Brokering Aboriginal art: A critical perspective on marketing, institutions, and the state

Abstract

Over the past 30 years, visual art has shone as a beacon of Aboriginal cultural survival, adaptation and efflorescence in post-colonial Australia. This success has occurred within a broader national context where Aboriginal socioeconomic status is perceived to have either stagnated or declined. Yet dynamic and innovative art movements thrive in many remote communities that are regarded as the most problematic in terms of welfare dependence and social disintegration. This lecture explores this apparent paradox by focusing on a history and analysis of state-sponsorship of arts infrastructure in that Aboriginal arts sector, a form of sponsorship that has provided the inter-cultural mediation, or brokerage, that has been pivotal to this unusual arts movement. By then drawing out some emerging tensions, contestations and challenges I argue that that there is no room for complacency in arts policy or practice—the new-found success of Indigenous arts remains fragile. The lecture concludes with a discussion of the risks to Aboriginal art posed by recent changes in Indigenous affairs and makes some broad arts policy observations, based on historical evidence, for the ongoing development and growth of the nationally significant and internationally acclaimed Aboriginal visual arts sector