The Dealer is the Devil

by Adrian Newstead

  The truth is that the majority of non-specialist dealers and gallery owners rarely had deep friendships with Aboriginal artists in the field. Nor did many of the curators working for institutions. They may well have believed that Aboriginal artists should be professionally represented in the same manner as non-Aboriginal artists, but they failed to acknowledge that many independent artists had their minds on far more pragmatic and immediate concerns such as needing to hunt, go bush, or procure new tyres, petrol, food and other commodities. Many artists have received as much if not more money and practical assistance through these friendships than they could ever expect from a city-based gallerist or an art centre catering to dozens, if not hundreds, of other individuals. At the same time the ‘name’ artists supported the art centres on the proceeds of their fame, and, as a consequence, were under pressure to put the interests of these centres above all else.

  To this complicated situation a new factor was added. Galleries seeking to establish themselves as elite brands began applying to join the Australian Commercial Galleries Association (ACGA). Prior to the early 1990s, the ACGA had little relevance to Aboriginal art, and struggled for membership (which was by invitation only and required consensus for acceptance). As the secondary market developed, several influential members of the AGCA, including Frank Watters, Bill Gregory and Bill Nutall, began showing selected Aboriginal artists, and several galleries that specialised in Aboriginal art applied to join. The move to elite branding was bolstered by Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Both conferred their own imprimatur upon ACGA galleries, community art centres and approved agents/dealers. From the moment these international auction houses entered the Australian market their brand power was so strong that they were treated more like institutions than commercial businesses. As certain dealers sought to elevate their provenance ‘beyond reproach’, collectors were embroiled in ethical and financial dilemmas about the source of an artwork every time they were drawn to purchase.

  When it came to artworks created for independent dealers who had worked with Kimberley artists, for instance, those created for Mary Macha became the gold standard, while works created for Neil McLeod were dismissed. This especially held for those works painted by Rover Thomas and Paddy Jaminji. In the Eastern Desert, Emily Kngwarreye’s paintings for the Holt family’s Delmore Gallery, and for Chistopher Hodges’ Utopia Art Sydney, were elevated by Sotheby’s to premium status while those created for Fred Torres, Emily’s own nephew, were treated as having ‘unsafe’ provenance. Both McLeod and Torres could provide more than enough documentary material to support the bona fides of works created for them to satisfy clients under any normal circumstances. These circumstances, however, were far from normal. In every region of Australia, an enormous amount of genuine art, much of the highest quality, was being catagorised as ‘unprovenanced’. As a result, dealer enmity festered, while buyers with nothing more to guide them than status simply ‘played it safe’.

  THE BIRTH OF THE SECONDARY MARKET

  As the debonair auctioneer Robert Bleakley picked up his gavel at the start of Sotheby’s 1997 auction, a flamboyant elderly lady, resplendent in red, swanned through the crowd on the arm of her friend and neighbour Beverly Knight and took her seat at the front of the house. Margaret Carnegie OAM, a product of upper crust Melbourne society ‘who bought paintings as if they were hats’,10 had bestowed her elegant endorsement on Aboriginal art. Australia’s old money got ready to bid.

  It had taken Sotheby’s just three years to dramatically change the nature of the market. In 1995 the auction house had introduced specialist Aboriginal art sales. As Margo Neale wrote in Art Monthly at that time, ‘the star system’, which was quite foreign to Indigenous culture, had begun to impact throughout every corner of the industry.

  A number of gallery directors, including myself, had also made an important breakthrough. For the first time Australian galleries were able to participate in major international art fairs overseas. We had engineered this by persuading Austrade and the Visual Arts and Crafts Board of the Australia Council to convene a Visual Art Export Panel, which would fund overseas travel. It was eventually chaired by Brian Johns, later to become Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In an era prior to Export Market Development Grants, this mechanism facilitated an Australian presence at the Chicago International art fairs (CINAF and SOFA),11 as well as those in Cologne, Dusseldorf and Madrid. The panel supported Gabrielle Pizzi who showed in Cologne and fought against Aboriginal art being categorised as ‘folk art’. Roslyn Oxley launched Tracey Moffatt’s international career, and Paul Greenaway showed Indigenous artists for the first time at the Madrid contemporary art fair, ARCO. High-end media coverage, including a cover story on Aboriginal art in Time magazine, reflected its growing international profile.

  The seven-page article by Alan Attwood describes Aboriginal art as ‘hot property’.

  As the Australian economy began to surge in the mid 1990s, moving into a period of sustained buoyancy, the Aboriginal art industry appeared to be pulling in the big money, and gaining a new level of currency and sophistication. By applying strict criteria to admissible work, Sotheby’s was creating new boundaries of exclusivity, and a two-tier market: those it endorsed, and those it didn’t. The most significant buyers were changing from impassioned ethnophiles and international collectors ‘on holiday’ to devotees of contemporary fine art and those with an eye to investment. By 1997 Sotheby’s had set 44 of the 50 highest results for Aboriginal art sales of all time and, of these, 42 were achieved between 1995 and 1997. In effect, it now ‘owned’ the secondary market.

  The phenomenal success of Aboriginal art in the 1990s, however, exacted a heavy toll. Despite the high prices and international acclaim, Sotheby’s two-tier market drove a wedge through the industry. Nothing illustrates the damage done to individual reputations more dramatically than the continuing story of what happened to Neil McLeod.

  The real trouble began, rather improbably, while the Victorian Premier, Joan Kirner, was fighting for her political life against a combative Liberal Party led by Jeff Kennett. Kirner was accused of having spent Victorian government money on what was subsequently described as a ‘fake Aboriginal painting’. One of her assistants said the work had been painted by a struggling young artist, Bobby Nganjmirra. The dealer who had sold the painting to the then Premier was none other than cultural field worker and photographer, Neil McLeod.

  Bobby Barrdjaray Nganjmirra, the great Western Arnhem Land artist and custodian, was now old and infirm. He was said to have been blind at the time the artwork was created, and it was suggested by McLeod’s nemesis, Dorothy Bennett, that McLeod had finished the work himself. Reputable authorities including, most importantly Lin Onus, refuted these accusations. At the time Onus was both the Chairman of the Aboriginal Arts Committee of the Australia Council for the Arts, and the Aboriginal Arts Management Association (AAMA). AAMA’s major role was the protection of Indigenous artists’ copyright, which made Onus’s advocacy on McLeod’s behalf all the more persuasive. He was extremely familiar with the painting in question, having seen it a number of times during its creation in 1988, and was at pains to point out that Bobby had created it solely with minor assistance from his son Alex Nganjmirra.12

  The history of Bennett and McLeod’s relationship, as recounted in Chapter 32, was a stormy one. She and McLeod had collected works from artists in Oenpelli long before an art centre was established there. They had both vied for the role of the art centre’s first art coordinator two years earlier in 1990. Conflict was inevitable.13 Both were also desperately short of money. McLeod had photographed Bennett’s personal art collection but she had reneged on his payment. Things came to a head when McLeod purchased a distinctive red Toyota for Bobby, which disappeared before reaching the old man.14 Rumours swirled but there was never any direct evidence to suggest that Dorothy had anything to do with it.

  Bobby Nganjmirra (back right) with (left to right) Thompson Nganjmirra, James Iyuna and Al
ex Nganjmirra.

  The scandal over the Nganjmirra painting took the simmering resentment between the two long-time rivals to a whole new level. The Oenpelli art centre management, the Northern Land Council and the National Gallery of Victoria, all became embroiled in the increasingly bitter public dispute, as it spilled over into the pages of the Sydney Morning Herald, Age and Australian newspapers. It was taken up by TV talk show host and Melbourne radio ‘shock jock’ Derryn Hinch. While the original political motivation had been to damage Kirner, by the end of Hinch’s merciless week-long attack, McLeod’s reputation was irreparably tarnished too.

  The subsequent police investigation concluded that the work was not a forgery and all charges against McLeod were dropped; but it was too late. Channel 9 and Channel 7 subsequently did interviews, but not one of the national media organisations, and certainly not Hinch, made any attempt at amends. Kennett beat Kirner in the state election. The government returned the work and received a refund. The case was closed, but the Kirner incident would be cited many times over the coming years as evidence of McLeod’s untrustworthiness. Now every work that passed through his hands was treated as suspect. McLeod turned the other cheek, and battled on, working in the field, doing his best to maintain close friendships with arts administrators and artists in Arnhem Land and the Kimberley. But this public scandal surrounding McLeod, however unjust, was a mere foretaste of what was to follow.

  In 1995 a seemingly unconnected literary storm broke. Helen Demidenko won the Miles Franklin Award for her book The Hand that Signed the Paper. Demidenko turned out to be Helen Darville an Australian brought up in suburban Brisbane. While most of the uproar concerned her fake Ukrainian identity, there was also concern that she had reproduced a substantial amount of work from other writers, most notably Robin Morgan and Thomas Keneally.15

  Various journalists were assigned to write a range of exposés examining misappropriation of Australia Council grants, government affirmative action policies, forgery, inappropriate cultural behaviour, misattribution and collaboration in the production of art. Not surprisingly, Aboriginal art came in for more than its fair share of scrutiny. Most journalists at the time knew very little about Indigenous culture, and fell easily into the trap of simplifying what were actually quite complex issues.

  By the mid 1990s the narrative in mainstream culture no longer held that Aboriginal people were lazy and shiftless. They were now more commonly thought of as terminal victims of white society, exploited by everyone who dealt with them. A great many of the published articles unwittingly tuned into subliminal currents of white guilt, at least a decade before the nation’s leaders officially made an apology and said ‘Sorry’. It was all too convenient to portray white dealers as great white hunters. This generalisation was to have a truly negative impact on the perception of the Aboriginal art industry as a whole.

  Between 1995 and 2001 the careers of a number of high-profile artists were scrutinised by journalists who accused artists, their families and their dealers of inappropriate practice. A great number of accusations were made, some fair and some unfair. Foremost amongst the Aboriginal artists whose praxis and authorship were called into question were some of the biggest stars: Emily Kngwarreye, Rover Thomas, Kathleen Petyarre, Turkey Tolson and Clifford Possum. But they weren’t the only ones. The media uproar that began with Helen Demidenko eventually spread to engulf any artist, writer or performer, regardless of ethnicity, who was rightly or wrongly suspected of abusing the public trust. These included the outright copyist Lance Blundell and his fakes of famous works, which he laughably labelled ‘innuendos’; Elizabeth Durack and the paintings she created under her Aboriginal alter ego, Eddie Burrup; the Indian Satchi Anamtjerre who hoodwinked half of the Brisbane Broncos football team into believing his paintings were ‘Aboriginal’ artworks, and who painted the ceiling of the Mary MacKillop Chapel with cosmic ‘Dreamings’; the black academic, activist and writer Dr Roberta Sykes who had lived and worked with Aboriginal people for decades but was dismissed as being of mixed Afro-Asian and Native American heritage: and the white male author Leon Carmen, who received a grant from the Australia Council while posing as Wanda Koolmatrie, a black female. This is the quagmire into which Aboriginal art descended.

  It is easy to understand how, in this unstable atmosphere, the question of authenticity became associated with the notion of fraud. You need an intimate knowledge of the role of authorship, attribution and collaboration in Aboriginal society to achieve any real understanding of appropriate behaviour. Yet not once in all of the millions of words written did I ever see a satisfactory attempt to interview in depth, in their own language, any of the artists themselves so that the public could understand the complexity of issues from their point of view.

  The secondary auction market for Aboriginal fine art was born in this charged atmosphere, beneath these storm clouds. It now began to change with astonishing speed. In 1992, I attended Lawson’s auction clearance sale of the last remaining stock of The Company, aka Aboriginal Arts Australia. It netted a total of $208,078. I pounced upon five large boxes filled with small Wandjina barks from Kalumburu, and picked up the lot for around $300. Over the following two years, I sold the hundred or more of these powerful little barks for between $20 and $35 each. Today Wandjina barks of their quality regularly sell for between $1,200 and $3,500 each at auction.

  Sotheby’s Aboriginal and Oceanic art auction in 1994 had generated just $153,910 from its Aboriginal component. A year later, when it held its first specialist Aboriginal art auction, Southeby’s sale total hit $978,926. At the time, Albert Namatjira had achieved 33 of the 50 highest prices ever for an Aboriginal artwork on the secondary market. Clifford Possum held the Australian record for an Aboriginal painting at $50,600. There were three paintings by Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, whose Bush Tucker Story (1972) held fifth place at $34,500. Dick Roughsey’s figurative depiction of kids playing marbles, Second Last Game, held 50th place, having sold for $15,000 at Mason Gray in December 1990.

  There were also three by Johnny Warangkula, and two by Yala Yala Gibbs. Those artists represented by a single work amongst the top 50 results were Emily Kngwarreye, Charlie Tarawa, Tommy McRae, Uta Uta Tjangala and Billy Stockman. The entire 50 highest sales consisted of works by just 11 artists.

  Two years later, Sotheby’s sales of Aboriginal art jumped to $3,764,233, or 98% of all secondary market sales through auction. Clifford Possum’s 1995 record had been relegated to 11th place. The record price was now Johnny Warangkula’s Water Dreaming at Kalipinypa (1972) at $206,000. No less than 33 Papunya works created between 1971 and 1973 now appeared in the top 50. Rover Thomas appeared on the list for the very first time and was represented by just one work holding fifth place that had sold for $68,500. Only eight Albert Namatjira watercolours remained.

  By setting strict criteria for the acceptance of artworks into its sales, Sotheby’s established total dominance of the high-end market and created a coterie of insider galleries and dealers that sanctioned its dogma of provenance to the exclusion of all others. Later, Christie’s adopted almost identical selection criteria, which became entrenched in policy and action.16

  This seriously undermined the businesses of a number of independent dealers who were working with major artists, and condemned their works to the outer reaches of the secondary market.

  ACROSS THE PHILOSOPHICAL DIVIDE – THE DEVELOPING MARKET INFRASTRUCTURE

  The first exhibitions I organised in the early years of my gallery were all designed to promote regional styles, not stars. Solo artist exhibitions were extremely rare events during the 1980s. Individuals weren’t really singled out for special attention because it was believed that the ownership of Aboriginal culture and imagery was shared, and art centre staff had neither the funds nor the time to assemble solo exhibitions.

  Papunya Tula’s very first solo exhibition did not occur until 1989, when Anatjari Tjakamarra showed at John Weber Gallery in New York. Lindsay Bird Mpetyane’s exhibition
at the Perth Institute of Modern Art in 1990 was the first solo exhibition for a Utopia artist. Emily Kngwarreye had her first solo exhibition the following year. Little known Elizabeth Gordon was the first Balgo Hills artist to be afforded a solo show when she exhibited at Kimberley Art Gallery in Melbourne in 1992.

  The growth spurt that followed the 1980s brought many pressures to bear on what was essentially a very immature industry. As annual sales rose from $2.5 million in 1980 to $18.5 million in 1990 there was simply more at stake. Australia’s competitive exchange rate kept the industry buoyant.17 But the artists’ share of the increased revenue was tiny. At the same time, the rapidly growing commercial retail sector was almost exclusively owned by non-Indigenous entrepreneurs. It was easy to assume that because these galleries attracted public acclaim and kudos they were also creaming off the lion’s share of the profit from exhibitions. In fact, it was the fast developing infrastructure around the marketing of the work that was eating into industry profits. Under-resourced coordinators had their hands full collecting the art, nurturing the artists and dealing with the day-to-day crises of Aboriginal settlements. They needed and actively sought outside help. And it was the entrepreneurial galleries and dealers who were laying the groundwork which would create an explosion of opportunities in the decade to follow. Yet the agenda of the Aboriginal bureaucracy, the field workers and the developing advocacy bodies was to increase Aboriginal financial empowerment and Indigenous ownership by bringing more Aboriginal people into the art industry’s workforce.