Is it OK to paint in an Aboriginal Art style?

Short Answer: Not for Display or Sale

Painting in an Aboriginal style to learn about it, in a classroom with the right guidance, can be fine. Painting in an Aboriginal style to decorate, sell or exhibit is not. Aboriginal art is a cultural practice connected to Country, ancestry and ceremony, and the right to paint particular designs and stories comes through family and law, not skill.

Why the Style Is Not Free to Use

Aboriginal art is tied to the Dreaming, the body of knowledge, law and story that explains how the land and its peoples came to be. Every design, symbol and colour carries cultural authority, and specific designs, such as a clan's cross-hatching or the story of a family's rockhole, can only be painted by people with the right to them. Even techniques that look generic, like dot painting, developed in particular desert communities and carry meaning there. This is a living practice, still made, taught and passed on by each generation. Using its designs without that knowledge or permission strips out the meaning and takes something that isn't yours.

What the Law Says

Copying a specific Aboriginal artwork for display or sale breaches the artist's copyright, like copying any other artwork. But Australia has no law against making art in an Aboriginal style, or against selling it, as long as you don't falsely claim it was made by an Aboriginal person. In 2023 the Australian Government committed to stand-alone legislation to protect First Nations cultural and intellectual property, but it has not yet been introduced.

That gap is exploited on a large scale. The Productivity Commission's 2022 inquiry found that two in three Indigenous-style souvenirs sold in Australia have no connection to Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people, and that more than 80 per cent of stock images showing Aboriginal-style designs are inauthentic. In 2019 the Federal Court fined the wholesaler Birubi Art $2.3 million for selling Indonesian-made boomerangs and didgeridoos as genuine Aboriginal art. The penalty was for the false claims, not the fake art itself. Sold without those claims, the same products would have been legal.

Appropriation and Learning

Appropriation is using Aboriginal designs outside their context, without permission, for your own purposes. Learning is understanding what the art means, who has the right to make it and why, and accepting that some knowledge is not shared outside the community.

In the Classroom

Teach Aboriginal art as a subject to understand rather than a template to copy. Students can learn what symbols mean, how art connects to Country and how knowledge is passed down, without reproducing the designs.

Education: Teach the stories and meanings behind the art rather than its forms, and have students develop their own visual language about their own place and family.
Collaboration: Work with Aboriginal artists, or ask a community art centre or local Aboriginal organisation for advice.
Acknowledgement: Make clear where knowledge and inspiration come from, and never present student work as Aboriginal art.

Better Ways to Engage

Invite Aboriginal artists: Workshops led by Aboriginal artists let students learn directly from people who hold the knowledge.
Buy authentic art: Buy dot paintings and other works from community-run art centres, where artists are paid fairly and work is made with the right cultural authority.
Make your own work: Let Aboriginal art prompt questions about story, place and connection, and answer them through your own culture and experience.

If you are unsure, ask yourself why you want to use the style. If the answer is learning, involve Aboriginal people. If it is decoration or sale, don't.