The Australian Art Print Network has expanded to incorporate two exhibition spaces within the Canopy Artspace known the AAN Galleries, one dedicated to fine art prints and the other an exhibiting gallery showing paintings, sculptures and works in other media. The Australian Art Network has been expanded Indigenous printmakers since it was established in 1996, by publishing, promoting, and distributing prints by Indigenous artists nationally and internationally. During the past decade the company has worked with artists in Arnhem Land, the central and western desert, the Kimberley, the Tiwi Islands, urban centers and most importantly Far North Queensland and the Torres Strait Islands. AAPN is the largest Australian publisher and wholesaler of indigenous fine art prints selling to galleries and institutions throughout Australia, Europe, North and South America and the East. Amongst its considerable successes have been bringing the work of leading Torres Strait Islander artists and National Aboriginal Art Award Winners Denis Nona and Alick Tipoti to large audiences throughout Australia and overseas. With support from the Queensland Indigenous Arts Marketing Export Agency AAPN has developed a unique business model focusing on international exhibitions, the most recent of which is the Nona and Tipoti exhibition recently shown in central Manhattan’s Chelsea Art Precinct.
According to Michael Kershaw, Managing Director of the AAPN ‘this new facility in Cairns will open up opportunities for us to help other Torres Strait Islander and FNQ artists to expand and commercialise their art practice and hopefully replicate the success we have enjoyed with some of the artists we currently represent’
