Publication | Protecting Indigenous Art 

In late September Melbourne University Press will release, Protecting Indigenous Art by Colin Golvan. Colin is a leading Intellectual Property senior barrister.

The cases in the book really focus on protecting Indigenous rights and voice, which weaves into many of the wider conversations about giving voice to Indigenous peoples happening in Australia and overseas. Below are further details for you to review.

Indigenous visual arts is at the forefront of Australian contemporary arts. Leading Intellectual Property senior barrister, Colin Golvan, gives a personal account of the legal campaign to protect the artform from rampant infringement from the late 1980s – sometimes called “the Mabo of copyright” – and onwards, including the widely publicised recovery of the copyright of Albert Namatjira and the extraordinary story of the copyright in the Aboriginal flag. In doing so, Golvan gets to the heart of some of the most important cases and events in contemporary Australian copyright.

Colin Golvan AM KC is a long-time member of the Victorian Bar, with extensive involvement in the arts as an author, legal adviser, and counsel, as a board member and supporter of arts organisations.

· Copyright in Indigenous art, from the person at the frontline defending it.

· Art provides meaningful opportunities for establishing Indigenous economic independence, and the Indigenous art movement has been one of the truly successful developments in black–white relations of recent years.

· From a copyright perspective, the challenge has been to have claims properly understood and recognised—a challenge embraced by courts and, most recently, by the Commonwealth government, in the case of the Aboriginal flag assignment. Cases:

o The T-shirts case

o Yumbulul and the ten dollar note case

o The carpets case

o Copyright and communal ownership

o Fakery

o Cultural heritage protection

o Namatjira

o The Aboriginal Flag

RRP $45

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