As Aboriginal Art is booming throughout the world, more and more “art sweatshops” are set up in Australia’s red center, exploiting indigenous artists for huge profit.

Below is an article written by Neil Sands and published by The Standard:

In an Alice Springs warehouse behind a chain-link fence, Aboriginal artists crouch over canvasses as a white supervisor looks on.

Aboriginal community leaders say the backyard art factory is one of many in Australia's "red center" where unscrupulous white art dealers pay painters a pittance then make huge profits from collectors and tourists.

"They're locking them up in sheds and making them paint Aboriginal art and just drip-feeding them alcohol," said William Tilmouth, head of the Tangentyere Aboriginal Council in Alice Springs. "It's an appalling state of affairs."

The dealers are motivated by booming interest in Aboriginal art which resulted in a painting by an indigenous artist fetching more than A$1 million (HK$6.5 million) for the first time at a Sydney auction last month.

The problem has become so serious that the Australian parliament last year launched an inquiry into so-called "carpetbaggers" who are undermining an Aboriginal art industry worth up to A$500 million a year.

The Senate report, due out next week, is expected to recommend that galleries adopt strict guidelines outlining the origins of their Aboriginal art in a bid to prevent fakes and "unethically acquired" works flooding the market.

Northern Territory Arts Minister Marion Scrymgour told the inquiry that unscrupulous dealers are flooding the market with low-quality work that amount to little more than tourist souvenirs.

Scrymgour said there is anecdotal evidence that some items such as digeridoos are being painted in faux Aboriginal designs then sold to tourists for hundreds of dollars.

"The material they call Aboriginal art is almost exclusively the work of fakes, forgers and fraudsters," she said in testimony earlier this year. "Their work hides behind false descriptions and dubious designs."

Talented indigenous artists are most vulnerable to exploitation as many speak little English and have no idea of the true value of their work.

Liesl Rockchild, who coordinates a program that Tangentyere set up two years ago to provide ethical marketing for artists working in the town camps around Alice Springs, described how the carpetbaggers work.

"They're locking artists up, feeding them, providing them with grog, clapped-out motor vehicles, Viagra - cutting them off from their communities.

"At the end of the day, they're paying them a small sum of money for their work, usually about a tenth what it's worth and then selling it for whatever they want to."

Rockchild said dealers sometimes told artists from remote areas they would put them up in Alice Springs motels, only to charge them exorbitant accommodation fees then demand they repay the debt with paintings.

Other carpetbaggers flew in to central Australia for a day from cities such as Sydney, handing artists cheap painting materials and a few hundred dollars then picking up the works before boarding their return flight, she said.

Rockchild said one artist, whose work recently sold for A$15,000 in Italy, was paid only A$100 for some paintings.