On the spot, on that day back in 1985, I bought my first painting by Clifford Possum. I was dazzled by the colourful iconographic images and decorative dots of the desert – they were so completely different to the figurative imagery and clan designs of Arnhem Land and the Tiwi Islands, with which I had fallen in love five years earlier. This purchase was to make me hungry for the new and different, and it later allowed me to venture further into the brilliant colour and haptic freedom of Warlpiri and Kukatja paintings.
Coo-ee Gallery brochure with Clifford Possum, Joe Croft and Burnum Burnum, 1985.
During the 1990s, Clifford regularly travelled with an entourage which included his two daughters Gabriella and Michelle, his sons-in-law, and Joy Aitken. Many times the two daughters came into the shop without their father, and stayed with various Sydney friends such as the academic Dr Vivien Johnson. When I first met Gabriella she was in her early 20s, very beautiful, and quite shy around men, yet she had taken up the life of an artist with some success. Like her father, she valued her independence. Coo-ee included her work in group exhibitions from 1991, and did a father-and-daughter show with Gabriella and Clifford in 1993.
Gabriella was one of a number of women who began painting in Alice Springs during the 1980s. It was still rare for women in remote communities to paint alone, with the notable exception of Utopia where women’s painting emerged after the mid 1980s. Even in Balgo Hills, where women were credited as artists (not just assistants), more often than not their works were completed in collaboration with their husbands. Up until 1995, it was difficult to be sure who had painted what.6 By the early 2000s, however, the tables had turned. Many of the powerful old male painters were dead, and for the next ten years a number of the most important Aboriginal artists were to be women.
This transformation had been initiated at a sacred women’s site nestled at the foot of Haasts Bluff, called Kungka Kutjarra, literally meaning ‘two women’. Imposing and mesmerising from a distance, Haasts Bluff looms over the surrounding countryside, with its almost perpendicular face subtly changing colour throughout the day. Known as Ikuntji, it has been home to the Pintupi, Western Arrernte and Pitjantjatjara people since the coming of white men and the establishment of a Lutheran mission in 1946. It has inspired many explorers and artists over the decades, including Albert Namatjira. Yet I must have driven past it 100 times before I learned of its important role in initiating women’s painting.
It was here in 1994 that a number of senior women from Kintore were joined by local female custodians who had already become painters under the supervision of Marina Strocchi, the coordinator of the Ikuntji Women’s Centre. Away from the sight of their men, women from as far afield as Kintore who had previously resisted painting on their own camped together for several days, dancing and singing. They also collaborated for the first time on several immense and exuberant canvasses. Strocchi and her partner, Wayne Eager (who worked at Papunya), had both been members of Roar Studios in Melbourne. Like the CoBrA Group in Europe, with which they had empathetic ties, they eschewed hard-edge abstraction and shared an affinity for painterly looseness and freedom of expression. This may in part account for the confident spontaneity demonstrated by women who participated in the workshop.7 They emerged with a style that contrasted sharply with the conspicuous deliberation of the men’s approach. By the time another camp had taken place during the following year, several women, including Naata Nungurrayi, Ningura Napurrula, Makinti Napanangka, Walangkura Napanangka and Inyuwa Nampitjinpa, were creating ‘some of the most radiant and richly textured surfaces in the history of the painting company, [Papunya Tula] and helping to revitalise painting in the community after the deaths of many of the older group of painting men’.8
New life now flushed through the flaccid art market that was still in recovery from the early 1990s recession. The excitement generated by the work was amplified by the advanced age of many of the most talented of the female painters. Their careers were often brief, yet their ancient stories and beliefs, which had previously been dismissed as less important than those of their menfolk, resulted in extraordinarily vivid work.
Each of the Kintore women rapidly developed a signature style. Naata’s preference for pale creamy ochres imparted softness to her paintings. She learned to apply paint thickly, as though moulding the textured surface. Ningura’s were characterised by strong linear designs, slowly built up through intricate yet boldly defined patterning on a background of dense, monochrome infill. Walangkura’s favourite colour, a deep sandy orange, accentuated her use of sombre blacks, reds, dusky greens and yellows. Masses of small markings and motifs covered large areas of her canvases.
One woman who played a vital role in the emergence of contemporary women’s painting amongst the Pintupi was Inyuwa Nampitjinpa. She painted for just five years before her death in 1999. The gentle, unassuming matriarch of a large extended family, she was a ceremonial and community leader in Kintore. Her daughter Walangkura and adopted daughter, Pirrmangka Napanangka, developed their own artistic careers under her guidance. Though Inyuwa’s output was small, her works are deservedly very highly prized. At the time of her death her first solo show was on the walls of the Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in Melbourne.
Of all the Papunya female artists Naata and Walangkura have proven, over time, to be the most versatile. Until recently, both were able to paint in a number of quite different yet consistent styles and loved to experiment with colour. Surprisingly, however, their most successful works at auction were created in relatively conventional ochre tones. Naata’s imagery varies from strikingly bold compositions created with gestural verve to tight grids with contrasting infilled dotting. Most recognisable are her paintings in which scallop-shaped women’s sites sweep in from the borders. Also distinctive are works consisting of an irregular grid within which subtle tonal differences create a sense of harmony. Walangkura’s paintings have a gestural quality, though they are still tightly packed with geometric line work representing sandhills. In a sense this provides a strong visual and contextual link to the men’s striped style, as exemplified by the works of George Tjungurrayi, Turkey Tolson and Willy Tjungurrayi. Her paintings are rich in colour, rhythm and unimpeded movement; they show sandhills, rockholes, journeys and gatherings of ancestral women, in subtle shifts of light.
Until her death in early 2011, Makinti Napanangka was the heart of Papunya Tula. She was a tiny wisp of a woman whose work invariably generated a sense of celebration with its bright palette, impasto surfaces and loosely worked geometric compositions. Her gestural style and bold line work evoked women’s bodies illuminated by firelight, and hinted at the rhythm and movements of ceremonial songs and dances as well as the desert landscape. Makinti painted the hair string traditionally spun and worn by women for ‘love magic’ in order to promote sexual allure.
She piled on paint in long, loose, linear ribbons of yellows, oranges and pinks. After solo exhibitions with Utopia Art Sydney in 2000 and 2001, and at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in the following year, she was listed in Australian Art Collector Magazine’s ‘Australia’s 50 Most Collectable Artists’ for four years in a row.
Walangkura Napanangka at work.
In the public imagination, the Papunya Tula story is enshrined as the most seductive creation myth in all of Aboriginal art: a myth so powerful that its major artists are considered heroes of the entire movement. The historical importance and market value of seminal works by its founders underpin the reputation and standing of all Indigenous art throughout Australia. Since the advent of the secondary market, the work of Papunya Tula’s leading artists has eclipsed all others in the Aboriginal art catalogues of every major Australian auction house. Yet it is the paintings created between 1971 and 1973 that dominate the auction results for all but a tiny number of the fathers of the Papunya movement. The importance of the Papunya story may be beyond question but, for me personally, the muted tone-on-tone colouration of the contemporary works emanating from Papunya Tula seems almost formulai
c beside those created by the same artists for independent dealers, and the textured, multilayered and brilliantly coloured paintings created by dozens of other clans and communities.
During the Olympic Games, attendances at the landmark Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales were poor. The general public largely ignored it. Although the stunning 320-page catalogue with its authoritative essays is mandatory reading for any serious collector, the company was still operating from a tiny outlet in Alice Springs at the time. Both Papunya Tula and its artists seemed to lack direction, and the works had lost their former sense of excitement. Life in Papunya, Kintore and Kiwirrkurra was not improving, nor were the artists benefiting from art production in any meaningful way. Many of the founding artists and their immediate families suffered renal failure, which is endemic in most desert Aboriginal communities, and they were forced to spend several days each week on dialysis in Alice Springs.
In spite of the millions of dollars generated by Aboriginal art there seemed to be no political will to address this severe health issue within the afflicted desert communities. The most exciting initiative came from an informal alliance of local Labor Party politicians, Aboriginal community representatives, art collectors and dealers. They organised an auction at Sotheby’s to launch what became known as the Western Desert Dialysis Appeal.
Papunya Tula’s move into a luxuriously large and more conspicuous gallery in the centre of Todd Mall repositioned its major artists at the epicentre of collectability. It coincided with the publication of the Bardon brothers’ monumental tome, Papunya: A Place Made After the Story, in 2004.
Following his initial period at Papunya, Geoffrey Bardon had been profoundly affected by deep sleep therapy which he received at Chelmsford Hospital. Confined to his home in Taree, New South Wales, he spent the rest of his life compiling material on the Papunya artists and their paintings. He kept abreast of developments in the Aboriginal art world by following articles in newspapers and magazines, as well as calling friends and acquaintances at odd, and often inconvenient, times for maddeningly nomadic conversations.
Naata Nungurayi painting in Alice Springs, 2004.
He encouraged my efforts as President of the Australian Indigenous Art Trade Association. We shared several long and discursive discussions, which I was naturally reluctant to cut short. Between general reflections on the state of the industry, Geoff would talk about his book and his difficulties in editing the voluminous material. It was sad he never lived to see its publication. His life’s work remains the most thorough documentation of the early days of the movement, and provides images and schematic drawings of a large number of the most important early artworks.9 Geoffrey Bardon died in May 2003, a year before the book was finally published, and just as art sales were about to boom around the world.
By 2004, Papunya Tula was the biggest Aboriginal art centre in Australia. The secondary market was expanding rapidly, and all the auction houses were fighting for the Papunya ‘product’. It represented 30 years of documented art production and a genesis story that had become a central Australian myth. There were 120 individual artists on its books. Business was very, very good. Even so, as many as 30 men and women, including a number of its 49 shareholders, were dividing their loyalties by also painting for prominent independent dealers in Alice Springs. Key female painters such as Naata, Ningura, Walangkura and Makinti were among them.
Ningura was catapulted into the public eye by her selection to complete the large ceiling panels for the Musée du quai Branly in Paris in 2004. Consequently she visited Alice Springs more often, where she could more easily meet demand. While Papunya Tula continued to show her work through the Gabrielle Pizzi and William Mora galleries in Melbourne, and Utopia Art in Sydney, Ningura took advantage of her renown to paint for independent dealers such as Mike Mitchell, Robyn Moloney, Chris Simon, Tony Mason and Steve Ariston, all of whom sold her paintings to Australian and international galleries. In typical unassuming fashion, she declined the invitation to attend the opening in Paris, declaring, ‘It’s too far away, and I have grandchildren to look after.’10
Naata and her relatives (brother George Tjungurrayi, sister Nancy Nungurrayi and son, Kenny Williams Tjampitjinpa) all painted for Chris Simon of Yanda Art in Alice Springs. Should anyone doubt that Naata was remunerated and cared for in an exemplary fashion, they need only look to the quality of her output.
The demand for paintings by these artists between 2000 and 2007 resulted in a sellers’ market. Walangkura Napanangka, a formidable artist capable of creating masterpieces on canvases up to 3 x 2 metres in size, spread her patronage widely outside of Papunya Tula. Her works, and those of the others, varied depending on the conditions under which they painted: the quality of the materials they were given, for whom they worked, and how they were treated.
Collectors who support art centres exclusively often say that artists produce works of a higher standard when they work with them. I have no hesitation in saying that great works are painted in both camps. The market, deeply sensitised to issues surrounding provenance, may not value those produced outside the ‘system’ as highly – but that is beside the point.
By 2008, the market had become deeply polarised. No painting created for an independent dealer, regardless of quality, would be considered acceptable by the Museum and Art Gallery of Northern Territory as a finalist for the country’s most prestigious Indigenous art prize. That year the gallery held the Silver Jubilee National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award. It was won by Makinti Napanangka with a small untitled work which had been submitted by Papunya Tula. While her winning entry was not one of her finest and was hardly a clear winner, those present overwhelmingly endorsed the award, acknowledging the quality of her works over a sustained period. The win was a clear demonstration of the judges’ prejudice in favour of art centre–provenanced works, at a time when the public debate over independent dealers had reached fever pitch. Makinti’s posthumous Order of Australia medal in 2011 was a far less politicised recognition of her service to the arts.
To combat the competition, Papunya Tula had by this time decided to break with its original resolve and open its own painting facility (a shed) in town and a painting studio at Kintore was opened in March 2007. It was another great success. The Kintore swimming pool opened in February 2008 using funds generated by the Charlie Perkins Children’s Trust at a fundraising auction, The Pool Party, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in November 2005.
As these accomplishments rolled out, powerful people, galleries and auction houses which were bent on controlling the provenance (and thus the worth) of Aboriginal art drew a line in the desert sand. They rigorously rejected works produced for dealers outside of Papunya Tula, regardless of quality, and refused to deal with those who stocked them.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
I had a fortunate upbringing. Our family home was built on the top of the biggest sand dune between Bondi and Rose Bay, at the highest point overlooking Sydney Harbour. It was always full of people, delicious food and laughter. In the years since my father had emigrated from England, he had built a chain of very successful salons. My mother was an actress, always rehearsing for one play or another. The house had an imposing vestibule, a huge cedar staircase, and a stone fireplace in the room overlooking the harbour and our carefully tended garden. My parents loved to entertain, and the weeks were punctuated with lively dinner parties attended by their wide circle of creative friends, many of whom were successful artists.
The dining room was connected to the lounge room by French doors, through which their guests ambled to smoke and tipple and gossip after a meal. It was lushly appointed with velvet drapes and flocked wallpaper, but my brother and I spent most of our time in the rumpus room upstairs, or under the canopy of the Moreton Bay fig in the garden, both of which had 180-degree views of the harbour. We weren’t allowed to join the adults until the wonderful day, just after my bar mitzvah; then it was agreed th
at I had reached an age when I was capable of following and contributing to the conversations and arguments about art, the plays everyone was seeing and high society scandal. We also had one of the first swimming pools in the eastern suburbs, and I vividly remember the evening before the workmen were due to begin excavating the site. A group of about 50 of my parents’ friends suddenly arrived after dinner, dressed as Snow White’s dwarves, wearing hoods and carrying lanterns and mattocks. They formed a procession through the rockery to the part of the lawn where the first sod was to be broken. They even carried a parchment inscribed with a sonnet celebrating the fun to come. Any excuse for a party! The swimming pool was a great success, and attracted all the kids in the neighbourhood.
When I think back on it, it was something of a golden era. Australia was a great place to grow up in the 1950s if your parents were doing well, as mine fortunately were. My father had been born in the East End of London during the Depression and the family lived through World War II largely sustained by a huge sack of split peas my grandmother had squirrelled away. Dad was a fireman during the bleakest days of the London Blitz. As soon as the war was over, he got out of England, and he completely embraced Australia and Sydney. My parents weren’t rich, but they weren’t interested in saving money; after the deprivations of the war years in London, they loved living the high life.
While I grew up going to the theatre and exhibitions, and listening to people discuss books, paintings and plays, I had no formal training in the arts before I went into business. My interest in Aboriginal art grew over time, and developed through my friendships with the artists I met as I travelled across the country. It was forged around campfires and over dinner tables, on long drives between townships and at exhibition after-parties. It was not until I began selling paintings for more than $10,000 each at the beginning of the 1990s that I came to understand the dynamics of the art market and the mindset of serious collectors. I learned the art market is one of the least regulated and least transparent commercial activities in the world. It’s basically trade gussied up as cultural exchange, in which success relies on a cunning mix of showmanship and snobbery. Some of the most successful art dealers in the world are the dilettante partners of wealthy people. Others rely on charm and contacts to access the capital necessary to create a successful brand. Many dealers manage to parlay early success built on luck into real prestige and influence. The Australian art world is no different, and no less byzantine. Those who work hand in hand with the top auction houses seek to distinguish their activities from those of lesser mortals. Once their brand is considered ‘elite’, they do not have to justify the prices they place on artworks. It is understood that value is a result of quality, brand power and strategic alliance. At this level the terms ‘dealer’ and ‘trade’ are frowned upon, and to be avoided at all costs. The owners of fine art galleries prefer to be thought of as ‘gallerists’, seeking to elevate themselves above the hoi polloi – the ‘dealers’ who are no better than second-hand car salesmen.
The Dealer is the Devil Page 45