Distressed or bored? Rover’s work was not even discussed in the article in The Australian, October 1995.
The controversy over the quality of Emily’s paintings and the existence of forgeries was rooted in the fact that ‘to be a great artist in Aboriginal society is to be a great provider’.35 After Emily was awarded a ‘Keating’ (the Prime Minister’s discretionary two-year Creative Fellowship worth $110,000) in 1992, Gooch estimated that around 20 members of her immediate ‘family’ would benefit directly and another 100 indirectly. Little wonder Emily announced as she accepted the award that she was ‘finished painting’. Certainly, she was not, but in her last years, she often needed a break ‘to escape the pressures placed on her by her own people and white people wanting to buy her paintings’,36 even though the demand for her work continued unabated.
The lasting impact of ‘Authentic Forgery: The Faking of Aboriginal Art’, however, probably owes as much to the presentation of the story as the content. Although the article itself did not refer to works by Rover Thomas, it ran with a rather sombre photograph of the artist seated in front of one of his paintings, supposedly looking deeply distressed. He was in fact bored, not distressed. Brought in expressly by Neil McLeod to examine more than 30 paintings in the collection of Melbourne dealer Hank Ebes, Rover had been filmed and interviewed for over three hours. Many of these works had been originally purchased by McLeod during his extensive travels in the Kimberley in the early to mid 1980s. Yet the use of the photograph with the ‘Faking’ headline implied that Rover was worried that these were fakes.
Neil McLeod and Rover Thomas.
It was later suggested that Rover couldn’t even remember whether he had painted any of these 30 paintings or not.37 I personally viewed the three-hour videotape of the authentication process in 1998 and subsequently asked Rover about it. I came away with no doubt whatsoever that these artworks are genuine. When he was photographed in front of one of them, Rover was just thoroughly sick and tired of the whole thing.
The inference that the painting in the photograph was faked, however, inflated the impression that everything Neil McLeod had ever touched was suspect. This attempt to clear his reputation, by arranging for Rover to authenticate the paintings, failed. Such is the power of journalism that reputations are made or broken at the touch of a keyboard – or the placement of a photograph.
AUTHORSHIP
I magine the conditions under which most desert painters live and work – sitting on the earth, under the shade of a tree, often surrounded by their extended families. Some render assistance to the storyteller, who is in many cases also the breadwinner, by fetching pannikins of water, cups of tea, pots of colour, and by providing an extra pair of hands to prepare and fill in canvases. The assistance is not so far removed from that which occurred in the studios of Renaissance painters, or the art factories of Andy Warhol and more recently Damien Hirst. Aboriginal people tackle any task all-in-together. Thus a relentless focus on the individual ‘star’ as auteur sits uncomfortably at the centre of the scandals that have plagued the Aboriginal art market for more than two decades.
By the time of Emily’s death in 1996, two distinct painting styles had emerged at Utopia. Like Yin and Yang, the gestural exuberance of Emily was the perfect counterpoint to the infinite labour, intimacy and detail exemplified by the work of Kathleen Petyarre. Of those keen to inherit Emily’s mantle, including Gloria Petyarre and Barbara Weir, it was Kathleen’s star that clearly shone the brightest. Her career had progressed quietly and steadily, encouraged by the Holts and her agent David Cossey, of Gallerie Australis in Adelaide. Dignified yet shy, even girlish at times, the unassuming Kathleen had sustained a decade-long ascent when she was awarded first prize in the 1996 Telstra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award for a magnificent painting titled Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming.
Shortly after winning the prestigious Visy Board Art Prize the following year, Kathleen’s personal life and career were laid bare by Susan McCulloch in He wanted recognition in his own right, and a chance at his own painting career.
Senior custodian of Atnangkere country, Kathleen Petyarre.
The Australian newspaper. Petyarre had recently separated from Ray Beamish, her Welsh-born de facto of ten years. The extended family knew that Beamish had been assisting her with her painting at their outstation during the previous year. At this time, none of her family insisted that he should stop helping her just because he was white. Her agent, David Cossey, no doubt heard the rumours, but he could only ensure that she painted alone when she was in the Adelaide studio he provided. Now, cut adrift and without an income, Beamish claimed that he, in fact, had been the author of her Telstra Award–winning painting, and that Kathleen had been no more than his assistant during its creation.
Kathleen was now torn between powerful competing interests – her family, her gallery and those collectors who had acquired paintings on which Beamish had collaborated.
She became terrified that she might be required to refund the prize money she had already distributed amongst her family members. There had never been any previous question over the authorship of her works executed in this style and in a number of different signature styles. Only the execution of the award-winning work was questioned. Those who had seen Kathleen’s work develop over the previous ten years knew that it was a treatment of her personal totem, the Thorny Devil Lizard, often referred to by her countrywomen as ‘that Old Woman Mountain Devil’. This tiny desert creature is believed to have created the vast desert home of the eastern Anmatjerre people by moving sand, grain by grain, since the dawn of time. Petyarre and her clanswomen believe that they are its descendants, and have therefore inherited the responsibility to care for and nurture the vast landscape that she depicts so intimately and carefully. From her earliest crude paintings she had refined this image into her leitmotif with increasingly sophisticated subtlety. The story always featured two diagonal fault lines meeting at the sacred men’s and women’s ceremonial sites along a dry riverbed.
The award-winning painting, however, had a new and powerful hypnotic presence. The perfectly placed white dotting applied by Beamish provided a magnetic counterpoint to Kathleen’s undulating sandhills. Beamish was, it must be said, an exceptionally gifted optical artist. He told McCulloch that although he had originally only assisted Kathleen, by the time they created this painting he had become the author, and she had simply followed behind him with the less expressive yellow dotting. The subject, he insisted, was his own, informed by a period of intense exposure in the desert.
For a while after the scandal broke, Beamish painted for Hank Ebes but he passed away from an overdose of heroin within a couple of years. Kathleen’s award was allowed to stand after an investigation instigated by the Trustees of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. But the following two years saw a dramatic decrease in interest in her works. While she retained public affection, as evidenced by winning the People’s Choice in the Seppelt Contemporary Art Award in 1998, a number of important international collectors refused to pay for commissions, and several returned works demanding a refund.
It was a devastating time for the artist and those who closely supported her. Even Susan McCulloch, who had brought the story to light, acknowledged her talent, dedication and integrity. Kathleen subsequently dropped the style of the award-winning work from her repertoire, but not before using it several times to prove that she could paint this way without any assistance. Although slightly less optically precise, I believe some of these are actually more interesting works than those she painted with Beamish. Regardless, in the long run, Kathleen was saved from crossing the Rubicon. Had she continued to live and paint with Beamish, his input may have eventually overshadowed her own.
Although she was emotionally traumatised by these events, Kathleen now reverted to painting her My Country series. She soaked thin acrylic paint into carefully prepared linen, and laid galaxies of fine dots, building subtle variations of tone and
colour, underscored by areas of compelling shadow indicating underground water. These highly atmospheric painstaking works, carefully veiled by mists of dots, reaffirmed her unique talent through their oblique reference to ancient landscapes and narratives.
Kathleen’s career was relaunched by my own Coo-ee Gallery and David Cossey’s Gallerie Australis in 1999. The exhibition was officially opened by Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, the Director of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA). A solo retrospective at the MCA in Sydney subsequently repositioned her career. It was enhanced by the publication of Genius of Place with essays by Dr Christine Nicholls and Ian North in 2001.
The very public ‘outing’ of the collaborative works by Kathleen Petyarre and Ray Beamish focused attention on the creation, documentation and sale of all Indigenous art. Assistance can be rendered to Aboriginal artists in a variety of ways. It can come from family members and, as we have seen, this has been an established, if rarely discussed, cultural practice for decades amongst many Arnhem Land bark painters and desert artists. And it can come from non-Indigenous art workers who provide technical and hands-on assistance in the making of wood and metal sculpture, printmaking and glass art, without any perceived need for recognition. In the desert, artists are supplied with primed canvases that have already been painted with background colours by art coordinators. Non-Indigenous art centre staff often assist old and infirm artists to ‘clean up’ their artworks, as messy paintings are hard to sell. The stakes are high. The success or failure of these works in the market can be the difference between a full belly and hunger for the artists and their families.
At Coo-ee Gallery’s Kathleen Petyarre solo exhibition in 1999.
David Cossey and Dr Christine Nicholls.
Elizabeth Ann Macgregor with me.
Ultimately, the Kathleen Petyarre affair was about the role a white man played in the creation of an artwork that won a prestigious Indigenous art prize. Had this particular Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming work been documented as a collaboration between a black and a white artist, it would never have been accepted into an Aboriginal art competition in the first place. In my opinion the bona fides of the paintings Petyarre and Beamish created together should be reinstated, and the works themselves properly attributed at last.
This particular scandal brought the expectations of both black and white society into sharp conflict. The white art world, myself included, tried to protect Kathleen’s reputation by denying the contribution that Beamish had made to the particular work in question. Editors at The Australian exposed a vulnerable Aboriginal artist on the front page. Kathleen’s Aboriginal community wasn’t worried about her ‘reputation’. They were just happy to get the money.
It’s my opinion that in the heated atmosphere of the moment both Beamish and Petyarre were badly let down by everyone.
SLANDER
On 6 December 1997, cultural provocateur Germaine Greer published an article, ‘Selling Off the Dreaming’, in The Sydney Morning Herald. Greer quoted an Aboriginal travelling companion named ‘Wally’ who, she claimed, told her:
What buggers me is this art. We’re losing all our culture. Those artists keep painting the Dreaming, and selling it to white fellas who sell it, and it goes all over the world until there’s nothing left. You keep copying that stuff, soon be nothing left. You can’t say it isn’t gorn [gone] if you’ve sold it.
Never, in my 30 years working with Indigenous people, have I heard such sentiments expressed. Whether ‘Wally’ actually existed or not, a careful review of the standards of scholarship evidenced by the article reveals serious flaws. Greer began a historical overview with the premise that ‘bark painting was introduced at Yirrkala by a missionary’ and that ever since, ‘Aboriginal artwork has represented a capitulation of Aboriginal creativity to European notions of what art is.’
There may be some truth in that, but Greer conveniently ignored the centuries-old antecedents of painting in Arnhem Land. There are well-documented bark paintings from the 19th century, with a visual tradition stretching back thousands of years. Posing as an expert on desert art, she further argued it had been similarly compromised. Stating ‘Aboriginal artists painted black over images that were secret to protect them from the stranger’s gaze’, she then extrapolated from this generalisation that black was a sacred colour to Aboriginal people, which it is not. She further conflated its importance with their pride in their black-skinned identity. She referred to the nuanced swirl of mesmeric dots that typify desert art as ‘decorations’ plied upon this sacred colour for monetary gain.
Furthermore, Greer lauded Emily Kngwarreye’s genius, yet characterised her as hopelessly manipulated by dealers who cared not a wit for her welfare. ‘A good Emily,’ she wrote, ‘strikes the viewer like a full-bodied roar from a football crowd after a great goal. It is utterly spontaneous and totally inevitable.’ Greer claimed, however, that these works were sold in ‘swanky shops in swanky streets’ while Emily was ‘dragged around the country … too frail to crouch over the canvases’ as she pushed big brushes loaded with colour ‘obediently back and forth in a ghastly parody of her own style. What began as a song,’ wrote Greer, ‘ended in a scream, but as long as the scream was authentic Emily, who cared?’
This is hyperbolic nonsense. The article’s conclusion exposed Greer’s addiction to provoking debate. It made great copy but it was hardly accurate. ‘Dealers raid the preliterate imagination the way Aborigines themselves gather sugarbag’, she wrote as she built toward her rhetorical climax:
… tearing chunks out of the life cycle and the community, turning the sustenance of future generations into squalor. The frenzied pace of exploitation has outstripped the growth of appreciation. As far as the international art market is concerned, recent Aboriginal art is a con. Which reaction, though it is unfair to the artists, is exactly what whitefellas deserve. Our desperate haste to get the visions out of Aborigine heads and into a saleable form could be compared with the way we rip the guts out of the country to overload the market with cheap iron ore. The emergence of women as a dominant force in Aboriginal art coincides with the collapse of its prestige in a glutted market, not because the work is not of intrinsic value but because intrinsic value has nothing to do with the making and maintaining of markets. The Petyarre–Beamish affair is just one sign that, in common with every other frenzied attempt to cash in double-quick on Australian natural resources, the Aboriginal art boom has bust.
In retrospect it seems to me that Greer, perhaps inadvertently, had grafted the victim role play of 1970s feminist polemic onto the experience of the Aboriginal artist. She suggested Aboriginal culture was being raped for cash. Obviously these wildly inflammatory statements demanded a response from those who had worked tirelessly to build an ethical industry. Consequently, a number of concerned artists, gallery owners, dealers and art coordinators agreed to participate in the ABC documentary film Art from the Heart, written and directed by Jeremy Eccles and Richard Moore. The well-intentioned documentary looked at the way that Aboriginal art had been commercialised since the 1970s, but it was widely criticised when it was eventually screened in May 1999.
Dr Romaine Moreton, a PhD in philosophy, a poet, filmmaker and a Goenpul woman from Minjerribah in Queensland, described it as ‘being somewhat exploitative, which is ironic considering this is the subject of the film’. She noted that the title sequence, depicting a $2 coin at the centre of a dot painting, was matched throughout by the reporter’s insistence that the Indigenous artists should justify their motivation for painting. ‘Is it from the heart or do you paint for money?’ they were repeatedly asked, as though they were children.
The conventions of the sound bite added to the language barrier, Moreton argued, and this placed the artists at a complete disadvantage. Where the documentary really went wrong, however, and upset not just white dealers but many Indigenous artists, was its implication that in painting for money Aboriginal artists were in some way acting amorally. The filmmakers inferred that white
collectors and gallery owners were making fortunes from the art, but made no attempt to substantiate this. The Indigenous artists were even asked to justify how they spent their income from painting.38 There was no doubt that the documentary was intended to make a serious contribution to the debate about the Aboriginal art industry, but it did the opposite. It simply added fuel to the fire.
I did not feel that I could simply stand by and watch the industry publicly sentenced without a fair trial. I had been trying since the late 1980s to create an advocacy body that could unite ethically committed dealers and I decided to give it one more go. Working with Michael Eather of Fireworks Gallery in Brisbane and Steve Culley of Desert Designs, I invited dealers from around Australia to a meeting timed to coincide with the opening of the Emily Kngwarreye retrospective at the Queensland Art Gallery. Doug Hall, the Gallery Director, kindly offered us his boardroom as the venue. On 22 February 1998 a group of 40 dealers, seated around one enormous table, entered into a spirited debate before empowering an elected steering committee to engage in industry-wide consultation; to formulate a draft constitution and a code of ethics; and to present these at a national conference later that year. I was elected the interim chairman of the nascent organisation, and the national spokesperson on behalf of those present. During the hours that followed I offered quotes to a number of journalists who rang, including Susan McCulloch.
I awoke the next morning to The Australian newspaper’s headline, ‘Dealers Opt for Code of Silence’. An editorial the following weekend appeared under the title ‘Code of Silence Poor Response to Art Crisis’.39 It challenged the dealers’ motives, and reported that those present had opted for a ‘code of silence’ in order to ‘stifle those issues that dealers may not wish to see in the public arena’. Although Susan McCulloch heralded the move to bring the ‘individualistic and disparate personalities’ together as ‘brave’, I found her accusation that we were trying to stifle debate terribly disappointing. In what way had we adopted a code of silence? We’d appointed a spokesperson to deal with what we believed were misrepresentations of complex issues. The so-called crisis had been prompted by headlines such as these, and indicated just what we were up against.
The Dealer is the Devil Page 39