There were many reasons why this didn’t and still hasn’t occurred, which I have previously discussed. But the upshot was that it became rather fashionable to stereotype the dealers working with independent artists as white mercenaries, even parasites. In most instances this was far from true, but it encouraged the somewhat naive supposition that the majority of the income being generated by Aboriginal art was going into the ‘wrong hands’, that is, those of commercial operators.
Meanwhile the institutions played their part as non-commercial entities through symbiotic relationships with the government bureaucracies. Powerfully influenced by the concept of positive discrimination, they made every effort to employ young urban Indigenous curators and arts administrators who argued successfully that they had a superior right to interpret Aboriginal culture.
Their increasing influence added yet another political dimension to an already heated debate over appropriate ways of presenting Aboriginal art. By making prescriptive statements publicly such as ‘We do this because we have to, you do it because you want to!’,18 they further divided the industry into us and them.
Furthermore, a number of art centres began to market their art directly to collectors and bypassed the galleries that were their biggest customers. No wholesale/retail price structure or orderly marketing system existed. I know how gut-wrenching it was for specialist gallery owners, who had worked so hard to build up the industry, to watch those with big reputations in the contemporary art world reap the rewards. But there were plusses.
A whole new set of serious contemporary collectors were converted to Indigenous art by dealers such as Bill and Anne Gregory in Sydney, and Bill Nuttall in Melbourne. White box galleries offered art centres the promise of professional representation and improved sales. The lure of contemporary art spaces emboldened art coordinators to transfer allegiances. The white box had won and we all had to upgrade our premises or risk irrelevance.
Indigenous cultural tourism also increased and collectors began to travel more easily to the source. New businesses such as Helen Read’s Didgeri Air Art Tours,19 and a fresh wave of more entrepreneurial art coordinators, offered direct experience with the artists and their works. This was typified by James and Wendy Cowan in Balgo Hills, whose champagne picnics on the edge of the scenic escarpment at sunset were legendary. After their VIP visitors watched the sun drop dramatically over the pound, they shared an evening meal in the Cowans’ house, the surrounding walls adorned with tempting treasures.
The new paradigm demanded far more from the art centres. They were now expected to provide up to 25–30 works by individual artists for solo exhibitions. These could take as much as two years to collect, given the delays of ‘sorry business’ and other cultural imperatives. Lacking human resources, this often resulted in intolerable pressure on the art centres to meet market demand. It was somewhat ameliorated by the advent of computers, which meant staff could service direct inquiries about artworks posted on their websites. The best works were still put aside, while many less desirable pieces that were formerly piled up in the stock room were now sold direct to the public for the first time. As turnover increased, the funding agencies began to look closely at the art centres’ balance sheets. Retail sales became crucial as funding was cut back to encourage financial self-sufficiency.
All of this made it very complicated for galleries striving to maintain a healthy working relationship with their suppliers. The arrival of a new coordinator could overturn arrangements that had been in place for years. The job was no longer the province of those with romantic visions of escape from life in the dominant mainstream. Roles in art centre management now went to ever more highly trained and educated people. Experience in the field could be a stepping-stone to further studies or an institutional position in the arts. Concurrently, a number of urban Indigenous artists and arts administrators began to develop networks that would come to play a more and more important role in the presentation of Indigenous art, art criticism and policy development.
Wendy Cowan, Adam Rish, me and James Cowan – sunset overlooking the pound, Balgo Hills, 1998.
SERIOUSLY COLLECTABLE
For over a decade I found myself slipping almost effortlessly in and out of several different worlds. I could be in a meeting with a politician one moment, standing in front of a bulldozer to save the forests the next, and then before I knew it, out driving to a remote waterhole deep in the desert. There were the Dreaming camps, and time spent visiting remote Aboriginal communities, working with artists and coming to understand their needs. In Sydney there was the gallery to run as I moved through the world of fine art, gave speeches and attended conferences. I wrote for art magazines, and sat on several industry bodies that meant keeping abreast of important exhibitions and policy developments. Yet throughout this period, I was really just a fringe dweller on the intellectual and curatorial landscape of Australian contemporary art. I’d never been to art school. I trained as an ecologist and then became a kibbutznik in Israel before returning home. And I was lucky enough to have indulged in a passion which had become a vocation. By developing friendships along the way, first my art business and then my gallery were forged amidst these sliding doors.
The big watershed moment occurred with the release of the Altman Report 20 in July 1989. It had been a revelation. For the first time the scale of the movement and a plan for the future were outlined. Its publication coincided with a major exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia which demonstrated the very best art being made around the country, and the industry’s remarkable vitality. Windows on the Dreaming was both political and archival, including early bark paintings, the famous Bark Petition, desert painting and Kimberley art.
It’s difficult now to grasp how few books about Aboriginal art had been published to this point. Windows on the Dreaming was complemented by a beautiful catalogue, edited by the gallery curator Wally Caruana, and featuring more than 100 full-colour plates. It made a huge impression. Erudite and punchy essays by various anthropologists sat side by side with a thought-provoking piece by Galarrwuy Yunupingu, titled ‘The Black White Conflict’. It discussed the difference between the Aboriginal experience of art and white interpretations and appropriation of it. ‘The paintings in this book are not just beautiful pictures,’ Yunipingu wrote, ‘… they are about social, cultural, and political survival.’
In one strike this book legitimised the entire movement. I used it in my gallery for many years, along with the illustrated ‘coffee table books’ that followed, to prove the serious collectability of Aboriginal art to anyone who was interested. Handsome volumes were also published to accompany solo shows from individual artists. David Malangi was the first to be honoured by a public art institution with a solo exhibition at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in 1989. And in 1993, the National Gallery of Australia highlighted an Indigenous artist’s career for the first time with George Milpurrurru’s solo exhibition.
The exhibition Balance 1990: Views, Visions and Influences was both challenging and controversial as it juxtaposed black and white interpretations of Aboriginal history. It signalled the first time the Queensland Art Gallery overtly supported Indigenous art practice. Works were selected during three big trips across the continent by the curators Michael Eather and Marlene Hall. The catalogue highlighted a shared aesthetic and collaborative spirit between white and black artists. At my suggestion the curators included Michael Ramsden’s seductive Painting for Big Bill. The work was named for the highly respected ‘Kakadu Man’ Big Bill Nedjie, the last surviving speaker of the Gaagudju language. Also featured were confronting works by Christopher Hodges, Lin Onus, Karen Casey, Gordon Bennett, Trevor Nickolls, Rod Moss and Imants Tillers.
As other major collecting institutions began to engage more deeply and sensitively with contemporary Aboriginal art, certain protocols became entrenched. Culturally appropriate behaviour included acknowledging the traditional owners in speeches during official functions, noting the so
cial affiliations of artists, and not referring to the names of deceased artists or exhibiting their photographs during the mourning period. By 1993, all the collecting institutions had formalised the management and care of their Indigenous collections. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, for instance, accepted joint custodial responsibility with Maningrida Arts and Crafts for their extensive collection of weavings.
Joanne Nalingu Currie, winner of the Wynne prize for landscape painting at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, with the artist/dealer and curator Michael Eather at Fireworks Gallery, Brisbane.
The next major psychological hurdle for those who supported Aboriginal art was a reappraisal of its status. Overseas visitors had sustained the market throughout the 1980s. Now the curators of major cultural institutions in Europe and North America began to host international touring exhibitions, which generated intense critical debate. As Aboriginal art began to feature in contemporary art institutions, rather than old established ethnographic museums, the participating Australian curators were encouraged to present it as contemporary art.21 For instance Magiciens de la Terre at the exciting, relatively young Pompidou Centre in Paris in 1989 featured works by Warlpiri artists. Rover Thomas and Trevor Nickolls represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1990. Aratjara: Art of the First Australians was held at that shrine of contemporary modernism, the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, in Dusseldorf in 1993, before travelling to England and Denmark. Several international contemporary dealers followed suit. John Weber, one of New York’s top 20 contemporary art dealers, showed Western Desert paintings from Papunya Tula at the same time as the Asia Society’s Dreamings exhibition.
As soon as he found that he could not ‘own’ the market for Papunya works in America, however, his interest in Aboriginal art waned.
A fascinating player in this turn of events was the visionary German artist, academic and curator, Bernard Lüthi. I first met Lüthi in Gary Foley’s office at the Australia Council in the mid 1980s. This pale, German intellectual impressed me as obsessive, yet inspired. In the mid 1980s none of us were thinking of doing big shows in Europe, but Lüthi pursued this dream for more than a decade, drawing on relationships with Aboriginal activists and urban artists, as well as those working in remote communities. He moved out of his car and in with Djon Mundine but, short on money, he returned to Germany in 1988. In 1989 he worked with Jean-Hubert Martin on the exhibition Magiciens de la Terre, and when the Australian government refused to support the Aratjara exhibition if politically charged urban imagery was included, Lüthi raised 1.7 million DM from the German government and banks. At the opening of Aratjara, more than ten artists were in attendance, including Lin Onus, Gordon Bennett, John Mawurndjul and Dolly Nampitjinpa Daniels. Though Aratjara was seen by a seriously art literate and enthusiastic public in Germany, numbering more than 250,000 people, it was largely ignored by the Australian media.22 Nevertheless, the positive critical reception in Europe and America invested the whole enterprise of Aboriginal art, and acrylic desert painting in particular, with a new prestige here at home.
The most powerful Aboriginal art dealer in Australia at the start of the 1990s was the stylish and cosmopolitan Gabrielle Pizzi. She was the granddaughter of John Wren, the flamboyant Catholic Labor politician and businessman, who was immortalised in Frank Hardy’s novel Power Without Glory. Nicknamed ‘Blue Wren’ as a child, Pizzi became a devoted and passionate campaigner for human rights and animal welfare. She was also a ‘rusted on’ Collingwood AFL supporter. She established her eponymous gallery in Flinders Lane in 1987. Encouraged by Bernard Lüthi, Pizzi exhibited her artists at ARCO, the Madrid contemporary art fair, in 1989. The response from Spanish art collectors was relatively tepid; nevertheless her participation generated significant publicity and works were sold to a number of international dealers. Two years later, she exhibited Papunya, Balgo Hills and Utopia paintings at four venues in the former United Soviet Socialist Republic. After showing sculptures from Maningrida and paintings by urban artists Judy Watson and Lin Onus at subsequent ARCO fairs, she attended the Art Cologne Fair with paintings by Mick Namarari, photographic images by Leah King-Smith, and traditional Maningrida sculptures.
A furore erupted the next time Pizzi applied to attend the Art Cologne fair in 1993. The ensuing fracas was to make her international reputation and change the perception of Australian Indigenous art forever. After heavy lobbying from several European galleries, the selection committee refused her entry on the grounds that she was intending to show ‘inauthentic art’. They quoted the fair regulations that prevented ‘folk art’ from admittance. Pizzi capitalised on the publicity both in Australia and abroad. Protests from important collectors and art institutions were extensively serialised in the German press. In a televised debate during the fair, both Lin Onus and Bernard Lüthi argued for a wider, less Eurocentric view of art, and eventually the committee revoked its original decision. But it didn’t end there. In spite of simmering European resentment, Pizzi attended Art Cologne from 1994 to 1997. Ignoring the committee’s disapproval, she stubbornly persisted in exhibiting works from Maningrida, including those by bark artist John Mawurndjul.
The controversy finally came to a head in 1998 when she applied to show Mawurndjul, England Bangala and James Iyuna alongside urban artists Destiny Deacon and H.J. Wedge. All were initially rejected, other than Harry Wedge. She then attempted to force the committee to organise a public forum. Although they refused, and Pizzi was compelled to withdraw, theirs was a pyrrhic victory. Pizzi had pulled off a major international coup, generating debate and sympathetic publicity, and forged her way into the lucrative European market for contemporary art.
The polar opposite to Gabrielle Pizzi was her key rival, the mercurial Dutch trader Hank Ebes. Having visited his home in Melbourne, I can safely say it is one of the most extraordinary private art experiences to be had anywhere in the world. Located in a gigantic warehouse three storeys high, the endless floorspace is shared by luxury cars, an antique printing press, a Hawker Harrier Jump Jet aeroplane, one of the largest collections of meteorites in the world, and an army of engraved jade and gold warrior burial suits from China. A Japanese garden is fed by a constant flow of morning mist. The walls are covered in rare examples of historically important Aboriginal paintings from floor to ceiling. The building houses the only ‘museum’ in Australia dedicated to Aboriginal Australia’s greatest artist, Emily Kame Kngwarreye.
Ebes was a brilliant speculator and opportunist, who began his commercial life as a door-to-door salesman and crop duster in America and, after moving to Australia, made a fortune out of video games and fine art prints. Conceiving an almost unparalleled enthusiasm for Aboriginal art, he borrowed heavily to create his own network of field operatives, with scant regard for criticism. Not content with his success in Australia, he set his sights on distant horizons. Ebes toured the highlights of his collection across Asia, Europe and North America, beginning with the exhibition Modern Art – Ancient Icon at the International Monetary Fund in Washington in 1992. This evolved into Nangara: The Australian Aboriginal Art Exhibition, shown in Bruges, Belgium, in 1996.
In 1999, Ebes accomplished a major coup. In Amsterdam’s 800-year-old Oude Kirk, which had just undergone a $25 million facelift, he installed a 15 x 5 metre ‘Emily wall’, comprising 53 individual paintings. His exhibition of Emily Kngwarreye’s major works was opened by Dr Simon Levie, the former Executive Director of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, who described it as ‘breathtaking in its luminosity and unheard of boldness.’
From crop duster to art dealer extraordinare, and founder of the first museum dedicated to Emily Kngwareye, the mercurial Hank Ebes.
The Hank Ebes 15 x 5-metre Emily Wall installed in Amsterdam’s 800-year-old Oude Kerk.
Another influential player who was mesmerised by Aboriginal culture from afar was the tall, pale and phlegmatic Thomas Vroom, one of the heirs to a substantial department store fortune started by his grandfather in the Netherlands. We may
never see the like of Vroom again. I can count on two hands the number of people I know personally who’ve bought more than 50 Aboriginal paintings in the past 30 years. Vroom bought at least 1,500. In fact he became so excited by Aboriginal art that in 1995 he opened a gallery in Amsterdam and another in San Francisco.
He told me:
In the first six months of opening in Amsterdam, an English guy walked in off the streets and bought 20 to 30 barks for the king of an African country. He was building a big house and wanted to fill it with all the cultures from around the world. We thought this was great, our business will be a big success! But then of course once the house was full he never bought from us again.23
Vroom wasn’t just a glamorous dabbler. He made many visits to Australia and was delighted to go bush with artists like Paddy Sims. Swagging-out in a riverbed under the stars listening to Paddy explain his Milky Way Dreaming was, he said, ‘one of the most delightful experiences of my entire life’. Yet he was anything but naive. Overwhelmed by the lack of hygiene and poverty, he was impressed by the art coordinators ‘who worked under such difficult conditions to raise the quality of the art and the living standards of the people’.
Vroom also visited Don and Janet Holt at Delmore Downs and became a major client. He was comfortable buying art from dealers who presented a ‘professional’ front. But he believed the way art was being produced in remote communities was ‘becoming far too commercial’, and he didn’t like it. His attitude typified that of many European collectors – the Dutch, Germans and to a lesser extent the French and Italians – who were still drawn by ethnographic curiosity, and the fact that Aboriginal art represented a unique culture. They were not so interested in the idea of the art as a contemporary living movement. Vroom felt that:
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