FOR THE LOVE OF ARTEFACTS
The Australian boomerang is a remarkable object, and worthy of its international fame. Despite the millions of cheap garishly decorated tourist boomerangs churned out every year, this elegant throwing stick has retained its mystique across two centuries. Captain Cook was of course the first recorded European to collect Aboriginal artefacts of this sort. Those that have survived from the period of first contact, when there must have been thousands of them in regular use, are nothing like the kitsch which became as ubiquitous as flying ducks in the 1950s. I’ve held the real thing in my hands hundreds of times over the years. Traditional boomerangs come in many shapes and sizes, and only a small number are designed to return. They belong to the Aboriginal hunter’s classic arsenal, are beautifully weighted, and in some cases capable of travelling over 400 metres. The most beautiful have a ruby or honeyed patina attained through constant handling, and are often intricately incised.
One of the most famous early collections ever privately assembled in Australia belonged to Dr Gerald Holt. He was first exposed to Aboriginal culture on his father’s cattle station in Queensland. His habit of trawling through shops that sold artefacts in the years prior to World War I became a life-long hobby. Fascinated by them since childhood, Holt discovered that boomerangs had many uses.
They could be thrown above a flock of flying birds in a manner that resembled the movement of a hawk. This would send the birds diving toward the ground, where they were caught in nets or killed by missile clubs. Boomerangs were also thrown at fish, used for sport, as musical instruments when two were tapped together, and to start fires when rubbed briskly across beanwood shields. Some of the finest examples were never thrown but owned as prestige items by important men and sometimes traded over great distances.
As Robert Bleakley ascended the rostrum at Sotheby’s in 1989, Aboriginal art finally entered the mainstream.
Boomerangs are also unique as they were used both as sacred objects when painted for ceremonies, and as secular utilitarian hunting tools when the paint was washed off. Holt recorded seeing Aboriginal men use them to spectacular effect during corroborees. They would light both ends and then throw them like catherine wheels, spinning through the night sky.14 After European settlement music hall performers used them to amaze their audiences with feats such as catching a thrown boomerang whilst blindfolded.
Some of the cream of Holt’s vast and valuable collection, much of it originally acquired by Sydney tribal dealers Robert Ypes and Leo Fleischmann in the 1960s, was auctioned during Sotheby’s first year in Sydney in 1983. In the catalogue essay Holt related two memorable anecdotes about the boomerang. The first was about the explorer Sir Thomas Mitchell, who was appointed as Assistant Surveyor General of New South Wales in 1827, and designed a prototype for the first ship’s propeller based on the boomerang. The second was that, during World War I, a Mills bomb was strapped to the central section of a boomerang, thereby enabling it to be thrown a considerable distance. Unfortunately, after the pin was pulled and the boomerang was thrown, it quickly returned, exploded and necessitated ‘quick ducking’ by the troops.
The sale of this collection lifted the profile of these curious objects into the realm of ‘collectable’ tribal art. This was in part due to the personal charisma of a young man named Robert Bleakley. Bleakley’s life-long fascination with tribal objects was inspired by the 19th-century novels set in exotic places that he read as a child. At 22, he cut short his studies at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, and travelled to London, where he enrolled in Sotheby’s Works of Art course. Within a year he was employed in its antiquities department, identifying and authenticating tribal objects from Africa, Oceania, Australasia and the Americas.
Bleakley’s name was made by a rather spectacular series of events. In 1978, the Red Brigade was wreaking havoc across Italy with bombings and assassinations, one of which resulted in the death of the intellectual former Italian Prime minister, Aldo Moro. The terrorists also kidnapped a five-year-old girl from her family’s turreted mansion in Switzerland. She happened to be the daughter of George Ortiz, the legendary art collector, and heir to a fortune made in Bolivian tin. Ortiz was a high flyer, whose parents collected silver and art. He had become fascinated at first with Greek antiquities, but later his interest expanded into African and Oceanic art. Forced to borrow the ransom money from his mother, he paid her back by putting some of this beloved tribal art collection up for sale through Sotheby’s in London.
The auction, supervised by Bleakley, was held in June 1978, and smashed the record for any tribal art sale by generating US$3 million. More than five pieces fetched prices over $200,000 each, including a small dark wood statue from the Hawaiian Islands that was purchased by a Belgian count for over $500,000. The price for that object in particular, and for the entire Ortiz collection sale, marked the coming of age of the tribal art market. Prominently reported in the international press, the sale made the cover of Newsweek, which noted the rising prices and the swing in market interest from French and Belgian collectors to Americans. The sale was so successful that Ortiz was even able to buy back some of the pieces which meant the most to him. They included the Hawaiian Aumakua, or personal God, reputedly collected by Captain Cook in 1779.
Exuding refinement and quiet confidence, Bleakley became the youngest director in Sotheby’s history, and head of its Primitive Art department in London. It was here he developed his own languid, even imperious, auction style. After spending more than a year researching the Australian market, Beakley proposed to open a Sydney office. The Sotheby’s Board twice rejected the idea. Finally, however, he gained approval and, by personally investing in the enterprise, equity in the Australian operation.
In 1982, Bleakley officially brought Sotheby’s to Australia and opened a small office in York Street, Sydney. The inaugural Sotheby’s sale was held on 23 March 1983. Its centrepiece was one of only five known surviving 18thcentury portraits of Captain James Cook RN – created in 1782. Painted by John Webber, the official painter on Cook’s third and last voyage of 1776–1780, it was accompanied by an extensive three-page catalogue essay. The painting sold for $506,000 against a reserve of around $220,000, tripling the highest price ever paid at auction for an ‘Australian’ work.15 It was purchased by Lady Angela Nevill on behalf of notorious businessman Alan Bond. The South Australian Supreme Court ruled 17 years later that the Cook portrait was to be handed over to Bond’s liquidator, although Bond claimed in July 1993 that he had never owned it.16 When resold in 2000, the painting was purchased by the National Portrait Gallery Canberra for $5.l3 million.
Bleakley rapidly became the walking embodiment of the Sotheby’s Australian brand at a time when the local auction scene lacked sophistication and an aura of professionalism. Though international participation was yet to arrive, Bleakley’s sale of the Holt collection six months later generated enough interest to indicate that an international market for Aboriginal art could be nurtured.17 His confidence and personal interest in tribal art ensured that tribal artefacts and antiquities were offered for sale every year thereafter.
In 1983, having just begun my engagement with Aboriginal art, I attended the Holt sale. I was looking for pieces to buy which I could resell through Coo-ee. From this time forward I started to mix with people who pointed out the technological sophistication of Aboriginal implements that were made prior to the introduction of metal tools. I began to look at early artefacts in a different way: to understand how the design and execution of Aboriginal weapons, utilitarian items and ceremonial regalia was an integral part of their culture, and perfectly suited to their nomadic lifestyle. Australian Aboriginals carried nothing extraneous as they adapted to a wide range of climates and conditions across the continent.
Sotheby’s 1985 tribal art sale was staged in the Blaxland Gallery on the 6th floor of the Grace Brothers Department Store in Sydney. I remember the extraordinary events that accompanied it almost as if it were yes
terday.
Some hours before the sale was due to start the gallery was already bristling with tribal art enthusiasts. I entered to find several large tables stretching the length of the room. Hundreds of artefacts made from wood, mud, bark and fibre were scattered across the starched white tablecloths, creating the impression of an inexhaustible supply. Having seen very few items of this sort before, I found the overall effect was quite overwhelming. Proceedings came to a sudden halt, however, when an injunction made by Gary Foley was announced.
Foley was a brilliant young firebrand. Many of the older Aboriginal activists had hoped that by installing him as the first Indigenous Director of the Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council, he would eventually settle down and fulfill his destiny as a gifted advocate, working within the system. But, having accepted the position, Foley seemed even more motivated to take a conspicuous position. Now he did something that really had them shaking their heads: he slapped an injunction on 75 lots ‘on behalf of the Aboriginal Lands Council [sic]’18 thereby effectively withdrawing almost a third of the objects from the sale.
I can still see the astonished faces in the auction house crowd as the injunction was announced. Amongst the items withdrawn were an overmodelled human skull from the New Hebrides and a wooden drum from New Guinea. It seemed a rather foolish act of defiance. What on earth was so special about any of these items, I thought, that could justify such an action? Like many others who were present, I had no idea that pieces of this quality were quite rare, and would escalate in value ten times over the following 20 years. A northeast Queensland bicornual basket in perfect condition, for instance, sold for just $750; I would estimate its value today at no less than $30,000.
While I had no idea of it at the time, in spite of the accidental inclusion of the Melanesian pieces, Gary Foley had actually made a valid point. From the moment Captain James Cook first encountered Aboriginal people in 1770, English officers and their troops had thought of these exquisite objects as mere curios. Many were stolen, or taken as war trophies from Aboriginals after violent conflicts known euphemistically as ‘dispersals’. Others were offered in what the Aboriginals would have considered a ritual exchange. Within half a century, all of the southeastern Aboriginal tribal lands had been occupied by white settlers and traditional life had ended. European museums were eager for any material from the Antipodes, before the Indigenous world was altered for all time.
Most Australian museum collections were still small and relatively unimpressive as late as the 1880s. Much of the Australian Museum’s initial collection of Aboriginal artefacts had been destroyed by fire, making pre-contact Victorian and New South Wales material even rarer. In the early 1970s, however, the contents of auction rooms and private collections throughout England and Europe were enthusiastically snapped up by the Christensen Fund, which returned a large number of these rare and valuable pieces to Australia. Today, there is much more sympathy for Aboriginal sensitivity around ‘stolen’ artefacts from the earliest contact period, especially those from Victoria. In fact, the sale of items such as these is now strictly regulated.
1 and 2 Western Australian Bardi and Wunda Shields; 3 and 4 Southeast Australian Parrying Shields, all c. late 19th to early 20th century.
Nevertheless, many more items remain in private hands. Tribal art collectors and dealers continue to rediscover many significant pieces each year and return them to Australia for sale privately, or through major auction houses. Consequently, exquisite artefacts fetch ever higher prices at auction. In Sotheby’s October 2008 sale, for instance, a Queensland rainforest shield sold for $84,000 and an eastern Australian broad shield achieved $61,200. During 2009, the National Gallery of Victoria reputedly purchased the shield collection of one prominent Sydney tribal dealer for $1.6 million.
Most of these pieces reveal little, if anything, about how they survived and found their way into the hands of European collectors. They may be prized for the insight they provide into the richness and diversity of pre-contact society, but in the majority of cases we have no idea whether their owners were murdered in early conflicts with settlers, or if they were stolen or exchanged for a tin of tobacco, a blanket or a bag of sugar laced with strychnine. Their stories were often lost once they entered into the collection of a prominent 19th-century grazier or a ‘distinguished English gentleman’. Those rare pieces of the finest quality that remain in private hands have become the cornerstone of international tribal sales, even though their ‘impeccable’ provenance can be traced back no further than the collectors who ‘discovered’ them.
The most sensitive items of all artefacts are men’s sacred tjuringa of stone or wood, and ceremonial storyboards. Throughout the 30 years that I have been entranced by these ‘ethnographic’ objects, I’ve seen controversy arise each and every time items such as these are offered for sale. It is considered culturally inappropriate for the most sacred of them to be seen by women and uninitiated young men, and they are rarely illustrated in catalogues, or seen on public display. Tribal dealers often argue that certain pieces don’t retain sacred content once they have been removed from their ceremonial or local cultural context. They insist the objects were ‘decommissioned’ by the original owners prior to exchange, citing burn marks and other disfigurements as evidence. Unscrupulous dealers have misrepresented sacred objects as less significant by altering their apparent function or appearance.19 Yet there are also literally thousands of ceremonial objects that are considered too sensitive to be seen publicly. They line the drawers of museums and the collections of tribal dealers and enthusiasts all over the world. The result is a fervent though furtive market amongst ethnographic enthusiasts.
It’s always struck me as slightly absurd that a relatively high proportion of these items exhibit identical designs and imagery to those employed by a number of prominent contemporary male artists since the 1980s. Ironically, the sacredness of the designs is not an impediment to sale when they are transposed onto canvas with acrylic paint, even though the documentation accompanying the painting usually indicates that the story is so secret that it cannot be revealed to the uninitiated.
DON’T BRING YOUR LOVE TO TOWN
There is a big difference between abruptly landing in an isolated community by plane, and the gradual initiation into a landscape that is experienced when travelling on the open road.
Leaving Sydney before dawn, Anne and I usually drive 12 hours across outback New South Wales to Broken Hill. Early next morning, as the sun begins to flush the horizon, the country gradually transforms into the browntinged green of overcooked roast beef. From Port Augusta pushing north, we drive bleary-eyed past the pocked and hummocked tailings of Coober Pedy’s opal digs, before swagging out on rust red earth at Marla Bore. Finally we make the leisurely journey through the mulga scrub to Alice Springs. Ancient rocky outcrops and vast plains mottled with spinifex are transformed after rain into snow-white floral drifts studded in mauve and blue. We’ve done this countless times over the years, and I never tire of the journey.
Alice Springs lies hidden behind the northern side of the MacDonnell Range, a long rocky fold that extends from horizon to horizon like the raised cicatrice scarring on the chests of the region’s initiated Aboriginal men. The white sand of the dry Todd River is still lined with the smooth white trunks and branches of weeping ghost gums, which evoke Albert Namatjira’s priceless artistic legacy. To the west lie Glen Helen’s red escarpments, the blue waterholes of Ormiston Gorge, Mount Sonder and Mount Wedge, which were the cradle of the desert art movement. Through the Gap, Alice Springs skirts sacred sites and sprouts beneath the upturned rocky ledges.
My earliest memories of the region are of Aboriginal people wandering from their various tribal camps in the ‘long grass’ to sit along the riverbed. It was a world distinctly separated from that of the white inhabitants servicing the centre of outback ‘civilisation’. Even 30 years ago, the tension between whites and blacks was palpable, and seemed irreconcilable. Few Aboriginal p
eople owned houses and as the township grew and modernised they became increasingly marginalised. Tourism had not yet led to the proliferation of the dozens of Aboriginal art galleries, and souvenir shops that dominated the town during the boom sat uncomfortably with black men wearing cowboy hats and jeans. They gathered to harass passers-by for spare change, or chat round a flagon under clear blue skies.
As the Papunya community dispersed in the late 1970s, and hundreds of Pintupi settled in the homelands, others moved to regions so remote that they lay beyond the catchment of Papunya Tula’s regular field trips. Several of the most important artists moved in and out of Alice Springs and began to paint for galleries and dealers outside of Papunya Tula. These galleries could be welcoming refuges from the gritty life the artists negotiated outside their doors.
While always pleasant, helpful and ready to introduce visiting artists to their clients, Papunya Tula staff refused to service the majority of town artists. The rationale was that the paintings created in town were generally inferior, and that life in fringe camps led to cultural marginalisation. Yet, in spite of the hostile undercurrents, ‘town artists’ could paint independently and sell their work directly to the growing number of tourists, or a variety of local shops and galleries that serviced them.
A dispute between Papunya Tula and The Company in the early 1980s saw the government-owned gallery, the Centre for Aboriginal Artists, become more active in buying and promoting the work of town artists. As time progressed, it was joined by the Institute of Aboriginal Development, which established Jukurrpa Artists, Pertame at the Gap Neighbourhood Centre, and the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA).
The Dealer is the Devil Page 24