How to finally get those photos off your phone and onto your walls

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How to finally get those photos off your phone and onto your walls

If you’re anything like me, your phone houses thousands of photos, but your home is shockingly devoid of printed images.

Erica Connolly understands the predicament. The Texas photographer frames and sells photography of her travels, but even for a professional, she says narrowing down which shots are worth printing and hanging can be difficult. The first step, she says, is a serious culling after each vacation or special occasion.

“When I get back from a trip, I choose 10 favorites that are either going to go in my print shop or on my own walls. Those tend to be the ones that have a story behind them and make me happy when I see them,” she says. “I also lean toward framing photos that reflect my own personal interior space — for example, if the colors or vibe match what I already have going in my home, I’m naturally going to gravitate toward those images.”

Connolly advises not overthinking things and framing “anything that evokes a memory or feeling.” Here’s more advice from her and other experts about how to incorporate framed photography into your space.

1. Consider your home’s flow

When deciding which photos to hang where, Colorado photographer Joe Hendricks says it’s important to consider how you want to feel in each space — and the story you want to convey to guests.

“Show the most important pictures to you when you walk into the house,” advises the owner of Elope Telluride, a studio that photographs elopements. Hendricks’s landscape photography decorates the walls of his office as it’s what inspires him while working. Toward the bedrooms, more personal moments are on display. His primary suite is filled with photos of his son and a montage of the fifth-grader’s early years. “He’s the first and last thing I want to see every day.”

According to Hendricks, the living room is prime real estate to show off accomplishments and interests, whether that’s travels or a hobby.

2. Print photos in high resolution

The camera you shoot your images on — whether a point-and-shoot, DSLR or phone — isn’t as important as the resolution of the photo sent to the printer. “If you’ve edited a phone photo anywhere, make sure you’re saving it in high res,” Hendricks says, adding that most phone apps give you the option to save in original resolution even after editing.

For a printed photo, Connolly recommends a minimum resolution of 300 DPI (dots per inch). “Never print a photo that is a screenshot or a photo that has been super cropped as that diminishes the image quality,” she says. “Always save the image at the highest resolution possible for the best printing outcome.”

Most online printers will indicate if your image is high enough resolution for the size print you want. In general, if a device captures imagery of 12 megapixels or higher, Hendricks says you should be able to print in any size.

3. Don’t get overwhelmed by options

Many printers offer hundreds of options — from different types of paper to the border width around your image. The most common finishes for a printed photo are matte, lustre and glossy, which offer varying levels of shine. If you’re struggling to decide, Hendricks advises keeping it simple.

“A classic print on matte paper with a small one-inch border in a frame is timeless and perfect. You can’t go wrong,” he says.

Hendricks says a local print shop with a large-format printer is always a safe bet; he also recommends Costco or Sam’s Club. Connolly says Artifact Uprising is a great choice for online ordering. Both photographers advise steering clear of printing at the kiosk at your local supermarket or pharmacy as color calibration and quality are often an issue.

4. Pick the right mats and frames

Once you’ve chosen your photos, frame selection comes next. While online companies such as Framebridge and Smallwoods have simplified the print-to-frame process, the options for materials are still plentiful. Connolly suggests letting the photo and your surroundings steer the selection process — for example, if your house is near a forest, a dark wood frame will probably look beautiful, she says.

“It’s fun to consider what’s going on inside of the image,” she says. “If you have a shot from nature, you might consider a wooden frame. If it’s a more industrial image, a black metal frame may be a better fit.”

If you’re planning a symmetrical gallery wall with images of the same ratio and orientation, you’ll probably want to stick to the same frame and matting for all of them, Connolly says. But if you’re going for something more eclectic, consider mixing up sizes and materials.

While mats aren’t required, they add a level of polish to framed photography. Plus, says Connolly, they draw your eye in by creating separation between the image, frame and environment. She generally recommends increasing the mat size as the size of the photo increases but adds that a large mat around a small image can create an interesting contrast.

5. Make sure to go big enough

Consider the negative space available in your home, choosing images and frames that sufficiently fill it, Connolly says. She says framing images that are too small for their intended wall is a critical error many homeowners make.

“Go bigger, go bigger,” she urges. Framing companies and designers often recommend that art take up between 60 and 75 percent of the available wall space where you plan to display it. “The larger the art, the better! I promise it’s going to look the best,” Connolly says.

6. Use secondary spaces for gallery walls

If you’re planning to hang a gallery wall of framed photos, interior designer Tori Alexander suggests steering clear of focal points, such as over the mantle. “Use a secondary wall in the room or passage spaces such as hallways and stairwells,” says the principal of Alexander Interiors.

Alexander explains that rooms are often architecturally oriented away from the largest swath of wall space. Installing a group of frames there will take up a good amount of it, “adding interest to an area that otherwise may feel like a void.”

7. Hang at eye level

The height at which you should hang images is relative to the size of the wall itself, Alexander says, though “a good rule of thumb is [to start] 60 inches from the floor,” with the goal of centering the piece at eye level. Function should be a priority, she adds — be mindful of how normal daily activities may impact frames.

“If you have young children, you may want to avoid placing framed pieces within their reach or you may spend countless hours re-leveling and keeping the collection straight,” she says.

8. No walls? No problem

In an era of open floor plans, not every home has wall space to spare. If that’s the case for you, Alexander says not to worry.

“I love a rod-and-chain to hang items like art or mirrors by suspension in front of windows,” she says. “Because windows are often the architectural focal point of a room, they really enhance the impact of art when well-executed.”

Or, just go for tabletop frames on a desk or shelf. “Tabletop frames are generally smaller and for images sized four-inches-by-four inches or five-by-seven,” Connolly says. “The more memories around your house, the better. It’s nice when your home can tell a story of you.”

Kristin Luna is a Tennessee-based journalist who writes about travel, food and home design.

The Photographer Who Captured England’s Last Hurrah

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The Photographer Who Captured England’s Last Hurrah

The Photographer Who Captured England’s Last Hurrah

On the eve of the coronation, a look at the photographs of Dafydd Jones, whose party shots of Britain’s Bright Young Things are the pictorial equivalents of Evelyn Waugh’s sentences.

By Tina Brown

May 3, 2023

A woman in an evening gown sitting on a mans shoulders.
Blizzard Ball. London, 1986.Photographs by Dafydd Jones

When I took over the editorship of Tatler (the old social flagship of the British upper classes that once had loitered on every coffee table of every stately home in England) in June, 1979, it had declined into a threadbare shiny sheet with staples through it trying to masquerade as an upmarket magazine. The only faintly recognizable collateral from its glory days were the pages at the front of the magazine, which featured host-approved snapshots of posh-looking stockbrokers and their tweedy wives, and choleric colonels and plump-shouldered débutantes grimacing at each other over a glass of warm amontillado or milling with company directors in very new deerstalkers at country-race meets where you might get a whiff of the royals.

Prince Charles kissing Queen Elizabeth IIs hand.
Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth II at a Guards Polo Club match. Windsor, 1985.

The Tatler photos were the polar opposite of what had begun to make a splash in RITZ, the raffish social newspaper of the late nineteen-seventies that was modelled on Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. Edited by the late David Litchfield, a former filmmaker, RITZ offered a parallel social world of louche café society, specializing in “candids” of such figures as Mick Jagger staring glassily in a flowered hat and eye makeup at one of Lord Glenconner’s Mustique galas, or dissolute closeups of half-eaten haute cuisine littered with cigarette stubs as a dazed Bryan Ferry and Jerry Hall float decadently past in glamorous disarray. I am not sure which of these worlds was more—or less—inviting, but as the new editor of Tatler I knew that they should not be mutually exclusive.

Historically, it was the right moment for the magazine to take a new visual direction. England was on the cusp of Mrs. Thatcher’s ascendance to Downing Street, and with it came an era of social division and hard-charging new money. In the words of Lady Hartwell, the wife of the Daily Telegraph’s editor, at a lunch party in Buckinghamshire, “At last we live in a world where we can sack people again.”

Margaret Thatcher in a dress. A person is holding an umbrella over her.
Margaret Thatcher arriving at the Winter Ball. Grosvenor House, London, 1984.

By the early eighties, the ruling class had its confidence back, but there was also—as the harshness of the Thatcher years played out—a nostalgia for the “Brideshead Revisited” era of aristocratic whimsy and frolicky romance. (The BBC TV adaptation of “Brideshead” ruled the airwaves in 1981.) The pages of Tatler needed to reflect all these crosscurrents, the emerging social edge, the high-low social mix, the secret excesses that still existed behind the closed doors of the great houses of England, and it needed to be chronicled with a cleverly irreverent point of view.

Couples sitting on sofa and making out.
Feathers Ball. Hammersmith Palais, London, 1981.

I knew how to do it in words, with impudent headlines, cover stories, and ironic literary voices, but who to express the editorial vision in pictures? Tatler was still captive to the old guard of social photographers who enjoyed free access to the most top-drawer aristocratic festivities. Two of Tatler’s stable were Barry Swaebe and Desmond O’Neill, courteous buffers of a certain age whose bread was buttered by the people who invited rather than assigned them.

It was in February, 1981, after two years of searching for the right sharp-eyed lens, that I saw a pre-publication edition of a Sunday Times magazine that featured the winners of a photography contest. One of the suggested topics was “The Return of the Bright Young Things.” The series by the runner-up, one Dafydd Jones, immediately caught my eye with its stark black-and-white definition and the sheer effervescent brio of its depiction of oblivious aristocratic bad behavior—photographic moments as memorable as Evelyn Waugh’s sentences. I assigned Dafydd to follow the then Lady Diana Spencer when she attended the race meet at Sandown Park in March, 1981. He shot her in black and white, eyes down, running the gantlet of hungry paparazzi whose lenses were all trained in her direction. We used it as a double-page spread beneath the headline “Di, Di, over Here Di, Di . . .” It became the classic, early image of a hunted future princess.

Lady Diana Spencer walking in front of a crowd of people who are taking photos of her.
Lady Diana Spencer at Sandown Park. Esher, 1981.

I asked Dafydd to bring his portfolio into Tatler’s old headquarters on Bruton Street, and resolved there and then to make him our party photographer. He was a strikingly elfin presence, so young, so hesitant, so unassuming. His own humble origins, including attending a state-run school in Oxford and making extra money as a campus cleaner, were the perfect townie vantage point from which to view the privileged antics of the Oxford jeunesse dorée. Throughout the next eight years, his pictures became the defining images of the new Tatler, reflecting more pointedly than all our glossy competitors the inimitable look and feel of a strata of society at play. Because he was so understated, he was able to be invisible. Because he always knew what he was looking for, he was usually the last to leave, producing wonderful motifs of sleeping young beauties with their long, lissome legs sprawled on padded banquettes with their entwined dance partners, or lolling with a friend on a summer lawn at the end of the revelry. Unusually for an outsider who penetrates the inner circles, Dafydd was never co-opted by the world he covered. Check out the picture of an unself-conscious youngblood stepping out that is straight out of Monty Python’s “Ministry of Silly Walks.”

A man Stephen WindsorClive who is wearing a suit and dancing.
Stephen Windsor-Clive at a Temple Muir dance. Wickham Place, Essex, 1981.
Two women talking on a staircase.
Carolyn Wroughton and Shona McKinney at Jo Farrell’s thirtieth birthday party. Polish Club, London, 1988.
A man leaning in toward a seated woman.
Lady Gowrie and the Rt. Hon. Nicholas Soames, at a Sotheby’s gala auction in aid of the Courtauld Institute of Art Fund. London, 1987.

There is no one better than Dafydd at capturing the moments of privileged pretension—such as the two-shot of the posturing, bow-tied, young William Nott and Edward Hoare sucking on their cigars as if they were already haw-haw-haw fifty-year-old members of White’s club. Or charm and smarm in motion, as the grandson of Winston Churchill, the Rt. Hon. Nicholas Soames, with his brilliantined side parting, leans over at a black-tie dinner to kissy-kiss the proffered pout of a winsome blond Lady Gowrie.

Two men smoking cigars.
William Nott and Edward Hoare at the gentleman’s club Boodle’s. London, 1981.
A woman drinking from a bottle next to a man at a table.
Annabel Harris and Cosmo Fry at a party at the Lyceum Theatre. London, 1982.
A man opening a champagne bottle at a party.
Revellers at the Sandhurst Commissioning Ball. 1988. 

Dafydd is probably most famous for his quintessential Hooray Henry photographs of exploding champagne bottles, or the madcap Sebastian Flyte-ness of a group of Young Things sledding down a mountain in St. Moritz on a dining table. A print of the moment when a scissor-legged deb in full formal dress is tossed by a raucous toff into a lily pond at a party now hangs on my sitting-room wall in New York.

A woman being pushed into a pool.
Charles Mcdowell pushes Pop Vincent into a lily pond during the Martin Betts Dance. Ascot, 1982.
People sledding down a mountain on a dining table.
David Kirke, Tim Hunt, Nicky Slade, and Lord Xan Rufus-Isaacs ride a dining table in the Dangerous Sports Club ski race. St. Moritz, Switzerland, 1983.

Dafydd’s brilliant evocation of a time and a class only seem more potent today, when we know that so many of the moneyed twits in his eighties portfolio ended up running the country, as they always have. His genius is to preserve something elegiac in the satire. These were, after all, just young people having fun.

Two women lying on a lawn.
Early morning at the Trinity May Ball. Cambridge, 1984.

This is drawn from “England: The Last Hurrah.”

Drone photography exhibit tomorrow at Sharks Peruvian

By in Photography

Drone photography exhibit tomorrow at Sharks Peruvian

CENTRAL FALLS – Run of the Mill photography will be hosting a one-night gallery exhibit at Sharks Peruvian Cuisine tomorrow, May 4 from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Admission is free and the exhibit is suitable for all ages. The gallery will feature metal prints of historic and abandoned architecture found throughout Blackstone Valley and beyond, but from the point of view of a drone.

Feast your eyes on DeadHungry’s delicious photography work

By in Photography

Feast your eyes on DeadHungry’s delicious photography work

It’s no secret that we love an artist who can celebrate the wonderful world of food in new and exciting ways. French chef, photographer and filmmaker Alex Paganelli AKA DeadHungry does exactly that. Every edible item in Alex’s work looks as mouth-watering as it does artistic – framed in ways which elevate the food as a centrepiece to the image. “All my work involves food somehow, that’s really what I’m best at,” Alex tells It’s Nice That. Using his test kitchen in London, Alex will cook and develop dishes or a concept with his team, tapping into his history as a chef to come up with creative food ideas. “Some projects are a lot more visual, like a campaign or an editorial where I shoot photos and video,” Alex says. “It’s always visually and creatively focused on food and the concept of dining itself.”

As someone who’s “naturally comfortable with food”, Alex gets involved on set as much as he can, figuring out “how we can handle it and what we can do with it”, he says. “Some projects are a mix of both, like developing a recipe to be published, or creating a food product for a store, where both taste and visuals come into play,” he adds. “That’s really where I can extend the creative process and test its limits.” What’s ultimately so captivating about Alex’s work is how he brings food photography into an arena of fashion photography, tapping into the same visual cues used in magazine editorials for his work with food.

Emotional precariousness in Sara Rinaldi’s photography

By in Photography

Emotional precariousness in Sara Rinaldi’s photography

Visual artist Ada Marino, Italian but based in Wales, works by combining installation and photography, seeking a visual transposition of traumas buried in the past. Her works, often in black and white, conceal an agony, suffering and sense of helplessness that manifest themselves in a form of cynical surrealism. The images that Ada Marino evokes belong to her personal experience and, more generally, those of women, focusing on gender issues.
The project “Paterfamilias” is autobiographical and therefore particularly charged with pathos. The artist investigates the phenomenon of patriarchy circumscribed to the domestic sphere, drawing from her past family traumas. In fact, Ada Marino dedicates the project to her grandmother, abused and denigrated by an authoritarian husband.

“To my grandmother who was abused and denigrated by an authoritarian husband. To her that when she was not beaten was impregnated, as sign of ‘love’ and punishment and often beaten while she was expecting, as sign of correction and discipline.” wrote Ada.

Ada Marino | Collater.alAda Marino | Collater.al
Selected photograph for Liquida photofestival

“Paterfamilias” visually describes a suffocating and toxic environment. A place where home is no longer a safe haven but the scene of violence and denigration. A place where man dominates every choice and marks time. Ada Marino, although not making the violence explicit through images, is able to evoke it with specific gestures, positions or behaviors. A man’s hand grips a woman’s hair; in another shot he forcefully holds a bird, preventing it from breathing. Broken dishes are stowed a sideboard, milk overflows from a glass. The man, shielded by a newspaper, pierces it with his arm in order to eat. Still two legs are seen floating in the air in a bathroom, a woman is hanging, evoking suicide. Fragments of life that every woman is able to perceive as dangerous. Symbols that in their apparent simplicity carry with them the sense of oppression that continues to linger to this day, highlighting how today’s society itself fails to eradicate patriarchy, despite many words and hard efforts.

Ada Marino is able to convey disquiet where there might not be any, as in the case of overflowing milk, managing to strike at those universally dramatic gestures. Marino’s photographs conceptualize the effect of repulsion/attraction, reevaluating the very concept of ugliness.

Ada Marino’s work is featured in the selection of the Liquida Photofestival in Turin 2023.

ArtDependence | 2023 Winners: V&A Parasol Foundation Prize for Women in Photography

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ArtDependence | 2023 Winners: V&A Parasol Foundation Prize for Women in Photography

The five winners of the inaugural V&A Parasol Foundation Prize for Women in Photography: an exciting new annual initiative dedicated to identifying, supporting, and championing innovative women artists.

Produced in partnership with Peckham 24, south London’s innovative three-day photography festival, the prize amplifies the voices of women, champions diversity and promotes equality in the arts. It has been made possible by the support of Ms. Ruth Monicka Parasol and The Parasol Foundation Trust.

The prize attracted nearly 1,400 submissions from artists all over the world, representing a broad visual and conceptual interpretation of the theme ‘Agents of Change’, which celebrates photography’s role in affecting and documenting transformation, revolution and innovation.

The five winning artists were chosen from a shortlist of ten by our prize selection committee, comprising of Lesley A. Martin, Creative Director of Aperture; Ronan Mckenzie, photographer, curator and founder of Black-owned artist space HOME; and Turner nominated multi-media artist and lecturer Ingrid Pollard. Of the winning photographers, the selection committee said: ‘This range of artists wonderfully characterizes the concept of “change agents” and demonstrates photography’s ability to capture and influence societal and political evolution. Each artist represents a compelling shift in the medium, from traditional observational documentary practices to the exploration of archives and staged imagery as a means of reflecting upon authentic, lived experiences.’

Each artist will receive a bursary of £2,000 and exhibit their work at the Copeland Gallery, London, opening Friday 12 May 2023 as part of the Peckham 24 festival programme. Selected artists will participate in talks and events as part of the Photo London art fair and during Peckham 24.

A door handle tied with a ribbon in the colours of the Ukrainian flag

Anya Tsaruk is a Ukrainian photographer currently based in Berlin. Her artistic approach initially focussed on documentary and street photography, but evolved in the past year to expose the realities of Russia’s war in Ukraine and its consequences. Her ongoing series ‘Mother Land’ is an autobiographical example of how families have been affected, and continue to live with the trauma of conflict.

A room covered with growing flowers on the floor, with a window looking over a mountainous landscape

Gohar Dashti is an Iranian-American photographer and video artist who currently resides and works in Boston. Her art is deeply influenced by her native country, Iran, and often explores its topography, socio-geography, and the history of war and violence that have affected it.

Two men in front of a boathouse at night

Vân-Nhi Nguyễn is a Vietnamese photographer and designer based in Hà Nội, Việt Nam. Her work is concerned with the reconstruction of collective memory – be it that of her own identity or of the larger community – and its relationship to contemporary society. Her ongoing project, ‘As You Grow Older’, takes the familiar shape of a family photo album and features portraits in which each individual is presented in their own space.

A man standing in front of an expanse of water, hands in pockets

Cynthia MaiWa Sitei is a Kenyan British visual artist and curator whose work is heavily influenced by the culture of storytelling. She integrates photography, text and the archive to explore themes such as stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. Responding to the colonial archive of British social anthropologist Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, ‘spear of a nation’ embarks on its own expedition to critically reflect on acculturation and assimilation, and the legacy of colonialism.

Four people sitting on each others' laps, close up

Priyadarshini Ravichandran is an Indian photographer whose work is connected with lived experience, including stories of women, their lives and the land. ‘Surge’ is a poetic and personal exploration revealing the complexity of familial relationships.

Juried Photography Show On View At Art Center

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Juried Photography Show On View At Art Center

Forty-three photos were selected out of 213 submissions for Falmouth Art Center’s Annual Juried Photography Exhibition. Rowland Scherman of Bourne, a longtime photographer for Life Magazine and other major publications, served as juror.

An opening reception for this show and two others is Friday, May 5, from 5 to 7 PM. The reception is open to all and is potluck. Attendees are welcome to bring a sweet or savory appetizer.

What do white staff do in remote Indigenous art centres?

By in Native

What do white staff do in remote Indigenous art centres?

In April, The Australian published the results of a four-month investigation into white staff “interference” at Tjala Arts, a member of the APY Arts Centre Collective of Indigenous art centres across South Australia.

It included a video of an art centre manager painting on Yaritji Young’s canvas, to “juice it up” a bit.

The ongoing media commentary has been divisive and confusing. One question it raises is what do art managers and studio assistants actually do in remote Indigenous community art centres?

50 years of arts centres

Remote art centres are central to today’s internationally successful Indigenous contemporary art industry. They typically have a white art centre manager and other staff overseen by an Indigenous board.

Papunya Tula Artists in Central Australia, incorporated in 1972, is the common ancestor of the publicly funded art centre model.

Papunya Tula marked the transition from the paternalism of the mission era to Indigenous self-determination, supported by the establishment of the Aboriginal Arts Board.

On May 3 1973, a press release from Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s office announced:

Aboriginals have been given full responsibility for developing their own programs in the arts under a new Government policy to revitalise cultural activities through the Australian Council for the Arts.

What followed was a revolution, led by and for Aboriginal artists, with non-Indigenous staff employed to mediate with the art world.

Today, this workforce are mostly young women with degrees in visual art or arts management. They operate in around 90 Aboriginal-owned collectives across remote Australia. Staff turnover is high, and recruitment is a perennial task.



Read more:
40 years on: how Gough Whitlam gave Indigenous art a boost

A cross-cultural thing

The troubling fact is not that “Aboriginal art is a white thing”, as Aboriginal artist and activist Richard Bell famously declared in 2002. Rather, Aboriginal art is “a cross-cultural thing”, bringing Indigenous and non-Indigenous creative workers together.

Despite the shared goal and triumphs of the cultural industries in celebrating Indigenous art, the shadow of Australia’s colonisation is never far away.

The conditions in remote art centres have evolved since the 1970s, but the practicalities are essentially the same. Art centre staff support the artists socially, culturally and logistically to ensure artists are happy to create their work in a culturally safe space.

Staff also manage the external demands of the market, exhibition schedules, bureaucratic accountability (to funding bodies and institutions, for example) and advocacy.

Studio assistance involves purchasing art materials, stretching and priming canvas, harvesting raw material such as ochre, bark or timber, as well as packing, freighting and distributing the work and travelling with artists to exhibitions.

The level of support depends on an individual artist’s needs. Art centres often include the elderly and artists with a disability. Some artists have a strong creative drive; some work slowly or inconsistently.

Whatever the art form, good work takes considerable time. Art production is frequently interrupted “mid-canvas” to attend to other business such as cultural events, funerals or medical treatment.



Read more:
Aboriginal art: is it a white thing?

A collaborative space?

The APY Art Centre Collective management strongly denied allegations of any interference with the paintings or “the Tjukurrpa” (the Aṉangu term for their comprehensive spiritual belief system). Their website currently states hands-on assistance, such as “underpainting”, is common practice.

Selecting colours and mixing paint, priming and delegating canvases, washing brushes and general maintenance, as well as regular discussion and responsiveness to the art are all part of the studio assistant’s role.

Some aesthetic influence on the final product is only natural, but painting directly on the canvas is never part of the job description. Undeclared, many would consider it fraudulent.

In 1997, when I first went to work in a Western Desert art centre, the message from the artists was simple: sell our paintings, and be straight with us.

It was also clear the paintings offered for sale – to public institutions, knowledgeable collectors and souvenir buyers – would be of a certain standard.

“Quality control” is an ambivalent term, but it is implied and expected in the job.

In 1996 Kathleen Petyarre won the lucrative Telstra Art Award for her painting Storm in Atnangkere Country II. It was later revealed she was “assisted” by her white partner.

Following an inquiry, Petyarre retained her rightful authorship of the work, but this prompted art centres to recognise “creative labour”, when delegated by the artist and particularly among family, as culturally accepted practice — which should be attributed accordingly.

The right to determine who gets to collaborate on artwork, and how, applies to artists worldwide. The studios of Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst are extreme examples of art making being undertaken by studio assistants. So too, Aboriginal artists enjoy workshops with specialists in fields as varied as printmaking, bronze casting, animation or glassmaking.

It’s up to the artists first, and the institutions, curators, the market and art critics next, to evaluate such collaborations and exchanges case by case.

Cultural narratives and daily realities

A key role in art centres is “taking the story”. This is where art centre staff document the artist’s painting with a photo and the related Tjukurrpa or Country.

These “certificates of authenticity” documenting culturally important stories guarantee the works as genuine Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander works. They also underpin the marketing, promotion and interpretation of many contemporary art exhibitions from remote communities.

It’s the disconnect between these purist cultural narratives and the realities of the busy cross-cultural studios that puts the artists, their staff and the entire industry in such a paradoxical position.

Trust and ethics lie at the heart of these working relationships. It’s impractical to create more rules and impossible to enforce the ways artists and staff interact in art centre settings, but it’s time to acknowledge these exchanges with a new story.



Read more:
Beware red flags and fakes: how to buy authentic First Nations designs that benefit creators and communities

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