Management and Marketing - Theses
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ItemReimagining the indigenous art market: site of decolonisation and reassertion of indigenous cultures( 2020)Indigenous art markets in Australia are highly dynamic. Commercial art intermediaries play a pivotal role in facilitating the exchange of art between Indigenous artists and consumers. Current literature on Indigenous art markets in Australia reveals that the majority of art intermediaries are non-Indigenous yet are responsible for dealing with Indigenous cultural art, artists, and communities. The extant literature on arts marketing and art intermediaries argues that art intermediaries take on different roles and form different relationships with artists and the artworks. They also navigate the tensions that exist between art and commerce. In Indigenous art markets, additional complexities exist as both art and cultures are exchanged. Thus, in this study, I ask: How do art intermediaries negotiate the meaning of Indigenous art within a multi-stakeholder art market? How do art intermediaries relationally engage with Indigenous artists and their art works, Indigenous communities, and buyers as they balance cultural and commercial tensions? Although current consumer research has studied different cross-cultural processes involving various cultural groups, these studies predominantly focused on immigrant consumers who migrate into a dominant host culture. I argue that these consumer acculturation studies have not interrogated the historical legacies and current realities of colonisation when considering Indigenous peoples. Thus, I turn to postcolonial theory as a critical theoretical lens to understand the power dynamics between colonisers and colonised. Existing consumer research using postcolonial theories is scant. I build on the existing postcolonial consumer literature by introducing the concepts of settler colonialisation and decolonisation to understand the dynamics of the settler-Indigenous relations in the Australian Indigenous art market. Like North and South America, Australia is a settler colonial society where continuous negotiations of tensions between settlers’ and Indigenous cultures occur. To investigate how art intermediaries in the Australian Indigenous art market navigate these tensions, I conducted field work at sites where art intermediaries interact with artists and consumers. I also completed 14 interviews with 12 Indigenous and non-Indigenous art intermediaries. These data were supplemented with archival data to develop a rich understanding of the relational dynamics among art intermediaries, artists, communities, and consumers. I inductively identified three roles played by art intermediaries: cultural conduits, art connoisseurs, and change agents. I conceptualised these roles across five dimensions including the meanings of art, focal relationships and community influence, power relationships with Indigenous artists, important practices for artists and/or communities, and practices with consumers. Based on an inductive analysis of emergent findings, I developed a conceptual framework that explains the power dynamics in reconciling settlers and Indigenous cultural tensions and commercial-cultural tensions through cultural expansion, aesthetics expansion, and political resurgence. This study contributes to four main areas of consumer and marketing research. First, I contribute to the arts marketing literature by expanding our understanding of the roles of art intermediaries in Indigenous art markets, how they interact with Indigenous artists and their communities, as well as how they navigate the inherent tensions with art markets. Second, I expand the range of post-colonial theoretical concepts that are useful for future consumer researchers interested in post-colonial societies and consumer cultures. Third, I contribute to studies on consumer cross-cultural processes by revealing a different kind of relationships in which cultural groups collaborate to expand cultures and build communities through sharing cultural stories. Four, I discuss implications for Indigenous art marketing, particularly other kinds of Indigenous arts such as the Native American art and its markets.