Back in January, as The Weekend Australian’s long investigation into the APY Arts Centre Collective was ramping up, Sally Scales, a member of the collective’s board and also on the board of the National Gallery of Australia, sent me a text.
“We continue to hear from partners that you are asking questions about our art centres and galleries,” she wrote. “You’ve been on this story for a while and my elders and I are wondering when you will be speaking to us about our story.”
I wrote back: “I have sent (CEO Skye O’Meara) an email. I would like to talk to her, not the board. The serious issues that have been raised with me relate to Skye and her management and her relationship with various artists and others.”
I flew to Adelaide to interview the board, but never got to speak to O’Meara. She tersely shook my hand at the gallery door and led me inside. She would not be interviewed. Since the investigation began, she has drawn around herself a protective Indigenous cloak. The arts establishment closed ranks and supported her. It has made things worse for all of them, the APYACC, its board, its artists, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the NGA.
NGA director Nick Mitzevich has also been drawn into the controversy with his ardent support for O’Meara and then for initiating an investigation into the provenance of APYACC paintings – paintings bound for a major exhibition at NGA – which found nothing untoward.
“Nick (Mitzevich) has some very real problems,” a figure in the arts community said. “He’s got a lot of explaining to do.”
The SA-led panel, which has spent months investigating allegations of fraud and bullying and claims that white studio staff had painted on Indigenous canvases, appears to have found the exact opposite to Mitzevich’s panel.
From the outset this story has been a battle between the grassroots – the artists, the gallery workers and the peak bodies representing them – who bravely spoke to me about their grave concerns, and the arts establishment, which wanted to sweep it all under the carpet. Meanwhile, the Indigenous Art Code, the sector’s ethical watchdog, expelled the APYACC from its organisation, the first time it has taken such a step.
Praise must go to SA Arts Minister Andrea Michaels, who pushed forward with a thorough investigation into the APYACC despite tepid support from federal Arts Minister Tony Burke.
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It comes after a months-long investigation by The Australian revealed claims by APYACC studio staff and artists that white staff painted substantial sections of Indigenous paintings.
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The panel she appointed, lawyer Anne Sibree and Indigenous experts Megan Krakouer and Cameron Costello, interviewed more than 200 people. But it was the artists and art centre workers who spoke out who are the heroes of this story.
One former staffer told me she had lost work in the arts industry because there was a suspicion she had spoken out. “This is really promising,” she said of Friday’s announcement. “It’s definitely a step in the right direction.”
She, like Michaels, said the management of the APYACC, particularly O’Meara, could not possibly stay on.
One artist, who told The Weekend Australian she had witnessed O’Meara and other studio staffers painting on Indigenous art works, including her own, said: “It’s about time … this has been going on for years and now it seems, finally, something will be done about it.”
She’d earlier told me that she’d felt great shame when white studio staff painted on her paintings, telling what were supposed to be sacred stories.
It was due to this artist and this gallery assistant, and many others like them, that this story was able to be told. They are the heroes.
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