Aboriginal art dying with desert masters

Ashleigh Wilson The Weekend Australian 19th September 2010

THE pursuit of cultural authenticity in Aboriginal art will make it harder for young artists to enjoy the success of the old masters.

New research into the sustainability of Aboriginal art claims the market for new works is already falling away, even for sought-after artists, because some indigenous works are still being treated as ethnographic objects.

A paper by Melbourne academic Meaghan Wilson-Anastasios says major artists such as Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri and Rover Thomas, are promoted as Aboriginal in a way that Pablo Picasso would not be labelled Spanish.

"To secure the future of the Aboriginal art market, it needs to expand and evolve so that a new generation of artists is cultivated and they are accepted as contemporary practitioners," she writes.

"Marketing the first generation of Aboriginal desert painters as the genuine ethnographic article has the corollary effect of initiating a spiral of redundancy that makes it increasingly difficult to promote subsequent generations of Aboriginal artists."

But in the paper, to be published in the UNESCO journal Diogenes in November, Dr Wilson-Anastasios says these issues explain, for example, why Aboriginal artists face double standards about authenticity. While Western artists sometimes use assistants, or take advice from dealers, similar practices are more controversial in the Aboriginal world.Her comments are controversial because most of the industry has long rejected the labelling of Aboriginal artworks as ethnographic museum pieces.

"Because the most sought-after ethnographic art emerges from a culturally immaculate source, workshop practices that are commonplace in the contemporary art world are anathema to collectors of ethnography," she says.

However, Melbourne gallery owner Beverly Knight says the findings are based on auction results and ignore the thriving primary market for indigenous art. She also says Australian buyers have become increasingly sophisticated and moved far beyond old-fashioned ideas of ethnography.

Ms Knight returned this week from the Korean International Art Fair, which she visited with Queensland artist Sally Gabori. She says Aboriginal works are appreciated as contemporary art by foreign buyers.

"No one really cares that it's indigenous, it's not a big thing in Korea," Ms Knight says.

"It's more that it's fresh and different and exciting."

Art historian Roger Benjamin also doubts the premise of the study, saying there has been a huge shift by dealers and collectors over the past two decades to position Aboriginal art as high art.

However, he says the findings demonstrated that art centres needed further government assistance to cultivate relationships with dealers.

"In the Australian market, this work is now recognised as fine art in the highest sense," he says. "Certainly more needs to be done by dealers to recognise or identify the great figures of the future, but I think they will come forward. This sort of naysaying or negativity has proven in the past to be just that. You can't put limits on the creativity of Aboriginal artists."

In the paper, Dr Wilson-Anastasios argues that the Aboriginal art market will split into two without "fundamental changes" in the packaging and promotion of works.

The top of the market is concentrated among a handful of Aboriginal artists, with the 12 highest-selling accounting for almost half the Aboriginal art sold at auction between 1993 and 2008.

Since 1995, clearance rates for these artists fell from a peak of 82 per cent to a low of 46 per cent. But their early works remain in demand, with Dr Wilson-Anastasios saying their later works are dismissed as "too commercial".

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The above article is in this weeks Weekend Australian and is something that is close to my heart and a passion of mine. I have spent the past 20 odd years trying to get people to understand that Aboriginal Australians are a living evolving culture. We are not dead yet, last time I looked I was still breathing, therefore it is inappropriate for us to be constantly stuck in a 200 year old inherited ideology portrayed to the masses by ethnologists, social scientists and more recently anthropologists and now the Commercial Art Market.

It is time for the wider community to understand that we are a living culture that has grown, adapted and evolved and despite oppression, dispossession and attempted genocide we have managed to keep and maintain our culture. Yes it is fragmented, after all we have been colonised, but we have and continue to practice culture and learn and pass on our heritage. I mean we knew about the stolen generations long before you the wider community did. Why, because we lived through it, and those of us who come from families that are not stolen generations have been culturally aware since birth. Reconnecting with culture and heritage has become a focus for all Aboriginal Australians and will become stronger as more and more Aboriginal people young and old are taking pride and pleasure in their identity.

The thing is that the art market continues to put Aboriginal art into high end art rather than culture and do not understand that Aboriginal Art is culture and yes that art will change and grow and evolve along with the people from which its foundations stem. It is time for us to acknowledge that our young people have a right like any other young person to express themselves in a contemporary voice using the ancient living language of our people, art. And that voice will be heard and seen and purchased for it is the voice of the future.

I think the commercial art market have it back the front, we are not painting high end art, we are painting culture, as we have always done because it is who we are and it stems from within the depths of our culture. The generations before us who have reached so much success in the art world told the stories of their culture and continue to do so. They too have adapted their styles and techniques for the changing fickle clientele that exists within the art world, yet they are painting culture. You only have to talk to the artists about their work and they will tell you the story behind the painting, for you see the aesthetics of the painting is for you the buyer (to match the colours of your decor) and the story is for us the keepers of the flame. And the styles will change along with the medium that it is presented on, but the thing you must never forget is that the story will evolve along with the living culture that it stems from because we are not dead yet.

Thats my rant for the day thank you for listening...lol