Indigenous-led Adelaide Gallery Forced to Relocate

The Indigenous-led APY Art Centre Collective, the only organization representing artists across all Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) communities, will have to relocate its Adelaide gallery following a premature termination of its lease. The Collective had signed a five-year lease with an option for renewal in 2019 with the University of South Australia (UniSA), which owns the venue on 9 Light Square, but the contract will now end in March 2022 and the building redeveloped into the UniSA Enterprise Hub, an incubator for research and business projects.

APY Gallery’s 500-square-meter venue comprises an exhibition space as well as a studio accommodating around 20 Adelaide-based artists daily, according to InReview. The Collective’s manager, Skye O’Meara, told the publication: “The university is already conducting building works around this space, which has been very difficult for the artists here. The whole experience has been really disappointing . . . We invested in this building an amount that was appropriate to a ten-year term. Really, we’ve had one good year and one Covid year.”

A University spokesperson explained to InReview that its original lease agreement with the Collective indicated the possibility of the building’s redevelopment. “In recognition of the impact of the Enterprise Hub building works, the university has waived rent for the APY Art Collective for a year until March 2022, while it continues to occupy the premises. The university has offered to assist the art centre in seeking alternative premises.”

The Collective is reportedly working with private-sector support to find a larger space in Adelaide although funding issues present a challenge. Governmental cultural agency Arts South Australia disbursed AUD 70,000 (USD 51,800) in operational funding to the Collective this year, representing a cut of AUD 10,000 (USD 7,400) from the previous year. The future of APY Gallery was brought up last week by South Australia’s Leader of the Opposition Peter Malinauskas during a parliamentary budget hearing. In response, premier of South Australia and minister for the arts Steven Marshall claimed the State Government provided a “very small contribution to the APY art center.”

The Collective launched in 2017 with the goal of increasing income and employment opportunities for young artists on APY lands in Central and South Australia. They opened their first APY Gallery in Sydney in 2018, followed by the Adelaide space in May 2019. As reported by InReview, the Collective raised AUD 3.1 million (USD 2.29 million) in art sales over 2020–21, with 84 percent of these proceeds returned to APY communities. Artists involved with APY Gallery Adelaide include Leah Brady, Margaret Richards, and Yaritji Heffernan, all of whom were previously shortlisted for the Art Gallery of New South Wales’s Wynne Prize.

Suining Sim is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.

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