Outspoken Australian writer Germaine Greer sparked controversy when she declared that the Aboriginal art movement in that country “may have run its course” in late 2005. “The punters may have realised that Aboriginal art, in common with all other art, is mostly bad,” she said.
The expatriate’s sentiment was nothing new. For many years she has openly condemned the commercialisation of Aboriginal art as crass and deplorable. But the attention directed at Australia’s Indigenous art movement only seems to intensify. Since Greer’s comments there has been a renewed push to defend the Aboriginal visual arts industry in Australia, all the while increasing examples of shocking fraud and exploitation come to light. The contradictions highlighting a woeful disparity between the world of high art and the third-world many Indigenous artists occupy.
