There’s something particularly valuable about seeing art in person.

It sounds obvious, but working in an industry where so much of what we encounter is viewed through a screen, it’s something I find myself thinking about more and more. We look at images, read about artists, save exhibitions, scroll through galleries and make decisions based on photographs that can only ever tell us part of the story. A recent trip to Darwin for Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair was a good reminder of everything that gets missed in that process.

This year marked DAAF’s 20th anniversary, bringing together more than 75 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Centres from across the country. The scale of the fair is significant, but what makes it particularly interesting is the way it is structured around the Art Centre model, giving artists and their communities a direct presence and creating a space where you can engage with the work alongside the people and places it comes from.

For me, one of the most valuable parts of being there was simply having time to look.

To notice the density of a surface, the scale of a work, the variations in colour and material that don't necessarily translate through photography. To spend time with weaving and fibre works and appreciate the extraordinary amount of labour, knowledge and skill held within them.

Speaking with Art Centre staff, hearing about individual artists and communities, and understanding more about where particular works had come from all changed the way I looked at them. It’s one of the things I find most interesting about collecting and working with art more broadly. An artwork is never entirely separate from the circumstances in which it was made. The more you understand about an artist’s practice, their materials, their environment and their way of working, the more there is to see in the work itself.

DAAF also makes it particularly difficult to think of “Indigenous art” as a single category. Across the fair, there were radically different landscapes, histories, languages, materials, stories and artistic practices represented. Desert painting sat alongside intricate fibre work, textiles, sculpture, contemporary design and objects. The differences between communities and practices were just as compelling as the connections.

What connects the work isn’t necessarily a particular visual language. It is the strength of the relationships around it between artists, Art Centres, Country, culture, community and making.

There was also something wonderfully disorienting about the trip itself. Leaving Melbourne winter and arriving in Darwin, the heat, the light, the pace, immediately changes your sense of place. Even outside the fair, being in the Northern Territory adds another layer to the experience of looking at the work. 

I came home with a camera roll full of details, a very long list of artists and Art Centres I want to continue following, and a renewed appreciation for the importance of seeing art in context.