Beyond the NAIDOC Week Gesture: First Nations Art in the Workplace
NAIDOC Week is a moment of celebration. For organisations, it also raises a sharper question: how do you bring First Nations art into the workplace with real integrity?
Corporate art is not decoration. In a workplace, art shapes how people move through a space every day. The stories visible on the walls quietly tell staff and visitors what an organisation values. Art Pharmacy’s Forever Strong exhibition at 1 Denison shows this done well. The three-month showcase of remote community Aboriginal art transformed a corporate lobby into a space of storytelling and intergenerational knowledge-sharing. When practised as a one-off gesture with no follow-through, the same idea becomes tokenism, however good the intentions.
Why the Workplace Is a Different Context to a Public Artwork
A public artwork sits in a shared, open space. A workplace is more contained. The same group of people sees the same piece daily, often without the interpretive signage or context a public installation would carry. That changes the commissioning organisation’s responsibility.
A temporary exhibition and a permanent collection also carry a useful distinction. Forever Strong was a three-month showcase built specifically around NAIDOC Week. Yarns Beneath the Gumtrees, Art Pharmacy’s workplace collection in Barangaroo, is the other end of that spectrum. Works that stay in the office year-round, offering moments of pause within the rhythm of the working day, long after any single week has passed. Both have a place, but they carry different obligations. A temporary exhibition needs a plan for what comes after it’s over. A permanent piece needs a plan for how its story stays visible once the launch event is over.
Start with Country and Community, Not the Wall Space
It is tempting to start a workplace art project by measuring the wall and picking a budget. However, the right starting point is upstream of that. Whose Country is the workplace on, and which community or art centre is the organisation building a relationship with?
Australia holds hundreds of distinct language groups, each with its own Country, governance, and cultural protocols. Treating this as interchangeable misses the point of the exercise entirely. For the Eumemmerring Business Park mural Beal biik, this meant working with the Bunurong Land Council Aboriginal Corporation from the outset to confirm the site sat on Bunurong Country. An artist was chosen only after that step was complete.
Work Through Art Centres, and Let That Relationship Outlast the Project
Where possible, workplace commissions should go through Aboriginal-owned and governed art centres rather than third-party dealers. Art centres provide cultural oversight and fair payment structures. Furthermore, they are accountable to community in ways an outside organisation is not.
Art Pharmacy has worked alongside Ernabella Arts, located on Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in South Australia and Australia’s oldest continuously running Indigenous art centre. Janice Stanley, whose work features in Yarns Beneath the Gumtrees, is the third generation of her family creating art at Ernabella. That relationship reflects the kind of long-term engagement a workplace commission should aim for, not a one-off purchase.
Consent Covers More Than the Commission Itself
Free, Prior and Informed Consent is the right of a community to say yes or no, freely, before anything begins, and with full information, to a project affecting their culture. In a workplace context, that consent needs to extend to how the work will be used day-to-day. Will it be photographed for the annual report? Filmed for a recruitment video? Reproduced on merchandise?
The 555 Collins Street project shows what this looks like in practice. Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation was engaged as First Nations Consultant throughout, alongside weaver Glenda Nicholls’ commission of Dhungala. The work tells the creation story of the Murray River. Not all cultural knowledge is for public or internal corporate consumption. What an artwork can and cannot communicate publicly is a decision that belongs to the artist and community, not the organisation hosting it.
Pay Fairly, Credit Properly, on Every Surface That Shows the Work
First Nations artists are frequently underpaid and under-credited. A workplace setting can make this worse rather than better, since the artwork often appears across many internal channels, reception signage, the annual report, LinkedIn, onboarding decks, each one a chance to either credit the artist or quietly drop their name.
Proper credit means the artist’s name, language group or Country, and art centre appear consistently wherever the work is shown. At 25 Grenfell Street in Adelaide, Lisa Khan’s Opal Dust, My Mother’s Country now greets visitors from the lobby. Her story and Country are named alongside the work, rather than folded into a generic description of Indigenous art. At Deloitte’s Festival Tower in Adelaide, 45% of the curated collection was by First Nations artists. This was part of a relationship between Art Pharmacy and Deloitte that has continued across Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Parramatta, rather than a single gesture in one office.
A NAIDOC Commission Is a Beginning, Not a Milestone
Fifty years into NAIDOC Week, the organisations doing this well are not the ones that unveil an artwork in July and move on. Commissioning First Nations art for the workplace during NAIDOC Week, without a broader commitment to First Nations engagement, is tokenism, even when well-intentioned.
Genuine engagement means involving First Nations voices in decisions before the brief is finalised, not just in the execution of it. Additionally, it means understanding that one commission, however well handled, is a starting point.
At Art Pharmacy, we work with Aboriginal-owned art centres and First Nations artists to help organisations commission workplace art that is ethical, well-credited, and built to last well beyond one NAIDOC Week.
For more on how to approach First Nations art commissioning with the right protocols in place, read our related article here: First Nations Protocols for Engagement in Public Art
Article by Gabriela Reyes
