Aboriginal Painting: Identity and Authenticity

Humans as Creativity Gatekeepers: Are We Biased Against AI Creativity?

“…We asked participants to rate the creativity of each painting with a 3-item measure (very uncreative to very creative, very inauthentic to very authentic, and very poor quality to very good quality) to capture the multidimensional nature of creativity. We specifically decided to capture authenticity, a less commonly employed creativity subdimension, because the creative value of Australian Aboriginal paintings strongly relies on authenticity (Coleman, 2001). Inspired by past research (Cropley et al, 2011;Sullivan & Ford, 2010), we used good quality to assess usefulness because of the visual and approachable nature of our evaluation targets.…”

Cultural appropriation and the intimacy of groups

“…Such insignias can only perform their social function when their use is restricted to authorized persons. In the cases of highly threatened groups, such as aboriginal groups, the uncontrolled use of such insignias threatens the stability and survivability of the group (Coleman 2001). appropriation can be shown to likely cause harm, then that fact has normative significance and should be weighed accordingly.…”

Frauds and fakes in the Australian aboriginal art market

“…In the world of Aboriginal art, over the recent years claims have been made that such well known Aboriginal artists as Turkey Tolson and Ginger Riley have signed their names to work produced by others. In the case of Tolson [7], the allegations involved claims that the artist had signed his name to works produced by less well-known members of his family. The case of Ginger Riley was a bit more complicated, since the tale allegedly involved members of another Aboriginal community spending some time with the artist in his remote bush home territory, working alongside of him for an extensive period, and then with some amount of coercion inducing Riley to sign works he had not produced [23].…”

“…Closer to the fine arts market, considerable controversy has emerged in recent years when material is produced which is claimed to be Aboriginal, but where the authors of that work are themselves not Aboriginal. One of the more notable of these examples concerned the works created by a wellestablished non-Aboriginal artist, the late Elizabeth Durack, who created works in an Aboriginal style which were signed with the name "Eddie Burrup" [7]. But Durack was hardly the only non-Aboriginal seeking to cash in on the popularity of Aboriginal art.…”