Several linguists now claimed that the interpreter used to prepare the published statutory declaration had an inferior grasp of Turkey Tolson’s mother tongue.47 There was, they argued, a strong reason to suspect that the artist had been manipulated by the journalist. Like so many others, I too readily believed that the artist had been manipulated into signing the statutory declaration.
McCulloch strongly refuted this. She had not been present when Turkey signed his declaration but insisted that a protocol adopted by The Australian ensured that statutory delarations were prepared and signed in the presence of an interpreter, a lawyer and two senior elders. In Turkey’s case the interpreter was his son-in-law, and the elders were Johnny Scobie Tjapanangka and Ronnie Tjampitjinpa.
A growing tide of commentators now suggested that every artist whose hand had touched a canvas should be acknowledged in the accompanying documentation. But, in the opinion of a number of academics and curators this sort of acknowledgement was inappropriate. Margo Neale, who was at that time acting as the Indigenous curator of the Queensland Art Gallery, stopped just short of saying that this debate over Aboriginal artistic collaborations was a form of covert racism. ‘There are similar situations in non-Aboriginal art,’ Neale observed,’ but they’re not making the front page of newspapers!’ Brenda Croft, then curator at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, also described the nature of the media debate as ‘sensationalist’ and worried about the effect it was having on the artists and their work.48
Dr Christine Nicholls weighed in with a different point of view.49 In an editorial piece in the Adelaide Advertiser,50 under the title ‘Aboriginal Art Reality Ignored’, she reasoned that the Western art system’s habit of creating ‘art stars’ was putting Aboriginal artists under intolerable pressure. Indigenous methods of artistic production were being fatally undermined by this emphasis on the individual. The traditional principle of ‘complementarity’ dictates that the ‘boss’ or owner of any particular Dreaming comes from the father’s side, while the ‘workers, managers or guardians’ come from the mother’s side. A system of checks, balances and restraints exists between the two as co-owners. The workers (kurtungurlu) are expected to contribute to a painting, should the boss (kirta) need them to.
Strictly speaking, according to Nicholls, Tolson’s female relatives were obliged under Pintupi law to paint his Dreaming if he directed them to (which in this case he hadn’t), and he was reciprocally obliged to recognise them as cocreators. But he may have done this simply by paying them a proportion of the income derived from the sale of the work. She argued:
This duality exists across the board in the Central Desert right up through Arnhem Land. The correct way in which to attribute these paintings should not be questioned in relation to Aboriginal art practice.
An artwork’s authorship belonged entirely to the ‘boss’. It was simply a matter of whether art centres, dealers and galleries should include in the accompanying documentation a reference to the fact that the author had been assisted.
In the Brisbane Courier Mail, on Saturday 24 April, Sue Smith expressed the widely held opinion that the real culprit was the market itself and its ‘commodification’ of art. She questioned whether it was fair, or even appropriate, to pick on Aboriginal artists in particular.
If Jeff Koons faxes directions from New York to a team of workers in Sydney building a giant floral puppy and this artwork is credited to him alone, why is that considered excitingly avant-garde and not a failure of attribution?
She cited Rembrandt and other Old Masters, as well as Hokusai’s woodblock prints, as examples drawn from European and Asian art history.
On the other hand, some would argue that if Woody Allen made a film, it would be considered outrageous if he refused to run a list of credits for all the other artists who helped him create the film. Cinema is accepted as a collaborative art form, without diminishing in any way the status of the ‘auteur’. Painting, in the Western tradition, is not. That’s the way the art market is set up, and consequently that’s the way the ‘value’ of an artwork is decided. The reason this has caused problems with Aboriginal art in particular is that in the 20th century painting became the collective way for Aboriginal people to pass down stories as an alternative or adjunct to ceremonial activity (which had been interrupted if not stopped completely in many places).
There are plenty of contemporary urban Aboriginal artists (like Rea, Tracey Moffatt and Gordon Bennett) who refuse to be categorised as ‘Aboriginal’. In presenting their work outside of an Aboriginal context, they are the vanguard of the new generation of artists of Indigenous descent who, like most contemporary musicians, are accepted as part of the Western global mainstream. But traditional artists are different.
How the market handles assisted Aboriginal artworks is a matter of mechanics. Fifteen years after the Turkey Tolson scandal, as a result of exhaustive industry discussion, the Art Consulting Association of Australia finally did devise a scheme for the classification and attribution of Aboriginal artworks.51
In order to be recognised and credited as a work by an individual artist it must be produced entirely in his/her own hand, or with minor culturally appropriate assistance, under the authority (authorship) of the artist. If the work lacks definitive ‘safe’ provenance but is believed to be in whole or substantial part the work of the artist, it may only be ‘attributed’ to the artist.
Works for which the family completed the majority, if not all, of the decorative infill must be listed as that of the artist ‘with family assistance’.
Those created in a closely related style (such as the paintings by Turkey Tolson’s daughters) must be attributed as being by the ‘family of the artist’. Naturally, as the artist becomes further and further removed from the centre of the activity the value of the artwork progressively decreases.
After all the newspaper coverage, what we are left with is this: It was Turkey Tolson himself who decided to bring this matter to a head. He had never been opposed to seeking assistance from his female relatives, but he drew the line when they painted alone and sold their own paintings as his. No doubt the articles in The Australian stopped the girls in their tracks.
Turkey died two years later, in 2001, leaving a priceless legacy. He had painted since the first days at Papunya and only those works created during a very brief period toward the end of his career, for a tiny number of dealers, were ever called into question. Only these require careful examination and possible reattribution prior to sale.
I want to draw a distinction here. While the content of The Australian’s stories about the Clifford Possum and Turkey Tolson scandals was fair, the way in which The Australian presented the stories traumatised the entire industry and adversely affected its international reputation. Splashed across the front pages, these articles gave rise to the general conviction that all Aboriginal artists are easily manipulated, and therefore need protection. The erroneous assumption that Aboriginal art was in high demand and fetched high prices led some to expect that dealers and galleries should help Aboriginal people overcome the odds stacked against them. Unfortunately it wasn’t that simple. Certain Aboriginal artists did make a great deal of money, but they distributed it widely. When no discernible improvement in their living conditions occurred, the blame was sheeted home to the easiest target. The dealer, who was characterised as uncaring and indifferent to the artists’ plight, was once again, the devil.
Susan McCulloch went on to become The Australian’s national art critic in 2003, and is now a highly respected author and publisher of many books on Aboriginal art. Yet nothing that she wrote during that time, or since, has stopped the production and misattribution of ‘copycat’ paintings by artists feeding the Alice Springs art trade. The practice continues unabated to this day, affecting the standing and legacy of several of our greatest artists. Those collectors who trawl the bottom of the auction market can find plenty of works that were purportedly created by Kathleen Petyarre, Dorothy Napangardi, Clifford P
ossum and hosts of others. To the untrained eye works offered at bargain basement prices appear to be genuine, but sadly, far too often they are not.
TOYOTA DREAMING
The easiest way to shop for works by East Kimberley artists before June 1995 was to stop in Kununurra and visit Waringarri Aboriginal Arts. The more adventurous dealers and art patrons, myself included, travelled on to Turkey Creek and Frog Hollow. This saved the elderly artists the three-hour drive north and allowed us to pay them directly in cash. Maxine Taylor and Terry ‘Serge’ Brooks ran the nearby roadhouse, and the Warmun pensioner unit always buzzed with activity.
Anne and I drove across the Tanami Desert to visit on several occasions, and Queenie McKenzie would always greet us by squeezing us together in her arms, her head barely reaching the height of my chest. Sitting nearby, Rover would chat happily with anyone who squatted down beside him. As the traffic increased so did the artists’ output. Amongst the regular visitors that I met there were the Swiss collector Arnaud Serval, whose mother, Patricia Feste, owned Gallery Woo Mang in Paris, Peter Harrison and Neil McLeod. Jack Britten could be found at Frog Hollow, and here Melbourne gallery owner Vivien Anderson was able to work closely with him and commission a major body of extremely fine works.
After Warmun Traditional Artists was established, Anne and I visited the artists at the old post office just over the river, and camped each night southeast of the community on Mabel Downs. We’d spend days with artists and their kids at Fish Hole and other prominent picnic spots.
On one of these adventures during 1996 I’d spoken with the council about bringing the master printmaker Theo Tremblay to the community. We arrived the following year with sheets of acetate, rolls of linoleum, and bags of plaster.
Lithographic stones, Theo’s favourite medium, were too heavy to cart over thousands of kilometres or freight up on the plane. He’d decided to experiment by asking the artists to carve into blocks of cast plaster. Our days with all of the artists and their children were some of the happiest of my life. Everyone enjoyed the atmosphere, including Maxine and Serge. I recall the affection they shared with the artists and the way in which they cared for them above and beyond the range of their ‘official’ duties.
Maxine and Serge were replaced when the Warmun art centre was officially incorporated. Deciding not to broaden the number of artists they looked after had been their political undoing. Devoted to the old masters they had nurtured, they couldn’t afford to take on a host of lesser talents. The council decided to fund a new ‘art coordinator’ who wasn’t hamstrung by the realities of ‘dealing’ to earn an income. Sadly, within six months of their departure, the health of several older artists deteriorated significantly. Queenie McKenzie went back to buying food from the local takeaway and died within the year. Henry Wambiny followed.
Though the art centre management was more accountable, those artists who were still able often journeyed to Wyndham to visit Maxine and Serge, and a small number continued to produce a significant body of works for them. The Wandjina painter Lily Karadada, from Kalumburu, also visited them regularly.
Serge also made regular trips to collect paintings from Jack Britten who steadfastly refused to paint for the Warmun art centre after they left. Apart from a few months just prior to his death, Jack created works exclusively for Maxine and Serge at his home in Frog Hollow on his traditional lands. Jack was by this stage in his late 70s and had certainly not mellowed. To this day when I cast my mind back, I still see him sitting, stern and solitary, under his favourite old boab tree.
The most emblematic images in Jack Britten’s vast repertoire are those depicting the dark clusters of Purnululu (the Bungle Bungles): dome-shaped mountains layered with glistening white trails of dots, imitating the layers of the pre-Devonian reef from which they were formed. Oddities in his composition and stylistic manner could be found throughout his artistic output, from the daring execution of his early works to the open, sparer images of his final days. His lifelong obsession with subtle variations of mood and composition mirrored his sombre outlook on a life lived during turbulent times.
Despite her tiny frame, Queenie McKenzie was an exceptional woman who achieved international renown. In 2009 Jennifer Joi Field published a touching and beautifully illustrated biographical book, Written in the Land, that was full of Queenie’s personal stories about the history of her people. It was launched by the Federal Labor Minister Jenny Macklin at the National Museum of Australia. Later, Queenie’s devoted admirer Marie Bashir, Governor of New South Wales, opened a retrospective exhibition at Coo-ee Gallery. It included many of her most important paintings. The majority had originally been purchased through Coo-ee and my Lawson~Menzies auctions.
Governor of New South Wales Marie Bashir AC CVO opening Queenie McKenzie’s retrospective exhibition, Written in the Land, at Coo-ee Gallery, Bondi, 2009.
Throughout the mature phase of her career, Queenie painted for Waringarri Arts and Warmun Traditional Artists, along with anyone else who commissioned her while visiting the pensioner unit. The one person who visited her most often, and collected the most works from her, was Neil McLeod, for whom she produced many major paintings.
During the last two years of her life, Queenie was the only woman considered an equal by the old men. Her best period as an artist was in the mid 1990s, while she was still strong and took great pride in grinding and mixing her ochres to form a range of colours including pinks and greens. As the sight from her tiny eyes began to fail, her paintings became less controlled. She was always a physically driven painter and in her last years the white ochre rubbed against her forearms, sometimes messing the image before it dried. Nevertheless, even at this stage in her career, she produced wonderful works.
Coo-ee was the last gallery to give Queenie a solo show during her lifetime. After the opening we took her up to the Blue Mountains to a party at Mount Tomah with some of Sydney’s best known artists: Gary Shead, Jenny Kee, Greg Weight and Peter Kingston. She was treated with much reverence by everyone. She was a true Queen: kind, humble and strong, without even the slightest trace of affectation. Even at her age she was quick to clamber through a barb-wire fence to take up her throne on a grassy knoll where she sat, with sunglasses on, taking in the dramatic 270-degree view of the Grose Valley. Greg Weight is now recognised as ‘the artists’ photographer’ par excellence. Stalking around the knoll just beyond her eyeline, he captured a set of intimate photographs that have since become the definitive images of the artist.
On the way back to Sydney we stopped at the Three Sisters at Katoomba and Queenie was impressed.
‘I can paint that story,’ she insisted.
Anne and my dear friend Jenny Kee, the infamous fashionista, told her that when some desert women had visited on a prior occasion, ‘they told us there are really seven sisters …?’
Queenie looked again, and said, ‘No, three sisters all right, three sisters and four kid [sic].’ After returning to the Kimberley, she painted the Three Sisters for me, flanked by four little hills in the distance. It still holds pride of place on our living room wall.
Queenie’s best known theme was the massacre at Mistake Creek, when seven Gija people were slaughtered in reprisal for killing a cow. Three years after her death, the National Museum of Australia purchased a particularly fine example from a Lawson~Menzies auction. The acquisition came shortly after Sir William Deane, then Governor General and former Chief Justice of Australia, had travelled to the site of the massacre and offered a public apology to the Aboriginal people for the incident, and others like it. This visit reignited Australia’s ‘history wars’ debate. Even the Prime Minister, John Howard, became involved. Howard publicly supported the revisionist historian Keith Windschuttle and his book, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, in which he claimed that the massacre was ‘an internal feud between Aboriginal station-hands’ over a woman. Following press coverage, it was announced that Queenie’s painting would be stored indefinitely in the basement in Canberra
, rather than put on display as originally planned.
One of my favourite characters from the pensioner unit at Warmun was Hector Jandanay. Visualising him laughing about ‘those mad bastards in Canberra’ still brings a ready smile to my face. Tall, rather fey, often bemused, Hector could be extremely funny, despite the pains of aging, and the many tragic events that marred his early childhood. He began painting in Kununurra in the late 1980s, and continued a decade later after the Warmun arts centre began operating at Turkey Creek. An inspiration and a delight to anyone who spent time listening to his irreverent, often bawdy, anecdotes, and creation stories, he worked away at his canvases, building the surface slowly and carefully by applying soft earth colours, pinks, greens, greys, and later introducing warm browns, reds and black.
Portrait of Queenie Mckenzie taken by Greg Weight at Mount Tomah, above the Grose Valley, New South Wales.
Queenie Nakarra McKenzie, Three Sisters – Blue Mountains. Natural earth pigment on canvas, 121 x 91 cm.
Hector gained renown for quirky figurative depictions, and landscapes with a distinct and original lateral perspective. He treated the surface of his work as if it were sacred. Watching him use a stone to rub, sand and smooth the thin washes of softly coloured earth pigment made you feel the painting was the country itself. Like the other old men who had been his contemporaries, he believed that ‘you can feel that paint, you can feel that country’.52 His commitment to maintaining his spiritual obligations is most evident in his magical Gurrir Gurrir paintings, such as those created for the ceremony that took place at Warmun in 1994.53 In these stark works on board, his depiction of ancestral owl spirits invites comparison with early Christian icons.
The Dealer is the Devil Page 41