Helping the corporate sector ethically source and engage staff in Aboriginal art
Investing in Aboriginal art is about more than just putting beautiful paintings on office walls. It’s a strategic initiative that breathes life into corporate values, engages your staff in indigenous culture, inspires a more creative workplace, shows your commitment to reconciliation and directly supports Aboriginal communities.
Aboriginal Contemporary’s Nichola Dare is a consultant specialised in helping businesses navigate this deeply rewarding but complex world. Her 15 years working with remote community art centres and artists has built trusted relationships that help her corporate clients not only buy Aboriginal art ethically but build programs around it to engage their staff in culture to support key pillars of their Reconciliation Action Plans (RAPs).
Aboriginal Contemporary is a proud member of the Indigenous Art Code.
What we do
Aboriginal Contemporary provides a range of corporate services to help connect organisations and their people with Aboriginal art in authentic and ethical ways.
WSP
Engineering consultants, WSP, were seeking a single artwork for their newly renovated offices. It had to be a particular size and complement their interior designer’s vision. Aboriginal Contemporary sourced a large collaborative work from Tjarliri Arts, a painting which soon became an integral and much-loved part of the new workspace.
Ethical Sourcing
Whether it’s a single artwork or building a magnificent corporate collection over time; whether your brief is specific or wide open; Aboriginal Contemporary works with our remote art centre partners to curate ethically sourced artworks for your organisation. The art centres we work with are 100% Aboriginal owned, so you can be confident artists are paid fairly, communities are supported and cultural protocols are respected.
OzHarvest
Aboriginal Contemporary helped food rescue charity OzHarvest license and reproduce a Central Desert artwork (echoing OzHarvest’s distinctive yellow) on corporate assets, including their RAP cover and a 12m x 4m warehouse wall.
Licensing and Extended Usage
Aboriginal Contemporary can help you license and reproduce artworks for uses such as internal assets, marketing communications and RAP covers. We work with specialist indigenous art lawyers to secure culturally appropriate licensing that ensures artists are fairly paid for their intellectual property.
One Denison Street
For Winten Property Group, we curated an exhibition of remote community art in their foyer. The exhibition had its own website, ran for three months and during NAIDOC week, we held a workshop where staff learnt about the meaning of ‘Country’ to First Nations people were invited to paint their own sense of Country.
Space Activation and Employee Workshops
Another way we help clients bring indigenous culture to life in workplaces is by curating short- or long-term exhibitions in commercial spaces, such as building foyers and public areas. To further engage staff and stakeholders, we can also run interactive workshops to build a deeper understanding of First Nations’ art and culture.
Sam Crawford Architects
Sam Crawford Architects were seeking indigenous artwork’s for an award-winning private residential project in Sydney. Aboriginal Contemporary spent time in the property, listened to the architect’s vision, took the brief and sourced four magnificent remote community artworks, now hanging in this stunning home.
Partnering with Architects and Interior Designers
Aboriginal Contemporary is happy to collaborate with architects and interior designers to integrate Aboriginal art into commercial, residential and public space projects. By working closely with your building design partners, we can source artworks that complement their visions, while ensuring cultural authenticity and ethical practices.
AWM Amaroo
AWM Amaroo is a Supply Nation office fit out business. They had already commissioned an indigenous designer to create their RAP cover and were now looking to deepen their engagement by building a collection of authentic remote community art. Aboriginal Contemporary sourced several significant works from the East Kimberley and will continue to work with AWM Amaroo to build their collection further.
Curating Corporate Collections
Aboriginal Contemporary can help businesses big and small build corporate collections that are living testimony to your commitment to Aboriginal culture and reconciliation. We can curate a collection around company values, an artist, a region or a medium, such as ceramics or weaving. We also help design programs to engage staff in selecting the art and can help you create your own virtual gallery to show your collection.
Colgate Palmolive
Colgate Palmolive engaged Aboriginal Contemporary for a panel discussion in front of staff from all levels of the organisation. The conversation explored culture and Country, ethical sourcing and how the corporate sector’s commitment to art directly benefits remote communities, where the art centre is often the only source of earned income.
Staff Engagement
Aboriginal Contemporary can help engage your staff in Indigenous art and culture by advising on internal comms and participating in presentations, workshops and panel discussions. As well as growing cultural awareness and sharing our experiences of communities and Country, we help your teams understand how corporate engagement with Aboriginal art directly supports remote communities.
Interactive gallery
During COVID, when our regular exhibition schedule was not possible, we held a series of exhibitions in our own virtual gallery.
Bespoke Virtual Gallery
As your corporate collection grows, we can help you create a bespoke virtual gallery that makes your artworks accessible by staff and stakeholders anywhere in the world. Your engaging, interactive digital gallery can even be designed to reflect your brand or architectural look and feel.
Frequently Asked Corporate Questions
We work directly with 100% Aboriginal-owned art centres, many in very remote communities. Every artwork is purchased ethically and comes with a certificate of authentication, ensuring artists are paid fairly and cultural protocols are respected.
Definitely. We can help ethically source works to specific sizes, colour palettes, from different regions, by senior or emerging artists and reflecting individual cultural themes. Not only paintings but artefacts, ceramics and weavings.
Some clients choose to work exclusively with local artists, but there is no cultural necessity to do so. Aboriginal artists paint to share their culture with everyone. All the artworks we source for our clients have been approved by their communities to be shown anywhere in the world.
Certainly. Our 30cm x 30cm original canvases are ideal corporate gifts. Each comes with its own Certificate of Authentication, and we can organise customised boxes for them. Other Indigenous art gift ideas include carved boab nuts and painted metal camp dogs.
Once we understand your needs, we put together a simple service agreement outlining the brief, scope, deliverables, timing and budget. Our fees are a combination of consultancy hours plus a commission on the artworks, which is set by the art centres.
We love helping organisations build their corporate collections over time. If you’re collecting around a specific theme, corporate values or artist, we can let you know when new work becomes available. Or you may prefer to buy the best available at the same time each year. We can also help put in place programs where staff participate in the selection.
One of the services we offer corporate clients is to build a bespoke virtual gallery online. Employees and stakeholders anywhere in the world can then view your collection in an interactive digital environment with background information on each artwork.
See an example.
Briefing an Aboriginal designer to create your RAP cover is a great start to engaging you staff with Aboriginal culture. But it needn’t stop there. Aboriginal art is incredibly diverse and artists, particularly those from remote communities, paint to share their culture as widely as possible.
While high quality Aboriginal art consistently appreciates in value over time (often significantly), we do not encourage buying Aboriginal art purely as an investment. The real ROI is connecting staff with First Nations perspectives, supporting Aboriginal communities and building a more alive and creative workplace.
Not at all. Aboriginal art is incredibly diverse - from the traditional to landscapes to the radically contemporary. There are also many forms of Aboriginal art that are not paintings at all, such as weavings, artefacts, carvings and ceramics. For a taste of some of the different styles view our online gallery.
In recent years, Aboriginal art has been growing in significance in the international art world. Archie Moore’s Kith and Kin won the Gold Lion at the Venice Biennale; a major Emily Kam Kngwarray retrospective recently opened at London’s Tate Modern; and high-profile collectors, such as actor Steve Martin, continue to grow interest and value overseas
Very much so. Whether it’s traditional styles or radical contemporary works. Curated for its surroundings – often working with your architect or interior designer - the rich cultural narratives and profound spiritual significance bring a unique sense of place to modern office environments.
You can. Buying from art centres or galleries that work with art centres is the best way to ensure ethical practices and good provenance.
What we bring to the process is our curatorial eye, 15 years’ experience and unique relationships with artists and art centres that can help you access works not otherwise available.
Provenance is your assurance that an artwork is properly attributed and ethically acquired. Well-documented provenance protects both the artist and the buyer by offering a verifiable lineage of the work’s creation, sales, exhibitions and publication history.
As well as helping First Nations people share their culture, your corporate investment in Aboriginal art provides sustainable income for remote communities where art centres are often the main source of earned income.
Let’s Talk
Whether it’s ethically sourcing a single painting or collaborating ways to use Aboriginal art to support your RAP, our experience and relationships with artists and art centres can help authentically connect your organisation and your people to the world’s oldest continuously living culture. Call, email of complete the form on the right.