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| Tools of the trade |
Alice Springs, itself, is surprisingly metropolitan: commercial art galleries, trendy restaurants and hip pubs abound. The town has been oddly built: inward-looking physically, in a large square, with the buildings seeming to face the central serpentine layout of Todd Mall. Closing the space. Given that this is where most of the action is that is fine, for now, but I can’t help feeling it is missing a more appealing external façade. But, no doubt, the influential city fathers will ensure this happens over time, as Alice really is the ‘capital' of central Australia and does not look likely ever to go backwards. Recently, the first million dollar house sale went forward – so, all appears on the up and up, here.
We’d heard stories before we came of dereliction and alcoholism -- but saw little of this. We were, instead, impressed at the functionality of the place. Again, backpackers make up the hard-core workforce in campsites, cafes, pubs and restaurants; but other local businesses appear to be alive and thriving. Alice is a happening place. All is not perfectly rosy, however.
A local policeman, at a fundraising market we visited, told us that over five thousand people in and around Alice Springs, remain homeless. And I’m sure, along the Todd River, many of these groups can be found gathered around campfires, just to stay warm, any day or night, at this time of the year.
Obvious loiterers in the mall are moved on, we noticed. The few people we saw attempting to sell art or hand made goods from any transient market-stall in the mall were deftly shunted off by Council authorities or the police.
Indigenous art and craft appears to be the mainstay of the Todd Mall economy. Gorgeous pieces from talented and naïve artists and craftspersons are on display every which way you turn. But, not all is perfectly rosy, here, either.
Some supposedly ‘reputable’ art businesses in town may, in hindsight, not be viewed at all well, when one looks back on their art-purchasing practices at this point in time. They are carving out a powerful and influential hold over art production in this tiny corner of the art world. But, at what price? Over the last couple of decades some of these art buyers have been supplying skilled and novice aboriginal artists with the tools of their trade. Free. Canvasses are pre-cut to size, large and small -- the size determined by the storekeeper, not the artist. Delivery to the settlements is free. Along with jars of paints of many colours: free. Western colours. Not much evidence of traditional mediums or pigments.
Out of the goodness of their hearts these very same buyers send out trucks of seasonal fresh fruit and vegetables: food for the settlement inhabitants. They also bestow in-favour elders with gifts of vehicles for their settlements, 4-wheeled drives to disperse the favours they dispense.
In exchange the buyers get first dibs at the art that is completed in the settlement. First dibs at the artists. First dibs at the emerging artists developing in these communities. Some even negotiate sole rights to the output of new and emerging artists so that they then have the right to turn that artist’s vision into coffee mugs and caricatures if they so wish. And in whatever form it comes, the product of that emerging artist will only be available, for sale, at that buyer’s outlet.
Such is their patronage.
And that’s not all.
There are, as always, steak knives.
When the fresh vegetables and new art supplies are delivered to these dusty remote communities, the completed art works are collected. Hundreds of them. Dozens by individual artists. Filling up all those clean canvases offered by the buyer on the last visit. Works are classified by the buyer as ‘rubbish’ or ‘not rubbish’. Signed there, by the artist, photographed there -- supposedly for authenticity, with someone (anyone?) standing behind each piece of work -- and from this identifying photograph, a certificate of authenticity, for the more discerning purchaser, is generated.
Money exchanges hands.
Not huge amounts obviously, as these remote settlements are still mainly dust and scrap metal heaps.
No art palaces here. More like piecemeal impoverishment.
The markup, though, is obvious on the works displayed on the glitzy white-painted gallery walls in town.
Payment to the artist is often accompanied by a not-even-self-conscious verbal admonition to certain of the artists to: “Do more of this next time I come!” or: “Don’t do any more of that – I can’t sell rubbish!” Unsavoury, intrusive, deep-in-the-eye interference in the artists' choice of subject matter, colour and composition.
The message of the buyer is as subtle as a branding iron burn: Give me what I am looking for -- or the food, the vehicle, the clean blank canvasses and bright shiny new paints may, one day, simply dry up.
Woe.
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