Get Involved and Help Stop Fake Art
05-03-2025
Following on from our successful Conference on ICIP at the Art Gallery of NSW, ACHAA is putting out the call for you to get involved in a new campaign that aims to educate about fake art and its cultural effect.
Protecting Indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights is a commitment from the current Federal Government and continues to be a concern for our member network.
Created by the Office of the Arts, the same Federal Government Department which sponsored our conference, this campaign helps define ICIP while also illustrating the specific harm that fake art does to our community.
As part of this campaign, the Office of the Arts filmed a series of videos at the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair in 2024, inviting First Nations artists and industry workers to share their experiences with fake art and the effect it has on artists and their communities. These questions help get to the crux of the emotional and cultural damage that fake art can do and emphasises the importance of cultural safety in the form of ICIP protections.
These videos ask five key questions about ICIP:
- What does fake or inauthentic art mean to you?
- What would you like consumers to know before purchasing Indigenous art?
- Have you experienced cultural harm because someone used your artwork without permission?
- Why is the protection of Indigenous cultural and intellectual property important?
- What would protecting your art and culture mean for you and your mob?
Each of these questions points to a specific concern, right, or cultural pain point for our communities and the specificity of how important cultural property is to Indigenous people.
Highlighted in these videos are several key points. It begins by defining fake art in this context as the act of theft of our unique arts, culture, and stories, copied by someone with no connection to them, for the purpose of selling merchandise to unsuspecting buyers. Yulwaallaraay and Gamilaroi artist Melissa Stannard rightfully points out that in this situation, not only is this wholly exploitative of artists, storytellers, nations, and the culture as a whole, but exploits the buyer as well who believes they are participating in authentic cultural expression.
Matilda Nona, a Torres Strait Islands artist explains how theft of her artwork affected her mentally, with a further effect on her family given that the story and culture held within the work stolen belonged to them. Small motifs, styles, and patterns are significant and specifically developed by artists based on their own cultural information, and so replicating those details not only is the cultural work done to develop such details disrespected, but so too is the knowledge within them.
Susan Reys provides a concluding summary that from her perspective; “If that knowledge, our knowledge, is protected; I would feel that the Australian Government, the Australian people valued us”.
You can view and share the videos with your artists, communities, buyers and supporters in full on the Office of the Arts website here. More information about what the Office of the Arts is doing to protect Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights is available here. As the centre for all things ICIP, new updates and info on ICIP and the campaign will be posted there.
You can also:
- Subscribe for updates.
- Follow Office of the Arts on social media and join the conversation using the hashtag #ICIP:
