In 2019, British comedian Ricky Gervais was caught up in an art scandal when his Netflix series After Life featured fake Indigenous art hung prominently in the background of a set.
The large painting was an unauthorised copy of a 1987 work titled Tingari Dreaming by Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri, a senior practitioner of what international art critic Robert Hughes once labelled the last great art movement of the 20th century — the Papunya Tula Art Movement.
The discovery — prompted by a Twitter callout by then NITV journalist Danny Teece Johnson — led to the actor's production company paying compensation to the artist.
The incident demonstrates how pervasive Indigenous art has become over the last 30 years, even overseas — with champions such as Steve Martin and Beyoncé, and tentpole exhibitions this year alone in Paris, New York and Singapore.
At home, the popularity of showcases such as the National Indigenous Art Triennial, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAAs) and Tarnanthi speak to the draw of Indigenous art.
But as the Gervais snafu also highlights, mainstream understanding of Indigenous art is still severely lacking, and beset by major misconceptions.
To help you better appreciate the wide, wonderful world of Indigenous art, let's bust some of those big myths.
But first: A brief history of Indigenous art
Prior to colonisation, the entire world was a canvas for creating Indigenous art.
Through song and dance, through the production of objects like shields and coolamons, and on bodies and surfaces, Indigenous communities recorded and communicated histories, traditions, beliefs, concerns and celebrations.
Bruce McLean, from the National Gallery of Australia, says post-colonisation, Indigenous artists were quick to adopt and adapt to new mediums and new materials as they became available.
In the 19th century, Wurundjeri clan leader William Barak and his contemporaries, Kwatkwat man Tommy McRae and the mysterious Mickey of Ulladulla, used ink, watercolours and pencils to record remembered scenes of public ceremony and traditional life.
Further north, in the 1920s, a washing detergent called Reckitt's Blue was popular among Aboriginal people as a way of creating a blue pigment to decorate shields, fighting clubs, and boomerangs.
But even as innovations were happening, non-Indigenous art experts and collectors largely considered works by Indigenous artists to be cultural artefacts rather than anything requiring artistic skill.
It wasn't until the 60s and 70s (around the time Indigenous people were finally gaining civil rights) that Indigenous art began to be widely understood as something more.
By the mid-90s Indigenous art was a 'movement' in its own right — from Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri being featured in the Art Gallery of New South Wales' Australian Perspecta exhibition, to Emily Kame Kngwarreye becoming the first Indigenous artist to receive the prestigious Australian Artists Creative Fellowship from then-prime minister Paul Keating, to Rover Thomas and Trevor Nickolls being the first Indigenous artists selected to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale.
Many of these trailblazing artists drew on sacred or spiritual knowledges as inspiration for their work, but as national and international interest in Indigenous art continued to grow, so did the variety of mediums and subjects of the work.
However as it's gained popularity and prestige outside of our communities, the buzz has generated a lot of misconceptions.
Myth: It's all 'traditional'
Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair Foundation's executive director Claire Summers and artistic director Shilo McNamee say one of the biggest myths they encounter is that Indigenous art is solely 'traditional'.
"Quite often we have to clear up the misconception that everything is either a 'dot painting' or a traditional artefact. And one thing that we're always so excited to share with people is that [Indigenous art] is as contemporary as art gets," Summers says.
The confusion likely comes from people recognising symbols and motifs, without acknowledging the materials or the commercial purpose for which the work was made.
For example, an artist from the Central Western Desert might use the 'u' shape to symbolise 'man', but if they're painting with acrylic paint rather than ochres, they may not consider their work to be an example of traditional Indigenous art.
Likewise, this year the prize for bark painting at the NATSIAAs went to the late Ms D Yunipingu whose striking depiction of a group of mermaids was created using the pink ink of recycled printer cartridges.
Her kinswoman Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr Stubbs told The Art Show's Daniel Browning it was a traditional design in a contemporary form — rather than a 'traditional artwork'.
"The stories are all the same but when we use the ochres, that's for ceremony; they're only for the ceremonies … same story, just different way of expressing themselves," she says.
Another misconception is the conflation of Indigenous art from remote communities with 'traditional' Indigenous art.
"Out at Buku-Larrnggay Mulka [in Northeast Arnhem Land] they're doing amazing artworks on the back of street signs, etching and creating brand new texture out of the aluminium signs, and making social statements about their communities and white intervention … it's quite amazing," Summers says.
"I know a lot of urban Indigenous artists [also] struggle with being recognised as authentic, but we're really not in competition with each other. It's all just expressions of culture and artist's journeys," McNamee says.
McLean says there's also a complex history of Indigenous artists from communities where art-making traditions were impacted by missionaries and assimilation policies, drawing on other communities' styles to create and sell art.
"When tourists started showing an interest in Aboriginal art, people from those areas were given books of paintings from the Central Desert, or books of bark paintings from Arnhem Land. They were basically forced to copy them," he says.
The problem with all this is that it creates a false idea of what Indigenous art 'should' be, when in fact it covers a broad range of mediums, subjects, and styles.
"Indigenous art is art made by an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person, it's that simple," Allas says.
Myth: It's created in a vacuum
Curator, writer, researcher and artist Tess Allas says that as with any art movement, Indigenous artists are influenced by other artists and art forms.
Vernon Ah Kee's text-based work critiquing Australian popular culture is (in part) inspired by the text work of Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer. Richard Bell's agit-pop work from the early 90s draws on the work of Roy Lichtenstein. Allas herself has made a video riffing on an Andy Warhol interview, casting Vernon Ah Kee as Warhol and her collaborator Charlie Schneider as the interviewer.
An example of a more direct, personal influence is Australian landscape artist Rex Battarbee teaching watercolourist Albert Namatjira to paint. Namatjira then in turn spawned the Hermannsburg watercolour tradition, which is still going strong more than 85 years after the injured returned serviceman and the Western Arrernte man first painted together on Namatjira's country.
Allas also says we may never learn all the names of the people who've influenced Indigenous art movements.
"I firmly believe that there is an undocumented greater influence, and that is of traditional family and community artists who transfer their knowledge to the generations under them. Perhaps these are our greatest influences of all," she says.
Myth: It's always readable
Some Indigenous artists draw on sacred knowledge to create their work, so some (or all) of the meaning behind it cannot be explained or shared — even if the artwork is on display publicly, or for sale.
One of the ways an artist might protect sacred knowledge present in their work is through the use of heavily stylised techniques or abstraction, such as the highly recognisable dot painting style from the Central Desert.
This means a casual viewer might only have a basic understanding of a work, while somebody who is initiated into the artist's community holds a deep understanding of it.
But even when access to a story needs to be earned, it doesn't stop you from being able to appreciate the work aesthetically.
McLean says this desire to 'know the story' is a hangover from when Indigenous people were the subject of anthropological studies.
It's an idea that artist Richard Bell explored in his artwork Scientia E Metaphysica (Bell's Theorem), or Aboriginal Art — It's a White Thing, which won the prestigious National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Award in 2003.
At the time he also wrote a paper about his frustration with the way Indigenous art had been positioned as "a commodity" that couldn't "arise and be separate from but equal to Western Art — within its own aesthetic, its own voices, its own infrastructure".
McLean says Bell's Theorem is arguably as true today as it was almost 20 years ago.
"It's still a very colonial power dynamic …. So there are a lot of artists, the Papunya Tula artists particularly in more recent decades, who've taken to titling their work 'untitled', to make the point that people should be considering these paintings as works of art first and foremost," McLean says.
Myth: It's overpriced
In 2007, Emily Kame Kngwarreye's painting Earth's Creation I (1994) sold for $1,056,000, making it the most expensive piece of art by an Australian woman ever sold. Ten years later it sold for double that price at a Sydney auction.
If you're new to the art collecting world you might think everything is overpriced — but a lot of factors go into determining the cost, including an artist's exhibition history, sales history (if any) and career level, as well as the materials used, and the size of artwork.
McLean says if you're dipping your toe into collecting Indigenous art, the safest option is to buy something you love, or that stimulates you.
"I think that's what gives a work value to a collector. I think it would be quite difficult for a newcomer to jump straight in and make very well-considered purchases in the market," McLean says.
Allas agrees, adding that even if the artwork you've bought is an investment it's still likely to be in your daily life for a long time.
"[And] if you consider that might be the only work that artist sells all year, and therefore that's the only money they're going to make all year, then a $1,500 stretched canvas of 60 x 90 centimetres isn't very much money at all," she says.
Especially when you factor in the hours of labour and the cost of materials that likely went into its creation. Plus, unless you've bought art directly from the artist, the gallery or art dealer takes a percentage of the sale price.
Myth: Buying it (ethically) is difficult
Unless you happened to live in a capital city, or nearby an art centre or gallery, it used to be that "FIFO Buyers" (people wealthy enough to charter flights to remote communities specifically to purchase work) and people connected to commercial galleries were the main purchasers of Indigenous art from remote and regional galleries or art centres.
But social media platforms like Instagram have made it both more affordable and more accessible for buyers to view and purchase work directly from artists and art centres.
"It's been like an explosion of amazing access to the beauty of these places," Allas says.
When the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair was forced to pivot to an online model in 2020 and 2021, the organisers immediately noticed a difference in their attendee demographics.
Prior to 2020, roughly half the attendees were from the Northern Territory, but once it shifted online, 95 per cent of attendees were from interstate and overseas.
Wherever you're buying from, don't be afraid to ask questions — ranging from who the artist is, to how long the gallery has been around, and even how the artist is being paid. (The Indigenous Art Code of Conduct has developed seven questions they recommend buyers ask when purchasing Indigenous art.)
If anything doesn't feel right, step back and do more research.
Glossary:
- Art centres: Community meeting places that foster the creation of art, offer local artists training and education, act as a place for keeping and recording cultural knowledge, and where communities can renew cultural values and lore.
- Art movement: A distinct style, technique, or trend followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time.
- Cultural appropriation: The act of a dominant culture taking things from another culture that is experiencing oppression.
- Carpet bagging: The unethical practice of exploiting an Indigenous artist by buying their art at a very low cost and selling it on for a large profit.
- Dot painting: First popularised by the Papunya Tula School of Painters, the technique uses dots to abstract and disguise sacred designs in paintings.
- Indigenous art: Art made by an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person.
- Fake Indigenous art: There's a few reasons Indigenous might be called 'fake', including if a work is designed by an Indigenous artist but has been reproduced without their permission, or if the work has been made by someone other than the Indigenous artist who is named as the creator, and the family have not agreed on the contribution.
- The Code: The Indigenous Art Code of Conduct is a set of rules and guidelines that dealers (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous businesses) commit to follow to ensure ethical practices and fair treatment of artists.
