The Wire

Carol Martin, member for Kimberley is asking lovers of Aboriginal art to give something back to Aboriginal communities. Carol has joined forces with the Indigenous Stock Exchange and the Broome Aboriginal Media Association to create a unique system that will see Aboriginal people benefit from paintings for centuries. A major issue for Australian artists has always been investors profiting, quite considerably from their artwork, with the artists gaining comparatively little. Resale royalty, or droit de suite, was introduced in France in the 1920s to give artists or their estates a share of secondary sales of their work. It exists in 11 European countries and, from January, will be rolled out across all 25 European Union members, including Britain. But it doesn’t exist in Australia and so Ms Martin has joined up with the Indigenous Stock Exchange and Broome Aboriginal Media Association to launch a strategy to ensure Aboriginal artists, their families and communities benefit indefinitely from their work. Ms Martin has put eleven paintings on-line for sale, through the ISX trading floor in a special online exhibition entitled My Soul, My Heart, My Home. People who purchase one of Carol’s works on-line will be asked to make a voluntary donation of 20 per cent of the price of the painting to an Australian Indigenous Art and Culture Development Fund, administered by the Broome Aboriginal Media Association in consultation with Carol.