga Artists (via Broome's Short Street Gallery) have taken the route direct - as have SF Fineart, Palya Art and Don Holt's Delmore Gallery. Out-of-Sydney galleries like Alcaston and Indigenart have come into Danks Street.

Where Does that Leave the City Gallery?

Does this all dishearten a city gallery like Aboriginal & Pacific Art in Sydney, where Gabriella Roy has been one of the staunchest of supporters of the 'old' community art centre model? Roy is a lot more cautious today about complaining than she was when Agathon Gallery moved into Irrunytju community, at its artists' request, to deal directly with their work. For the balance between city and the bush has swung around.

"Though I have the highest respect for the majority of art centres" says Roy, "and I think they respect me - there are some who'll take exhibitions away from me if I mention anything negative". For it seems that, in these times of plenty for Aboriginal art outlets, the days when exclusive rights were held by a gallery to all the work from a particular community are gone - "even Papunya Tula sells to anyone who comes to Alice Springs these days", Roy reminds me.

But she excepts the Western Desert Mob communities from her strictures, and Tjungu Palya over the border in SA. "They're both exciting art and loyal", says Gabriella Roy. And even this community art connoisseur will hold the odd solo show. She used to feature the glorious Kitty Kantilla. Now she's adding two wonderful old men - Paddy Sims from Warlukurlangu Artists and Butcher Cherel from Mangkaja Arts.

Other connoisseurs of the 'old-fashioned' community art concept should take joy in the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair, coinciding with the Telstra's in August, where 20 communities will be on show this year; and, of course, the Desert Mob Art Show in Alice in September/October.

Tjungu Palya Artists Exhibition But, clearly, the way you can buy Aboriginal art is becoming increasingly varied.

We all have to be open to that. And while some will see 'a great deal' - a known artist, a complex painting and a below-market price - as the object of the exercise, many others will acknowledge a moral element in the equation. For remote Aboriginal artists are a whole lot less worldly than their urban and white peers, and are under the different pressures I mentioned earlier so that it is a whole lot easier to exploit them.

The new Australian Government has recognised that with one of its few new spending decisions to invest in remote art centres. I look forward to much more action when it gets around to serious consideration of the Senate Inquiry into Australia's Indigenous visual arts and craft sector and the NAVA recommendations for an Indigenous Art Commercial Code of Conduct for dealers.

But the rest of us can choose to play a part too. As Melbourne gallerist, William Mora said to me in 2005, "the ethical question is a simple one - what was the artist paid? I'll open my books and show you the cheque. But the trouble is there's such a demand these days, plenty of collectors no longer give a shit about the artist".

- Jeremy Eccles

Photos:
1. Artist Tommy Watson; courtesy of Agathon Galleries
2. Janangoo Butcher Cherel exhibition at Aboriginal & Pacific Art gallery in association with Mangkaja Arts, Fitzroy Crossing, WA; courtesy of Aboriginal & Pacific Art
3. Nganampa Nguraku Tjukurpa exhibition at Aboriginal & Pacific Art in association with Tjungu Palya Artists, SA; courtesy of Aboriginal & Pacific Art

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