More than 100 copies of Guiding Light have been sold across the known listings and purchaser product reviews indicate at least some of them may have been shipped to Australian buyers.

“Mulganai is my middle name, and in language, it literally means ‘guiding light’ or a lighthouse figure,” Hollingsworth said.

She is a Kaanju, Kuku Ya’u, and Girramay woman based in Brisbane. “That’s what (the painting) Guiding Light is about. It’s about finding that light within yourself … and trusting yourself.”

Guiding Light was painted and sold to a private buyer last year at a discounted rate of about $1100.

Hollingsworth has never sold prints of Guiding Light, but she does sell high-quality prints of select other paintings for between $50 and $150 through her website.

“I’m not getting a cent (of those sales).”

Several of Hollingsworth’s social media followers reported the listing by LMF Art to Temu after she posted about the theft of her art on Instagram.

At least seven people received an email response from Temu’s customer service team, seen by The Australian, saying the listings were legally sound.

“After carefully reviewing your report, we regret to inform you that we have decided not to delist this item as we do not believe that it contains any content prohibited by the law or our internal policies including the community guidelines,” the correspondence said.

The known listings of unauthorised prints of Guiding Light have since been removed from Temu, along with the seller profiles Luey, LMF Art, and CJH Art, but merchandise like phone cases – which Hollingsworth also sells on her website – featuring altered versions of her work were still available for purchase on Temu.

A Temu spokesperson said the company “takes intellectual property protection seriously”.
“Temu operates as an online marketplace where independent third-party sellers list their own products,” the spokesperson said.

“Sellers who violate these rules may face removal of their listings, account suspensions, or permanent bans in cases of repeated or serious infringements,” the spokesperson added.

The seller profiles of LMF Art and CJH Art – which featured listings for more than 40,000 products combined – were still live several days after the intellectual property violation was reported.

They were only suspended by Temu following inquiries by The Australian.

A Temu spokesperson confirmed to The Australian the LMF Art and CJH Art seller profiles have been permanently banned from the platform. The company said it had launched an investigation into the unauthorised sale of Hollingsworth’s art and “added her artwork to our IP protection database for proactive monitoring”.

Temu declined to elaborate on how its proactive monitoring protocols are applied or if it would issue a blanket ban on all Indigenous artworks unless the seller could prove ownership of the intellectual property.

The company also declined to say if the Queensland-based artist will be compensated for the theft of her work.

Hollingsworth said the work she produces is a powerful expression of her connection to culture.

“If you’re Australian, you know how different Indigenous art is. (It’s) not just art. It has culture in it,” she said.

A quick search reveals thousands of Indigenous and Australian artworks for sale on the platform, some for as little as a few dollars.

Sydney-based artist Karina Jambrak has been targeted by copycats and unauthorised sellers for years.

A regular collaborator of Australian and international retail brands like Adairs, Hallmark, and Greenhouse Interiors, Jambrak told The Australian she’s lost count of the number of times her work had appeared on Temu and other e-commerce platforms without her knowledge or permission. Her name is brazenly displayed on many of the Temu listings.

“My work has been replicated without my permission on clothing, soft furnishings, wallpaper and more recently even on furniture,” said Jambrak, pictured below.

“Once I see copies of my work being sold at such a poor quality, it kind of stains the vision I once had for them, which is just so unfair.”

Museum-quality prints of Jambrak’s most-popular collections start at $60 on her website but regularly appear on Temu for as little as $4.

“It’s a price that I couldn’t even produce a small-sized, high-quality art print for in Australia, let alone sell them,” she said.

“I have worked really hard to create my artworks and I pride myself on my prints being of the highest quality.”

A Temu spokesperson told The Australian previous reports made by Jambrak were promptly removed and she has also been added to the company’s IP Protection database for proactive monitoring. Multiple unauthorised listings bearing her IP and name, seen by The Australian, were removed following inquiries by this masthead. 

Jambrak said her community of fans and followers alert her when new unauthorised listings appeared online, but she had to engage legal representation to help her pursue compensation for theft of her intellectual property.

“It is exhausting. Some of these companies are major global retailers … and companies (generally) are not willing to compensate me unless a legal letter has been sent,” she said.

“So even if I stop people from selling the products in Australia with my work on them, I’m … not really getting to the root of the issue.”

Temu is owned by Whaleco Inc, a Delaware-based subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce company PDD Holdings, which has an estimated market value in excess of $280bn. That means while Australian artists are protected by local copyright legislation, the site’s terms of use fall under US law.

“Under (sections) of the Communications Decency Act in the US, platforms have immunity from liability in relation to third-party content and can’t be required to proactively moderate content,” said Marlia Saunders, a partner at Thomson Geer, which represents The Australian.

“This means they are likely to say that they don’t pre-moderate or approve listings before they go live, but they do respond to reports of intellectual property infringement.”

Ms Saunders said this is the crux of the problem for Australian artists: pursuing third-party marketplaces such as Temu for copyright infringement is possible, but costly.

“It’s always challenging and expensive to pursue actions against companies based overseas,” she said.
“Often the costs of pursuing copyright litigation can significantly outweigh the damages awarded by the courts.”

In one such example, The Pokemon Company successfully sued the global online marketplace Redbubble in the Australian Federal Court for intellectual property and consumer law infringements, but was awarded nominal damages of $1.

Indigenous artists like Hollingsworth are also protected by a legal concept called “moral rights”, meaning their work should be adequately credited and exempt from “derogatory treatment”.

“Applying an artwork to a cheap print and selling it online for between $5 to $8 is quite clearly derogatory treatment,” Ms Saunders said.

“In 2023, the Australian government proposed introducing specific laws protecting Indigenous cultural expressions, including artistic works, however these have not yet been released or enacted.”

Hollingsworth hopes buyers will think twice before purchasing cheap prints from online marketplaces.
“Do your research, figure out who the artist is, and don’t just buy art blindly – especially from a website like Temu or Shein,” she said.

“We really have to grind and hustle as an artist to make this our living … (and) it’s really disheartening to see that happening.”