The early European colonists in Australia discovered Aboriginal artists in their rural settings. These artists produced art full of symbolism celebrating, "The Dreaming," their creation story. As these native peoples were assimilated into the colonists' European culture, they began to produce art for tourists that started to move away from the creation theme. Today, there is a vast difference between the art of remaining rural pockets of Aboriginals and that of the urban Aboriginal artists.
The early Urban Aboriginal art of the 1960s and 1970s was created for protest posters of Aboriginal peoples' treatment by the colonists. This volatile, political scene definitely promoted the art form on first the Australian national stage and then the world stage. Tourists to Australia were already mesmerized by the commercialized Aboriginal art painted on boomerangs and other souvenirs. So art critics and collectors flocked to the bold new urban Aboriginal art scene they saw forming, knowing that the world would embrace it.
Urban Aboriginal artists may or may not be formally trained in art techniques; however, many are formally trained. The general consensus is that they create their art to express their feelings about assimilation and to rediscover their Aboriginal identities. Thus, their art is typically abstract and could be classified as modernist, with many geometric interpretations of real objects. Other urban Aboriginal art is similar to American Outsider art and has a very simplistic, primitive look.
According to David Langsam, Australian Aboriginal art export sales came close to $100 million per year in 1997. Though Aboriginal artists make up only 1.7 percent of the population, they produce as much revenue as the rest of the Australian population combined. Many of the Aboriginal artists in urban areas have formed supportive cooperatives to market their work as a body. There is no denying that the market for urban Aboriginal art has been hot since it took off in the 1980s.