This chapter explores the history of artists’ industrial organising in Australia, including its connections to the trade union movement as well as the broader organising and advocacy efforts of peak bodies in the visual arts sector. Despite several attempts by both artists and unions to industrialise the Australian visual arts sector across the past century, it remains a largely informal or unregulated market with haphazard coverage by a range of unions and industrial awards including, for example, the Amusement, Events and Recreation Award and the General Retail Industry Award. While this is due, in part, to the self-employed and independent nature of much arts work, there is more to the story. Competing interests between trade unions, the amalgamation of various arts and cultural unions into the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) in the early 1990s, and the prevalent role of peak bodies such as the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) have all had a role to play. Other factors include the cultural decline of the trade union movement more generally since the 1990s and the tension between paying union fees and trying to survive in an industry that is insecure and underpaid (Beynon in ‘State of the Union’ [exhibition catalogue], 23 July 2018 27 October 2018, Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne, 2018). This chapter explores this history alongside its ongoing legacies.