The Dealer is the Devil

by Adrian Newstead

  During the 1970s and early 1980s The Company gallery in Perth was managed by Mary Macha. The Company was already the most important conduit through which Kimberley arts found their way into the national market. It was during her visit to the Kimberley in 1981 with field worker Don McLeod that Macha first saw painted boards by Paddy Jaminji at Turkey Creek. This was the same year that some people, including Neil McLeod (no relation to Don) insist Rover Thomas first painted in his own right.

  There is no question that Paddy Jaminji was painting well before this time. He was the major painter and instigator of the East Kimberley movement though his role has been overshadowed by Rover’s phenomenal success. Jaminji’s early storyboards made specifically for the Gurrir Gurrir corroboree were painted in earth pigments on housing debris, pieces of formica, wall panelling and wood from old packing cases. Performed as musical theatre, the Gurrir Gurrir dance and song ceremony was open to the general public. The painted storyboards were carried on the shoulders of the participants and presented to the audience like the frames from an animated film. Traditionally, Kimberley dancers wore elaborate stylised headdresses which depicted climatic phenomena like clouds and rainbows, Dreaming sites, and other related places and events. By replacing the headdress with painted boards, the Warmun artists were able to reinvent an ancient ritual. It was a brilliant example of the vitality of Kimberley cultural exchange.

  Two old friends, Paddy Jaminji and Rover Thomas, at Derby Hospital, 1987.

  Macha wanted to buy some of Jaminji’s Gurrir Gurrir boards from him, but he refused to sell them to her. Without ready access to new materials, they were difficult to replace. They were mostly small, and had been used repeatedly in ceremony. When Macha offered to send him good boards to paint on in future, he agreed to supply three shipments of paintings that were sold to the Berndt Museum at the University of Western Australia and to the Western Australian Museum.

  Several politically charged re-enactments of the Gurrir Gurrir ceremony were facilitated by the Aboriginal Cultural Foundation which existed to help Aboriginal people attend ceremonies, funerals and national and international cultural events. The foundation was run by Dorothy Bennett’s son, Lance Bennett, and received significant funding from the Australia Council each year.44 The ceremony was performed during a number of Kimberley cultural gatherings and land rights meetings in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These included the Noonkanbah mining protests, and negotiations over the development of the Argyle Diamond Mine.45 The Gurrir Gurrir was also re-enacted at Maningrida in Arnhem Land, at Victoria River Downs in the Northern Territory, and even during the 1983 Aboriginal Arts Festival in Perth.

  By 1983 the autonomy of The Company’s regional managers had become a matter of some concern to its central management in Sydney, which wanted to restrict their spending.46 Macha was so infuriated that she left to become an independent dealer. In time she entered into commercial relationships with several private galleries including the Hogarth Galleries in Sydney and Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in Melbourne. In 1984, Macha set up a studio in her own garage where Rover Thomas and Paddy Jaminji could paint while in Perth. She catalogued these and other paintings that passed through her hands at a time when the rest of the industry operated in a far more ad hoc manner. Today works created by Thomas and Jaminji that carry her provenance fetch a premium in the market.

  Macha was not, however, the only person the artists were painting for. Several agents were out in the field well before any art centre had been established to service them directly. The natural history photographer Neil McLeod had first met Rover Thomas and Paddy Jaminji in the company of Paddy Williams, in a pub in Wyndham while on a wildlife trip in the mid 1970s.47 He worked with David Mowaljarlai, whose passion for recording Aboriginal life and culture drew McLeod to Mowanjum in 1977. As he continued to work with Aboriginal people, McLeod also became interested in collecting and eventually commissioning art works. His field notes from March 1982 record the collection of paintings, including some from Warmun that Rover Thomas had stored under his bed. Detailed diary notes from 1983 record meetings with Rover Thomas, Paddy Jaminji and other artists at Warmun. Specific details, including schematic drawings of some of the works painted at this time, are recorded. In addition, McLeod also collected old boards from Rover Thomas which he had in his small house covered by an old blanket.48

  Of these Rover said, ‘Some of these [works] bin here a long time.’ Though the resource officer of the Balangarri Aboriginal Corporation, Rimas Riauba, has insisted to me that Rover would not paint for him at the time, McLeod’s field notes indicate he had no reservations on his count. They quote Rover as saying, ‘I got no boss, I work for anybody.’49 On field trips such as this McLeod recorded cultural practices and commissioned works from remote communities right across Arnhem Land, and as far as the north coast of Western Australia.50

  The enigmatic Chips Mackinolty was another key player. I first met Chips through Banduk Marika and Djon Mundine in the early 1980s. Skinny with lank shoulder-length blond hair, I found him guarded and difficult to read. A year later, however, I was delighted when he offered me an extraordinary collection of feathered dance belts and dilly bags woven from exotic feathers and hand-made bush string. Although Aboriginal people were allowed to hunt traditional game, the conservation laws prevented trade in any products made from them.

  I jumped at the opportunity to show these rarities. Every piece was exquisite. Woven bags were constructed from fine string threaded through with colourful feather down. Dance belts were adorned with tassels of cockatoo feathers attached by decoratively painted wild bees wax. For many years thereafter, each time David Gulpilil travelled through Sydney for a performance here or overseas, he would visit me so that he and his dancers could wear these flawless objects. Lucky are the people who bought them. Outside the museum context I have never seen their like again.

  Mackinolty was out collecting paintings from East Kimberley artists between 1981 and 1985 too. He was the art coordinator of Mimi Arts and Crafts, based in Katherine in the Northern Territory, and his travels took him across the Kimberley as far east as the Gulf Country and south to Tennant Creek. Though Mackinolty had come from a comfortable middle-class family (his father was the Dean of the Faculty of Law at Sydney University), he had been something of a firebrand in his youth, starting out as an artist during the anti-Vietnam War protests. He was a pioneer of the hard-edged political poster art produced at Redback Graphix, and the Sydney University Tin Sheds in the 1970s. His fellow agitators included Colin Little, later to work with the Tiwi screen printers on Bathurst Island, and Marie McMahon, famous for the poster Pay the Rent – You Are On Aboriginal Land. Mackinolty later became a major player behind the scenes across Arnhem Land, and inside the Northern Land Council, while continuing to produce award-winning contemporary visual art of his own.

  Though McLeod’s diaries provide compelling evidence, both Riauba and Mackinolty have expressed their doubts about McLeod’s involvement with the Warmun artists during the early to mid 1980s. Both were on the ground supporting and encouraging cultural activities. Yet there have been thousands of people working on cultural matters in the communities that I have visited during the past 30 years whom I have never met. The likelihood that they would have encountered McLeod during his occasional forays into their territory is exceedingly slim.

  The establishment of the Argyle diamond mine, and large projects on the North West Shelf, also created a lively stream of individual collectors and contractors passing through Kimberley communities. Local artists proved either eager, or at least willing, to sell their art and crafts to them. It was only a matter of time before the need for arts infrastructure and development in northwest Australia became apparent, as it had done in the Central Desert and Arnhem Land.

  The prime mover was young Joel Smoker, an artist and musician who was the son of a Kimberley missionary. As an arts adviser for the education department he swapped his desk for a 4WD, venturing out to the most isolated communit
ies in the region, and meeting and discussing the development of local arts with people from all walks of life. After securing a grant from the education department he set off to study art centres across Arnhem Land. He was so inspired by what he saw happening there, that on his return to the Kimberley he recommended art centres be set up in Broome and Kununurra.

  In 1985 Smoker established Waringarri Aboriginal Arts under the aegis of the Waringarri Aboriginal Corporation and the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre. It was hoped that art and craft production, and cultural advocacy, could be expanded throughout the Kimberley region through these urban-based art centres, despite the lack of community-based facilities. This certainly proved to be the case in Kununurra. By the time Joel Smoker left six years later, a fully functioning art gallery, a workshop and four staff testified to his legacy.

  Around the same time, the visionary Ken Neilsen was hired by the Mamabullagin Resource Centre in Broome to establish and run Goolarabooloo Arts. Neilsen had been working on land rights issues in Fitzroy Crossing, and advocated for art centres in both Balgo Hills and Fitzroy Crossing. Goolarabooloo Arts did not survive beyond the 1980s, despite drawing on more than 20 individual Aboriginal communities in close proximity to Broome. When I met him in 1987, Neilsen was living in a caravan parked permanently inside an old warehouse with his partner, Jenny Wright, the former owner of the Perth Aboriginal art shop, Ridji Didj.51

  Meanwhile, Lord Alistair McAlpine, the voracious raconteur and former Tory minister and ex-Thatcherite in the United Kingdom, had become a major player in the economic transformation of the rather shabby old pearling town into an international tourist destination. McAlpine had many grandiose plans for Broome, which included the Pearl Coast Zoo and the Cable Beach Club Resort and Spa. He displayed an artefact collection, easily the finest in Australia, in the foyer of his Perth corporate headquarters. Though he purchased most of his paintings outside of Broome, McAlpine competed with Goolarabooloo Arts for fine artefacts from local artists including the collection of stone heads he bought from Bidyadanga artists Donald Grey, Big John Dodo and Mervin Mallardy.

  McAlpine’s aggressive purchasing outside the art centre, coupled with poor management after Neilsen was replaced, effectively destroyed Goolarabolooo’s viability by 1988. Nevertheless, Broome continued to nurture a renaissance of Aboriginal culture. During this important period Magabala Books was established and became the first Aboriginal-controlled publishing house in Australia. The emerging music and dance organisations in the region drew on the energy and enthusiasm of talents such as Jimmy Chi and Stephen Pigram, who went on to create many original hits, as well as the musical Bran Nue Dae.

  By the end of the 1980s, galleries like my own were able to purchase Warmun paintings by Rover Thomas, George Mung Mung and Queenie McKenzie; Wandjina images from Kalumburu and the Mitchell Plateau by Jack, Rosie and Lily Karadada; and artworks and artefacts by a growing band of Wangkatjungka artists from around Fitzroy Crossing.

  Rover Thomas was by now the acclaimed cultural leader of the East Kimberley School. Just nine years after painting his first work he was selected to be one of Australia’s two representatives at the 1990 Venice Biennale. This confirmed his status as the pre-eminent Aboriginal contemporary painter at a time when Emily Kngwarreye was just entering the second year of her prodigious career. As the majority of Rover’s early works are held in museum collections, only two 1981 paintings (the year he began painting works alone) have ever appeared for sale at public auction in Australia. Both were originally sourced by Neil McLeod. Though in some quarters these paintings have been denounced as fakes, I believe that there is ample evidence to support the fact that they were purchased during his well-documented field trip to the Kimberley in March 1982.52 The first depicts Bow River, where Rover worked as a stockman. It was rendered onto a piece of board originally used to back a dressing table mirror.53 The second, which was painted on a recycled piece of construction ply, is an emblematic rendition of the Mook Mook Owl with its young in a nest at the Blue Tongue Lizard Dreaming site, Pompei Pillar. Measuring 167 x 60 cm, it was purchased at Lawson~Menzies May 2007 sale for $102,000.

  Rover Thomas, Bow River, 1981. Natural earth pigment on composition board, 99 x 74 cm.

  Note scuff marks right side, top and bottom, from handling during ceremony as in image on page 186.

  ARNHEM LAND ARTISTS OF RENOWN

  I t was the last word in luxurious boutique adventure. I was cruising through the Arafura Sea on a small Orion ocean liner in 2009. Meandering along the northern tip of Australia, we stopped in at remote coastal communities to indulge in a spending spree at each local art centre. I gave several lectures about Aboriginal art to the superannuated, slightly puzzled couples on board, most of whom had never met an Aboriginal person. Two senior artists joined us at Yirrkala with their art advisers to add to the depth of the cruise experience.

  Most of the passengers and crew struggled to interact with Bobby Bunungurr and Peter Gambung, who were used to speaking several local Aboriginal languages before English. Because of my long association with Aboriginal people, I wanted to make sure no-one missed the rare opportunity to hear the life stories of these two remarkable, if rather shy, gentlemen. I had known Bobby for several decades. Elegant as a rock star, and just as mischievous, he was one of the stars of the film Ten Canoes, and had been the singer for David Gulpilil’s performance troupe. A country and western crooner, he’d also had his own band at different times. While the rest of the passengers retired early, he entertained our small entourage each night on the foredeck with his repertoire. I hadn’t met Peter Gambung before, though I was immediately impressed by his quiet dignity. Peter’s story was so poignant and compelling that I decided to conduct a chat show style interview in the ship’s lounge. That night, a packed audience listened in rapt attention as Peter’s story unfolded.

  During the 1960s, when just 20 years old, Peter and his friends from the five clan groups at Milingimbi, in Central Arnhem Land, started their own business. They caught mudcrab, reef fish and barramundi, and transported them to the Darwin markets by barge. The business was so successful that in time they bought a 6.1-metre refrigerated fishing boat in Brisbane and sailed it around Cape York and through the Torres Strait Islands to Ramingining. With their own ‘mother ship’, their business grew and their enterprise flourished; that is, until the Department of Primary Industries closed them down. In a sad example of what has happened repeatedly to entrepreneurial Aboriginal people at the whim of politicians and bureaucrats, the federal government had determined that all fish, crab, crocodile skins and even art were the property of the government. As a result, the people on Elcho Island and Milingimbi were told they could no longer sell them. A period of great promise ended with the stroke of a pen in another world thousands of kilometres to the south. The local people had thought that they were going to be allowed to own their own land, but the Department of Fisheries took over, and everything they had been working for collapsed around them.

  Peter Gambung (left) and Bobby Bunungurr (right) aboard an Orion cruise through the Arafura Sea, 2009.

  Peter went on to achieve many other goals in life, but he never forgot this early disappointment. When he was young, he was just as keen to get ahead, just as keen to earn money and create a better life for his family, as any balanda. His ability to engage in enterprise was due largely to the relationships he’d forged with sympathetic white people, and as a result he remained friendly, warm and open when meeting people of every nationality and background. He’d gone on to spend a decade living and raising a family in the desert before returning to become the town clerk of Ramingining. Decades later, when we met on the boat, he was concentrating on being an artist and attracting sales to his local art centre.

  Lofty Bardayal Nadjamerrek, Collecting Sugarbag, 1994. Earth pigment on Arches cotton rag, 75 x 53 cm.

  Mick Kubarkku, Serpent Egg and Yam Story, 1957. Earth pigment on stringybark, 77 x 48 cm.

  At the v
ery same time as Peter and his friends were running their fishing business, the first art ‘stars’ were beginning to emerge amongst the bark painters of Arnhem Land. Given the lack of private galleries in the 1970s, The Company’s exhibitions were the primary showcase in which they could shine and receive the acclaim they deserved. The bark paintings of Lofty Bardayal Nadjamerrek, for instance, with their superb draftsmanship and composition, were a mainstay of The Company galleries.

  Lofty had grown up amongst the Kunwinjku people of the dramatic Liverpool–Mann Rivers region, where rocky overhangs provide excellent shelter and natural galleries for art. He was given his nickname by the boss of the tin mine 200 kilometres to the south, where he worked for rations and tobacco as a teenager. He’d spent the years during World War II working in an army camp, before returning to his own clan lands, where he married, and became a buffalo shooter. Lofty began painting in 1969 with encouragement from Peter Carroll, an energetic and inquisitive linguist in Oenpelli. At first, his paintings sold through group exhibitions at the Church Missionary Society. While living at several different outstations, he sold his barks to Peter Cooke, the art adviser in Maningrida, and to Dorothy Bennett. Eventually, in 1980, he established his own outstation at Malkawo, high in the Stone Country. Two years later he attended a group exhibition at The Company gallery in Perth, run by Mary Macha, and thereafter became a regular exhibitor in its galleries around Australia. Finally, promoted as an artist in his own right, Lofty began to achieve greater recognition and critical acclaim; however, in 1988, a tragic shooting incident at Malkawo saw it abandoned, and Lofty moved to Kamarrkawarn in his mother’s country on the Mann River, where his family reside to this day. Following the closure of The Company’s gallery network at the end of the 1980s, Lofty’s paintings were regularly displayed in my own Coo-ee Gallery and at the Hogarth Galleries nearby.