As with the history and culture of Australian Indigenous communities, Aboriginal art has also been passed on for thousands of years.
"For a lot of communities it's something that's been handed down for generations," Art director and collector Simon Chan tells SBS Cantonese. "So it's part of their culture, how the relate to the land."
Chan is a director of Sydney based gallery Art Atrium, which exhibits contemporary Australian, Chinese and Aboriginal art in Bondi Junction, Sydney.
Below, Chan pictured (centre) with a group of artists at his gallery:
In 2013, he received the NSW Premier's Multicultural Award for Arts and Culture, in recognition of his dedication in enhancing the cultural and artistic life of NSW through the promotion of intercultural understanding, information exchange and artistic endeavours.
He is also the Chair of the Aboriginal Benefits Foundation, Community Ambassador at the Art Gallery of NSW and President of the Haymarket Chamber of Commerce.
Chan explains that Indigenous art has become a booming business, with the paintings appreciated not only by local Australians, but also by numerous high profile collectors from Europe and America. "In fact there are quite a number of very high-profile well known collectors who have huge collections of Aboriginal art."
Chan explains the appeal, "They look at it and sometimes think of it as abstract expressionism or abstract art - but at the same time it's also quite intriguing in the sense that there's such interesting stories and history behind it."
Chan says there have been, "quite a number of paintings by well-known Aboriginal artists such as Rover Thomas and Emily Kngwarreye, which have sold for over $1 million at auction so it is collectible."
Chan says that this money can be a vital channel of income for remote Indigenous communities.
"For a lot of communities it's the main source of income," he says. "Because they are in these remote areas - and, over time, because of the Western influence, they've lost their hunter-gatherer way of life, so therefore they rely on painting as a source of income for the whole community."
So how to ensure that funds from wealthy collectors actually make it back to the Indigenous communities who need it?
Chan explains, "one thing about collecting Aboriginal art, the provenance - where it comes from - is actually one of the most important things."
"If you buy artwork with a good provenance, which means the work is sourced ethically, you know that the artists are being looked after as well."
Chan says that Indigenous art centres, which are set up throughout Australia to help cultivate young Aboriginal artists in different communities, have greater credibility in sourcing genuine Aboriginal paintings. Thus public art institutions and auction houses would only buy paintings from them.
"These community art centres basically help support the whole community," Chan explains. "The more senior artists, would obviously sell more, then there's a certain percentage of any sale that will go back to the community art centre."
"And they then use the money to nurture the younger emerging artists so that can help them to establish their careers. So eventually they become the senior artists of their community, and obviously the prices of their artwork go up."
Chan says it is a cycle that repeats itself, supporting generations of Indigenous Australian painters.
"There are a number of art centres which are set up throughout Australia," says Chan. "They're quite different - for instance there's Tiwi Islands - which still do a lot of paintings using ochre, and sometimes on bark. Then in other areas, they've actually used very bright colours and acrylic paint on canvas."
Explaining what drew him to specialise in the area of Indigenous art, Chan sayys that he finds the abstract expressionism intriguing.
"The interesting thing is the history behind it - a lot of the stories are handed down through generations," he says.
"Different communities and even different families have different dreamings. It's all about how they relate to the land."
"So it's got thousands of years of history but at the same time, it has evolved as they introduced different materials - like they start using acrylic paint on canvas and so on - and [as a result] using different colours."
"And they modify it over time as well, so it becomes quite vibrant. So while at the same time, when you look at it, it's similar to Western contemporary art, at the same time there's actually thousands of years of history behind it as well. So that's what I find so interesting."
