‘Get Up! Stand Up! Show Up!’: How NIAF is showing Sydney the way

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‘It is a place where art and stories are exchanged, where buyers can meet remote artists. Best of all, it is where you can buy art that is being sold ethically.’ Writer Christopher Raja was here discussing twenty-five years of the ‘Desert Mob’ exhibition and marketplace at Alice Springs’s Araluen Arts Centre in 2015, but this pursuit of a meaningful and sustainable platform for First Nations culture has become the aspiring template for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art fairs across the country. 

‘Desert Mob’ has spawned a variety of marketplaces in the decades since, each inflected with their own particular sense of character and place: for instance, the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair, established in 2007, has more recently introduced fashion parades; while the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair, begun in 2009, this year extends to a night of stand-up comedy. The newest offspring is the National Indigenous Art Fair (NIAF) which, since 2018, has been presenting a more intimate taste of First Nations culture (showcasing the work of around 30 art centres and collectives compared to over 70 in Darwin), but on prime Sydney real estate.  

Held at the Overseas Passenger Terminal in the Rocks on the eve of this year’s NAIDOC Week, NIAF is also the first physical Indigenous fair since a series of lockdowns closed off Australia’s remote art centres in 2020. Embracing NAIDOC’s theme of ‘Get Up! Stand Up! Show Up!’, this year’s edition of NIAF imparts the art experience with holistic public programming that includes a communal weaving circle and culinary demonstrations from Indigenous chef Matt Atkins (Malyangapa and Barkindji Wiimpitja) and outfit Mirritya Mundya (Ngarrigu). 

‘We might be a tiny organisation sitting in La Perouse,’ says Peter Cooley, the Bidjigal CEO of First Hand Solutions that runs the fair along with the local Blak Markets, ‘but our reach goes right across the most remote communities in Australia. For some, the art centre is the only opportunity economically and for employment in those communities, and it is an absolute pleasure for us to be able to support those guys and bring them to Sydney – the biggest market in Australia.’ 

Cooley was speaking at the launch of ‘Heart in Art’, a NIAF satellite exhibition at the harbourside Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf that mixes classic desert painting from the APY Art Centre Collective with extraordinary pandanus weavings and stringybark works from Bula’bula Arts at Ramingining, showing how the best Aboriginal art can easily upstage any Sydney water view. ‘I hope it goes on for a while,’ said Cooley of First Hand’s art project, ‘and it just gets bigger and bigger.’ 

Michael Fitzgerald, Sydney  

The National Indigenous Art Fair is at the Overseas Passenger Terminal, Sydney, from 2–3 July 2022; ‘Heart in Art’ is on display at Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf until 10 July.