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Agathon Galleries Opens State-of-the-Art Aboriginal Art Centre in Alice Springs
The temporary closure of Agathon Galleries Melbourne gallery flags the company's change of focus for the upcoming period. We will be reopening in Melbourne later in 2010 and will let you know of these arrangements as soon as is possible. In the meantime our Sydney Galleries will continue with our exhibition programs. For the first 6 months of 2010 Agathon Galleries will be focusing its energies on opening a state-of-the-art Aboriginal Art Centre in Alice Springs which will be run on conventional art studio lines. The property is equally owned by Agathon Galleries and Tommy Watson and his family. It will be open to all local artists wishing to paint with us. We have just purchased a rural acreage of 10 acres, an old camel farm close to the airport. It has beautiful rural setting and is a ideally suited to Indigenous campfire lifestyle with access to country and spectacular landscape views. John Ioannou: The new Alice Springs Aboriginal Art Centre is a major step in the direction of reducing the exploitation of Aboriginal artists which has been so much part of the arts industry in Alice Springs. Up until now artists have been victims to people eager to buy their work for cash at well below market prices. There has been no organisation that has provided any professional support to Alice Springs artists. The new art centre will do this. The provision of trust funds for each artist will ensure that money will be available to them long term and the Foundation, will provide capital to assist in projects for the well being of local people. I have fought hard and long over the past 5 years to establish the integrity of my place within the indigenous art world. To thisend I have studied indigenous culture and become initiated, I have learnt the Pitjantjatjara language so that I could understandand speak to the central desert people. I live most of the time in the desert. I have made enormous efforts to assist the Irrunytju Art Centre to financial self determination and improvement of their art centre and health, when they had been abandoned by institutions, galleries and the art world because of my involvement with them. I have also provided a safe and professional world within which Tommy Watson has been able to create some of his most extraordinary works. For all the initiatives to empower the indigenous people artists that I have represented, I have received nothing but opposition by most in t he art establishment. None of my detractors (all European) have ever had much face to face contact with the indigenous world or hands on experience with them. They have relied upon second or third hand information about me from those in the European indigenous art establishment who have a vested financial interest in the discrediting me. The result is that I have been the victim over many years of a highly organized art establishment campaign to discredit my integrity in every possible way. It has been an environment where truth is meaningless, and where truth has been relegated to a very minor role within today's journalism. This environment has been particularly harmful to my business. The spreading of lies and incredibly damaging unsubstantiated rumours about my character and past, in an effort to paint me in a negative light has had a devastating impact on me through influencing negatively the attitude of some major collectors and institutions. The Alice Springs Art Centre initiative is my determined response to set the record straight and demonstrate in a very positive way, the truth of my long term commitment to the empowerment of indigenous artists. The operation of the Centre will set new benchmarks for respecting artists and certainly go a long way to minimizing their exploitation. The operational model for the Centre is the product of long and in-depth consultation with indigenous desert leaders and local indigenous artists in Alice Springs. It will operate within the form of a conventional art studio model. It is damming on governments and others in the art establishment that despite the crisis around artists exploitation that they all complain about, that they have failed to deliver any tangible solutions for the artists. Our revolutionary model, will give artists the same opportunities and more that successful white artists expect from their dealers.
The Centre will be designed to act as safe haven for Alice Springs artists who are routinely exploited and paid pitiful amounts in cash. It will provide residential, medical and dialysis support for them. To ensure the highest quality work and fair payment, artists will be supported by a professionally run organisation with a financial structure and payment to them determined by an independent advisory board. The Centre's financial operations will be transparent and open to government audit. Artists will have their own trust funds with a Foundation to support local artists. The Foundation will receive 5% of profits which will be allocated according to the wishes of the Board.
It is a pity that had I been someone else within the art establishment initiating the changes that I have undertaken, I would be celebrated
As Director of Agathon Galleries, I am delighted that you are visiting our website and welcome you to it. I trust it becomes a key source of information for you on arguably the most exciting contemporary art movement in Australia that of the Australian Aboriginal artists.
Contemporary Aboriginal art is a movement of just over 30 years duration that has captured the hearts and minds of collectors not only in Australia but increasingly, global investors. They find in their paintings exuberance, spirituality and dynamism that is inspirational. This growing appreciation of Aboriginal painting is reflected in the growth of secondary art market sales which were around several millions in the 1980's, but today stand at over $25 million. Investors have seen the prices paid for major artists escalating astronomically.
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