Oversupply and taxes hurting demand for Indigenous art

With more artists producing work in the Indigenous art market, buyers are harder to come buy.

With its twisted glass yams, some a deep, murky green, it references the nuclear bomb tests at Maralinga in the 1950s and 60s, and the impact on country her grandfather called home. (SBS) Source: SBS

For many remote communities, art sales are a vital source of income.

But data from the Cooperative Research Centre shows, while demand is stable, supply has increased, with more artists coming on board.

In urban centres, art dealers have said they are finding fewer buyers for high-end works.

Aboriginal art dealer Adrian Newstead has seen a decline in the global appetite for Australian Indigenous art in the past 10 years.

He says the global financial crisis and the introduction of a number of taxes and restrictions on Indigenous art, particularly when purchased as an investment, have had an impact.

“We need the government to look at a range of measures which are really just taxes on the sale of art, and red tape that is making it more and more difficult for galleries to survive in a very difficult financial market," he said. 

South Australia's Tarnanthi festival's artistic director Nici Cumpston acknowledges the market's downturn but said no-one can put a price on the social and cultural value of the art on display.

"The market waxes and wanes, but the artists don't stop making,” she said.

“They're not necessarily just painting for a commercial market.

Artist inspired by atomic blast

Thunder Raining Poison is one of more than a thousand pieces of art on display at the biggest show of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art in South Australia, theTarnanthi festival.

On closer inspection, there’s something more sinister about the immense glass artwork created by artist Yhonnie Scarce.

With its twisted glass yams, some a deep, murky green, it references the nuclear bomb tests at Maralinga in the 1950s and 60s, and the impact on country her grandfather called home.

“A number of those poisonous clouds blew across Kokatha country,” she said.

Stories of the blasts were part of her childhood.  Last year, she travelled from her Melbourne home to see it for herself.

"It was the weirdest experience I've ever encountered,” she said.

“You enter the village, and it's like a dead zone, there's no sense of previous human occupation."

Her imposing piece is one of more than a thousand on display at the festival.

The festival celebrates the work of Indigenous artists from across the country.

"They're painting because they really want to share this particular story and they want to pass that knowledge down to the younger generation."

The festival ends on October 18, but many exhibitions will be displayed until January next year.