Australian Indigenous ‘artists’ critical agency and the values of the art market

Abstract

The recent integration of Australian Indigenous arts in the field of contemporary art is the fruit of a complex historical process deeply rooted in social and political relationships. The Aboriginal art market has grown exponentially over the last 40 years and the artwork has become an international icon of Australian identity. However, Aboriginal art has been, and to a certain extent, is still endangered by cheap imitations, fakes and the transgression of Indigenous artists' rights and community protocols. These issues have been addressed by various inquiries and reports since the 1990s. Recently, a new paradigm has emerged from the scholarship produced by researchers, such as Howard Morphy, John Altman and others. These scholars conducted research on the community-controlled art centres and outlined in particular how they could be taken as business models. In their studies, the art centres are presented as intercultural institutions, which are both commercial and cultural enterprises in which Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people are active agents. The expression 'Aboriginal Art. It's A White Thing' of the awarded-painting Scientia E Metaphysica (Bell's Theorem) by Richard Bell highlights another vision of the Aboriginal arts sector. Drawing on the debates generated by this prize-winning work, I will analyse how artworks and discourses surrounding these debates are entangled in a complex process of value creation. 2 In this paper, I will first use Richard Bell's theorem as an example of the critical agency of Aboriginal artists living in metropolitan cities, in order to draw attention to their valuable contributions to the arts sector. I will argue that their position as urban-based artists as well as Indigenous people gives them an overview of the process of definition, representation, circulation and regulation of what constitute the Australia's Indigenous arts sector. Australian Indigenous 'artists' critical agency and the values of the art market Les actes de colloques du musée du quai Branly Jacques Chirac, 4 | 2014