What is the Aboriginal Art Economy?

What does it mean to be an economically strong art centre?

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Economies Project

• Non-profit research with a strong emphasis on outcomes for artists, agents and others

• Research starting now > 2015/16• 2011 = consultations and feedback

<Presentation name and version>

3

Production

• Artists working with art centres, for themselves and for private dealers

• Success and failures of art centres: understanding performance and impact

• Un/licensed merchandise• Micro-enterprise project working in three regions• Art outside the art centres• Potential of licensed designer and other products

<Presentation name and version>

Marketing and Consumer Dynamics

• Primary and secondary [+] sales• Hierarchy and layers of the market: ‘fine art’ through

middle market to ‘tourist art’• What happens at the ‘pointy end’ affects what

happens below it• What and how are consumers/buyers influenced?• Marketing project• Online and e-commerce project

<Presentation name and version>

Writing and talk about art

• What is written and said publicly about the art industry, about art work and how it is made, quite possibly has real impacts on the ‘art economy’, to the advantage of art centres, or not.

• Promotional representations and stories about collectors, prizes and commissions help to set ‘taste’.

• Ideological debate in print over the past few years – what business models are being promoted, by whom?

<Presentation name and version>

Big Issues• Volume of art production: scarcity or oversupply? • Pricing • Marketing: types and strategies• Entrepreneurship > social enterprise: how to

understand an art centre and ‘performance’• Overall economic analysis: scope and scale,

economic relationships

<Presentation name and version>