With the onset of the pandemic, numerous aboriginal art centers in Australia have been experiencing difficulties for the past three years. As the flu spread, things were looking bleak for distant and regional artists who rely heavily on tourism as the Northern Territory, where many are located, was under strict lockdown.
“We were stunned by how quickly art galleries and art fairs moved online,” says Ruth McMillan, the art coordinator of Tangentyere Artists in Alice Springs. “We were unable to travel interstate, and all tourism ceased. The online art fair has been great for us. It implied that the artists’ revenue continued. “
One of these was the Tarnanthi Art Fair, an annual event of the Art Gallery of South Australia that made its online-only debut in 2021 following a hybrid year before that. At a time when Australian Indigenous art was growing in popularity among collectors and consumers, Tangentyere artists’ inclusion in 2020 created a portal to the rest of the globe. According to McMillan, “We sold projects in Asia and America, and other centers sold them to Europe. We also sold projects to the UAE and the Philippines. We sold a lot of work to embassies and ex-pats living abroad. It came as a surprise, unexpectedly.”
Buyers may be confident that all artworks are produced and sold responsibly because every dollar from Tarnanthi’s sales goes directly to the artists or arts organizations. Over the course of three days in October of last year, Tarnanthi sold a record $1.4 million worth of artwork from about 50 independent and arts centers, which was 16% more than at previous in-person events.
Indigenous art centers are frequently located in the center of rural towns. They offer the artist studio space, art supplies, and technological help, and some even offer breakfast and lunch, and a place to speak. The money that comes back into the centers may be distributed among the artists or the larger community, or it may be utilized to subsidize support services for after-school and summer care; nutrition; literacy; and numeracy; as well as training and employment. Additionally, they all work to ensure that First Nations artists get paid for their work and assist artists in responsibly selling their work through galleries and art festivals.
Since 2015, there has been a Tarnanthi Art Fair. The online fair, according to Artistic Director of the fair Nici Cumpston, is likely to continue through 2022, and an in-person event is also planned.
Nothing could possibly compare to the in-person experience of viewing the artwork in the country where it was created. Still, she claims that people are now accustomed to purchasing almost anything online. She continues by saying that the pandemic has, in some ways, benefited artists. As a result of the majority of art centers being closed to the public, the artists could focus entirely on their work during this relatively calm period.
The artists “had more time on their hands, and many of them started to push limits and dream up new concepts” when people weren’t passing through to interact with them, according to Cumpston. “I’ve noticed a significant change in the kind of artwork produced, but that’s not true,”
