Milanka J Sullivan

Milanka J Sullivan
Proprietor
Artspeak Studio Gallery

This paper is a response to the draft concerning the `Commercial Code of conduct for the Indigenous art industry` with an aim to strengthen fair and ethical trade in the Indigenous visual art industry, which resulted from a Senate inquiry undertaken for concerns about unscrupulous conduct within the Indigenous visual arts sector.

From the submissions offered to the Senate there was a noticeable absence of submissions from Indigenous artists, who actually work for private dealers, which might have resulted in a more balanced view of the workings within the `Aboriginal Art industry` in relation to private dealers had artists been able to express themselves freely away from the hearing range of their `minders`.

From those involved in informing the Senate there was a perceived reality that artists were not being paid fairly by certain private art dealers for works and that some private dealers were engaged in bartering alcohol and shoddy motor cars for paintings and that some known senior artists were being pressured to paint for private dealers, who were paying relatives to `bring artist`s` into their sheds, or work rooms, or galleries, to work for them, or sell them paintings.

Those giving opinion to the Senate also made an issue of the importance of these senior artists to remain in their communities and continue to paint for their own art centres for the common good of entire communities. Known artists serve to benefit a community financially and culturally by passing on culture to the next generation through art works and teaching. When senior artists are away from their home communities while working for private dealers these benefits are put on hold.

Another private dealer `sin` pointed out to the Senate concerns a demise in the quality of art work that these private dealers acquire and thus serve to denigrate the status of known artists, which art centres have worked on to lift up to begin with.  Poaching art centres` chief artists and then participating in the artist`s demise are real issues of concern, but not all private dealers are deliberately malicious, but some are just simply out of their depths in the Fine Art arena.

An experienced dealer of worth is already aware of commercial expectations and the laws governing commerce, including the copyright laws, which are already in place to protect all artists alike. Art dealers of worth are also aware of the need for contracts in areas where contracts are advisable and they are also aware of the protocols in Art in terms of good documentation concerning provenance and endeavour to pay artist`s fairly. But the very notion of the worth of a painting, for example, is open to interpretation and the value of works change over time, which is why the `resale royalty scheme for art` is being introduced here in Australia, so that artists, or their beneficiaries, can benefit from works that were originally sold at a very low price, but came to be valuable commodities.

But the `sin of poaching artists from art centres` remains, which is seemingly a problem for art centre managers to overcome by finding what will convince their artists to stay onboard. Artists being bullied to paint by relatives and dealers might also be better served by the law, as I suspect that `enslavement` might be a criminal offence, including within communities where expectations and threats of corporal punishment might be used to over work an artist being treated as a `cash cow` with little liberty imposed upon them by individuals, who feel that these artists owe them a living.

The Code of Conduct is well meaning, however, it is difficult to imagine how a commercial code of conduct overlayed with `cultural ideals` that reinforces the demise of individuation in favour of group control over individuals will bring Indigenous people in remote communities into the 21st Century and better equip them to conduct their own business in a manner that will lend to their overall well being. It is an ideal that proposes that Indigenous people have no sense of self and are completely satisfied being as one with a social group within a community and at one with an ancestral past. Those days are gone and any action of bureaucratic paternalism that aims to lock indigenous people into this kind of ideal is destructive.

The idea that dealers need to seek permission from family and community members to show photographic images of deceased artists is an absurdity and a perfect example of an understanding of culture run amuck and destructive idealism. Individual artists of the past wanted their work seen and wanted to be remembered and they would be outraged by the idea that images of themselves, which they proudly posed for, were under the control of the whims of family and community members.

In addition to this, a photographer has licence over his or her material, and to expect photographers to hand over their own artistic licence to other people is offensive, so too defining individual artists in terms of a whole within a community. The precursors of the Papunya Tula Art Movement, for example, did not engage in their new found freedom from being `wards of state` for the purpose of handing that freedom over to a group or family members; nor did these artists welcome interference in conducting their own business affairs, which did include bartering when appropriate for them, be it for a cab trip, or vehicle, or anything else that they needed and could swap their artwork for.

In remote areas where access to certain things is difficult, or a relative, or many relatives, engage in pressuring an artist for a car, or cars, it sometimes made sense to artists to seek the help from a dealer in acquiring vehicles and other necessities. In their everyday dealings with art traders and tourists and private collectors, artists soon discover who they can and can not trust, for while they may not be literate, or have a full understanding of the `art world`, they do, however, have thinking minds and are not children in need of protection of the kind that deprives them from making their own decisions and living their own lives, which they learn from.

Time does not allow to venture into every aspect of the code and speak more broadly about it as I would wish to, but what has been touched upon here is my disapproval for the code in general. Indigenous artists have been engaged in selling their own art works for more than three decades. Some of these artists have established reputations, while most may never find any real status as an artist, but all are generating incomes through art centres and private dealers and selling directly to tourists and collectors and the results have been a complete success and any attempt to stifle individuation under the guise of an idealized notion of cultural tradition and community life locked into a commercial document is not the role of government.

Milanka J Sullivan
Artspeak Studio Gallery
Warrandyte, Victoria
www.artspeak.com.au