Guy Hayes, Founder of ART ARK®

Chief Tea-Maker

I fell into Aboriginal art many moons ago. A former partner's ambitions took us to Fitzroy Crossing, and my heart never left. A decade in the Kimberley and the Desert followed, at Mangkaja Arts and then Warlukurlangu Artists.

Nothing about it resembled the auction rooms I had come from, where paintings changed hands as investment and ego, and the artists themselves never entered the room. In communities the opposite is true. The work means something to the people making it. The days were long and the job was never finished, and even so the balance came out in my favour, over and over again. To be welcomed and loved by these remarkable old people, who endured the hardships of former government policy, was humbling. They painted to support themselves and their families, so my work had meaning.

And somewhere in all of that came an enormous quantity of tea. Hence the title.

That's the background. I founded ART ARK in August 2015 because so many of these generous artists were being ripped off. Are being ripped off. The darker side of the Aboriginal art market is mass exploitation. I didn't start it thinking I could change that. I started it because nobody else was trying.

ART ARK is not a gallery. It's a way to reach these communities properly, and a place to learn. Every work comes from the art centre that made it, and the reasoning behind that is on the ethics page.

Eleven years on I'm still here, still trying. When it feels hopeless I think of those old people in Fitzroy Crossing who changed my life. And whilst most of them have passed, I think of all the people I haven't met, and I do it for them.

That's it. There's a mountain of info across the site, if you find the time.

I hope you like the premise.

Guy

On the road to the Darwin Art Fair, Circa 2010