Central Art's Relationships with Aboriginal Artists

For Sabine Haider (Gallerist/Owner of Central Art) dealing in art is about relationships, first and foremost her relationships with the artists she works with. She only sells work by artists she knows personally.

In the beginning Ada Bird Petyarre and her relatives would visit Sabine at her home. They’d sit down on the ground with her and teach her about the stories behind the ceremonial body paint designs and the bush tucker (native food plants) represented in their canvasses.

Now Central Art has its own physical home, a large well-appointed showroom in Alice Springs available for pre-arranged private viewings. For Sabine it is important that the artists she works with feel comfortable here.

They can visit any time. It is here mostly that she continues her education in their culture although she loves to ‘go bush’ with them when she can. She deeply appreciates how safe they make her feel even when they take her hunting for goanna.

Her experience with the artists has been a great privilege and a way of staying grounded, in touch with the meaning of their work and vocation. In return, apart from the purchase of paintings, she offers the artists the benefit of her commercial skills.

Sabine does not enter into exclusivity arrangements with them. They are quite free to offer their work to whomever they want. At the same time she is confident, because of her relationship with them, that she is offered the very best of what they do.

Sabine buys each work on its merits, never work of a type. She never specifies subject matter, size, format, colour; never orders in quantity. She has to personally respond strongly to a work before she can think about buying it and offering it for sale.

She spends a lot of time with the artists on making sure they understand their agreement with her, especially the difference between what she is paying them and what she will try sell the work for, and why there is a difference.

She talks to them about the vagaries of the market, the variation in prices, changes in taste, in what collectors are looking for, but also about the importance of avoiding mass production.

She talks to them about the critical issue of provenance and has encouraged them to develop their signatures and sign the back of their canvasses, which they now do with a great deal of pride.

Sabine’s dearest hope is that by the time she retires the artists she has worked with will be able to sell and market their own work, take charge of their own destiny.

(Photo: © 2008 Sabine Haider, Gallerist of Central Art - Aboriginal Art Store with Artist Jennifer Purvis Kngwarreye © 2012 Central Art)

 

Sales Enquiries

Sabine Haider
Central Art - Aboriginal Art Store
T: (08) 8952 1711 (Aus) or +61 8 8952 1711 (Int)
Skype: centralart (Get Skype and call us for free)
F: (08) 8952 1744 (Aus) or +61 8 8952 1744 (Int)
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