Fears for bumper festival

THERE are no guarantees for the future of the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair, despite its success.

Avril Quaill

IN three years, Cairns Indigenous Art Fair has grown into the nation's biggest annual hub for the trade and exchange of indigenous arts. More than 10,000 people attended last year's event, and with better facilities and a new location within walking distance of the city centre, official attendance figures from this weekend's fair are likely to be considerably higher.

The three-day event is the biggest single platform of the Queensland government's Backing Indigenous Arts initiative, launched in 2007 when Premier Anna Bligh was arts minister. The initiative is designed to foster indigenous arts practices.

In its June budget, the government confirmed $13.2 million for Backing Indigenous Arts for another four years. But the fair's place within that package is not guaranteed.

Rachel Nolan, who replaced Bligh as Arts Minister earlier this year, says the government is considering the fair's future.

"[The fair expands] the market for Queensland indigenous art, which is not as historically well established as the Territory but is a bit more diverse," she says. "We are certainly trying to establish an ethical selling environment and I think the fair has been successful in doing that. And being able to see the very distinctive different genres all in one place gives you a sense of how sophisticated Queensland indigenous art is."

Exhibitors live with uncertainty about the fair's future. One exhibitor says planning for this year's event was made difficult because it wasn't confirmed until March, and even then the final budget was not known. Exhibitors scrambled to compile displays for the fair, an effort made even harder after some artists' studios were hit by the cyclone.

Avril Quaill, a founder of Sydney's Boomalli Co-operative, was appointed artistic director for this year's fair, taking over from Michael Snelling, who oversaw the first two. A Quandamooka woman from Stradbroke Island, whose job for the past six years has been working with the Queensland government promoting indigenous arts overseas, Quaill's contract only covers this year, but she says she would like to continue in the role.

She wants to expand the event to include Asia-Pacific dealers and contemporary artists working alongside locals. "The standard is so high here there is the opportunity to bring other artists from the region in," she says.

Quaill's ambition is echoed by Beverly Knight from Melbourne's Alcaston Gallery, who says the fair is good but not sustainable at its present level. "If they developed this along Asia-Pacific lines it could be the best in the world," she says.

While Knight would like to see it become biennial, some of the art centres involved prefer an annual event because it provides them with a chance to interact with buyers. Unlike some Northern Territory art centres, which have retail outlets, the Queensland art centres tend to sell exclusively through dealers.

Nolan says speculation of a biennial event is premature. But the galleries -- many of which spent between $15,000 and $25,000 at this year's event, money they may or may not recoup in sales -- say the ability to plan is paramount. "We'll come out ahead but you have to do more than come out ahead," Knight says.

This year's fair received $600,000 from the Queensland government and $320,000 from the federal government, including the Australia Council and the Office of the Arts. Its first year saw sales of $500,000, rising last year to $700,000, a result expected this year as well.

The fair's significance, however, goes beyond the wheeling and dealing that takes place inside the Cairns Cruise Liner Terminal. Music and dance performances by Queensland dancers were scheduled every few hours on the lawns outside; the Queensland Art Gallery set up a busy kids art activity centre; ABC TV presented mock broadcasts of its children's show Go Lingo!; exhibitions and symposia for art and theatre were held across the city as staff from state, federal and international arts agencies mingled among it all.

Queensland governor Penelope Wensley extended her visit beyond opening night to officiate at the unveiling of a memorial to Thapich Gloria Fletcher, the ceramicist and CIAF co-patron who died in April. An auction raised $32,000 towards an educational bursary in her honour, to be awarded next year.

The fair delivered much needed focus to a region still suffering from the economic effects of cyclone Yasi and the general tourism downturn. But it was taking place amid tough trading conditions for Australian art, and for indigenous art in particular.

The Lockhart River Arts Indigenous Corporation was probably the most commercially successful group at the weekend. Late yesterday, it had sold 66 works for more than $60,000, and organiser Robbi Neal was ruing the fact she hadn't brought more stock. "We're a bit amazed because we came along expecting to sell four artworks," she says, referring to the number sold last year.

The 16-year-old centre made its name with artists such as Rosella Namok and Samantha Hobson. Those artists now work independently and Neal says new artists are starting to find emerge. (They are not, though, the next generation, since the new breed includes Irene Namok, Rosella's mother, whose entire showing at the fair sold out.)

Alternative voices at the fair this year were Tony Albert's Be Deadly installation and a symposium keynote address from Vernon Ah Kee. Both artists are members of the ProppaNOW collective of urban Aboriginal artists, which also launched an exhibition addressing racism in sport.

Albert, who is known for his reworking of Aboriginal kitsch from the 1960s, sold signed posters of three indigenous children bearing the slogan "Be Deadly". The sales raised about $1000, to be used to mail the posters to schools and community centres.

He had a flexible price system for the posters -- $10 for indigenous buyers, $20 for non-indigenous buyers -- saying the difference reflected the different opportunities people have. "Nobody was really concerned about the actual difference in price," he says. "They were interested in the benefits of the project."

In a keynote address on Friday, Ah Kee challenged the very trading under way at the fair, saying white sellers were representing indigenous artists who were divorced from the selling process. "It's a market, a good thing, I like it and it brings us to Cairns and we're gonna go swimming," he said, half in jest.

He called for greater involvement from indigenous artists. "We should stop calling blackfellas artists when they don't even know what that means," he says. "We should call Aboriginal art folk art. That's what it is."

That view was not shared by Knight, who is confident that the Aboriginal artists she represents are well empowered. "A lot of remote artists in the [Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara] lands look online at the prices we charge so to say they don't know is absurd," she says.

Michaela Boland travelled to Cairns courtesy of Arts Queensland.