Aboriginal art dying with desert masters

Melbourne gallery owner Beverly Knight does not believe MeaghanWilson-Anastasios's argument is sustainable. Picture: Stuart McEvoy Source: The Australian

The Australian: "New research into the sustainability of Aboriginal art claims the market for new works is already falling away, even for sought-after artists, because some indigenous works are still being treated as ethnographic objects.

A paper by Melbourne academic Meaghan Wilson-Anastasios says major artists such as Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri and Rover Thomas, are promoted as Aboriginal in a way that Pablo Picasso would not be labelled Spanish.

'To secure the future of the Aboriginal art market, it needs to expand and evolve so that a new generation of artists is cultivated and they are accepted as contemporary practitioners,' she writes."

Read on in The Australian