With art and crafts being such a strong part of any culture, the importance of authentic artworks is both cultural and financial for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists. Through sales alone, art generates around $250 million each year for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and workers.

A recent report showed that two of every three Indigenous-style artworks are fake with no connection to First Nations groups and providing no benefit.

While many are simply generic stylistic imitations, some make use of important cultural and intellectual property inappropriately.

Sacred symbols have been misused, and traditional stories misrepresented by the knockoff artworks.

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Cory McKenzie, a Wiradjuri artist, said that there was a difference between people wanting to engage with the culture and profiting off it.

"There is a line. It's not the people that want to engage in it, it's the people who want to profit off it."

"They don't even know the stories they're telling. Some people could be painting a death ceremony for someone - it's taking someone's story and then reproducing it," he explained.

"I've seen a lot of artworks lately, where people have taken sections and just printed it. They did it to me, they took a picture, recoloured it and printed it out."

He suggested that management and further education or support for artists could go a long way towards preventing exploitation.

"Proper management would be definitely one, because you have to have guidelines around the artwork now ... You don't want to get the art world into a contract state of mind, because that's not what art is about."

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