Paris, 26 March 2015
*A block of earthy colours tucked away in a corner of the Grand Palais, the booth of the Galerie Arts d’Australie is irresistibly welcoming: the gallerist Stéphane Jacob welcomes visitors there to discover contemporary Aboriginal art. AMA invites you to discover a relatively unknown but fascinating universe.*
- **Could you tell about the identity of your gallery and how it was founded?**
**S. J.:** Ever since it was founded in 1996, the gallery has specialised in Australian arts, with a particular focus on contemporary Aboriginal works and those from the isles of the Torres Strait. I founded it when I returned to Australia, with the wish to make collections directed towards museums as well as private collectors. I contributed particularly to making the collections of Aboriginal art in the Musée des Confluences in Lyon. As a gallery, we especially aim to teach our spectators whilst trying to have a maximum number of well-informed assistants present to reply to questions from both enthusiasts and novices. It’s about helping people to enter a universe that can at first appear to be very distant.
- **What particularly characterises Aboriginal art?**
**S. J.:** There is an extremely close relationship between the artist and their work, a work which is immersive for the spectator, but also, from the very beginning, for the person who creates it. An important thing to know about aboriginal work is that is done on the ground, without even a preliminary sketch. The artist is therefore immediately immersed in his work, which can be seen at once as a self-portrait and an expression of the identiy of his terriroty. Their painting is actually writing, which has traced, over the course of time, from the ground to the body then to the cave art, until the first paintings were created. It’s also necessary to understand that Aboriginal painting has always played a very important role politically-speaking. Each painting is a story that belongs to its artist: in fact each artist has one or several stories, which they will tell with the help of symbols. In doing this, they inscribe this story into reality, because that which is not named does not exist. You can see Rêve d’Opossum and Rêve du Lézard Sauvage: these real diagrams indicate the presence and the permanence of the passage of our ancestors on the earth.
- **How did you select the artists whom you present?**
**S. J.:** These artists are my personal favourites, but they also the ones that I know the best because I’m specialised in art from the centre and the north of the island. Other regions also have their own specialists… the figures that you can discover on this booth, in particular the artists originating from Papunya Tula, are the most important artists, because they have changed the history of contemporary Aboriginal art. For example, this year, we sold one of the first works realised by Old Walter Tjampitjimpa in the 1970s. He is one of the first artists to have been taught by Geoffrey Bardon in Papunya, and to have known the special minimalist and symbolic graphic codes of the Aboriginal peoples.
- **What’s the contemporary Australian art scene like?**
**S. J.:** There are several different artistic communities, which each have their own field of expertise, their relationship to the world, and their particular social environment. At Art Paris, our neighbouring stand is that of Geneva-based gallery Analix Forever, which represents the Australian artist Shaun Gladwell. It’s very interesting as this artist shows another different aspect of Australian art, which explores the relationship between man and immensity and identity, and he questions the way of urban life through mediums such as video art. In terms of the Aboriginal world, the most respectable commercial transactions nowadays are carried out by cooperatives. The latter act as intermediaries between collectors and artists. They pay artists and produce authenticity certificates and there’s never any direct exchange. Some artists also work for reference galleries, but some people can be victim of untrustworthy intermediaries known as carpetbaggers, who encourage the production of works that are painted very quickly and who direct artists without talent to copy popular works.
- **What exactly is the price range of the works at your booth at Art Paris Art Fair?**
**S. J.:** At this booth, the works range from €900 to €32,000, for a piece that is actually in store. The average range, however, falls more around €3,000, whilst sculptures are sold from €8,000 upwards. I always advise people to buy a piece that they fall in love with at first sight. It’s not about finding something famous but to really feel a strong emotion when faced with a work: I therefore try to make spectators enter the material of a work and to feel the energy that it gives off. There’s a lot of clearing work to do and this is important to me because collectors often show a desire and an awareness at the same time that these works have a very profound character. They are impressive because of all the information that they contain.
- **It seems that the works that you present have been very popular with collectors.**
**S. J.:** We have sold around 20 works, so we are more than satisfied! The arrangement of the booth has been entirely redone and we moved a large work by Abie Loy Kemarre onto the outside. It’s one of the works that has most caught the attention of spectators; it’s therefore necessary to draw the attention of people who pass by our booth and to allow other works to express themselves.
- **So what do you think about Art Paris compared to other art fairs?**
**S. J.:** From being in the Grand Palais, Art Paris benefits from a magnificent location. Furthermore, the more I look, the more I notice that the exhibited works work very well with the glass roof, thanks to the network of lines! The choices of galleries here is very interesting and less exclusive than other fairs that we’ve participated in, such as Art Élysées or Parcours des Mondes. Here, many exhibitors are international galleries and amongst them, we’ve found a privileged position because we are the only gallery specialised in contemporary Aboriginal art. I love Art Paris because it’s a very friendly fair and you can really take time to talk to the visitors, which allows me to learn about what they’re looking for.
- **Do you think there’s an increase in interest for spirituality in the contemporary art world?**
**S. J.:** Yes, I think so. We’ve noticed a general desire to return to the Earth, to the basic things. The spectators are undoubtedly aware that spirituality, and returning to one’s roots, is important. We’ve noticed that people have bene looking for more sensitive and spiritual art. In fact one of the most disturbing aspects of Aboriginal art is that there’s an almost hypnotising quality about it.