The Dealer is the Devil

by Adrian Newstead

  Tommy Watson, painting at Agathon Gallery in 2005, in front of his incandescent painting Pangkalangu.

  Prior to Maralinga, Watson had been a Pitjantjatjara nomad roving from waterhole to waterhole in the Gibson Desert. A severe drought in the 1950s saw his clan move with others to government settlements, where many became disoriented and died. By the 1980s he had settled in Yuendumu, where he’d become a renowned stockman. Men like Watson who had journeyed from the Stone Age to the 20th century in a decade are often portrayed as child-like – gullible enough to be tricked by white people. Yet by the time he became an artist, Tommy had cleverly negotiated the dysfunctional territory between two cultures for more than 30 years, despite speaking little if any English. When I first met him in 2005, I found him to be an imposing and powerful figure who was fiercely independent and knew exactly what he wanted from painting and what he wanted to say.

  When Watson’s paintings initially came to the attention of collectors, they stood in dramatic contrast to the café latte tones adopted by the painters of Papunya Tula. And almost from the moment he painted his first work for Irrunytju Arts, the art centre in Wingellina in 2001 he became a star. His debut at the 2002 Desert Mob show in Alice Springs was followed by a series of group exhibitions organised by the cash-strapped art centre. A fundraising auction to facilitate the employment of a coordinator was organised by a committee of dealers and collectors. The appearance of one of his paintings, Kukutjara (2003), on the cover of the Cromwell’s auction catalogue sent shockwaves through the industry. After the painting sold for $36,300,13 an unheard of price for an artist’s first sale at auction, news spread instantly on the bush telegraph. Demand for his paintings outstripped supply, despite a sharp spike in his prices. Other artists from the same auction became the new stars of the millennium.14

  A short time after, Tommy Watson turned up in Alice Springs with a swag of canvases and a gaggle of family members. He showed the paintings to Nathan and Peter King at Red Sand Gallery, and offered to paint more over the next few months. Watson was not yet well known outside the city-based galleries that occasionally exhibited his relatively rare works. Red Sand was a small Alice Springs gallery that catered almost exclusively to high-end international tourists, and dealt mostly with artists from the Utopia region. A deal was struck which initially satisfied both parties. Tommy received around $65,000 in cash and kind, in return for 42 paintings of various sizes and quality. The individual value of these works may not have been easy for Red Sand to determine at the time. The Kings appeared to be aware of only one previous sale, at Cromwell’s charity auction. They were then persuaded by an expert for Shapiro auction house,15 who knew Watson’s stock was on the rise, to put one of the recently completed paintings up for sale at its next auction, with a presale estimate of $15,000–$18,000. After the painting sold for $36,000 the Kings were left in no doubt whatsoever that the paintings were worth many times more than they had paid for them.

  At this point I arrived on the scene, literally rolling up at the gallery one day during a trip to the Red Centre. I was stunned to see the cache of paintings by one of the art world’s rapidly rising stars. Watson was supposedly painting exclusively for Irrunytju Arts. I immediately recognised the potential difficulties of the situation. As they had already purchased the works, I advised the Kings to offer Watson a bonus payment scheme, which would compensate him more equitably for paintings on which they made a premium. If he intended to stay in Alice Springs to paint, I argued, he should be discouraged from selling to anyone and everyone. They paid a further $11,000 but events moved too fast for them.

  My father always told me I should never sue anyone. Just prior to World War II, when he was already an internationally successful ladies’ hairdresser in London and a former Permanent Wave Champion of the World, he sued The Evening Standard for a story that claimed that one Harold Newstead of Camberwell had been convicted of bigamy and sent to jail. It proved to be a case of mistaken identity – another Harold Newstead of Camberwell. This landmark case is still taught in law schools throughout the English-speaking world. It is covered in the anecdotal tome on litigation, Hatred, Ridicule or Contempt: A Book of Libel Cases. The proceedings were enlivened by a parade of beautifully coiffed women who vouched for my father’s tonsorial talent and testified that they had failed to attend their hair appointments because they believed that he was in jail. In the end, although he won, he was awarded a farthing, and years later when I was a young man starting out in business he warned me that the only people who ever profit from litigation are the lawyers. I had good cause to pass on this wisdom to Nathan and Peter King, owners of Red Sand Gallery in Alice Springs in 2005.

  Just a few days prior to my visit a story by Jeremy Eccles had appeared in the influential industry journal the Art Market Report.16 It referred to the Kings as ‘carpetbaggers’ because they had been buying works directly from Tommy Watson. As Alison Harper, the magazine’s fiercely intelligent and impassioned editor pointed out in her introduction to Eccles’ piece, the term ‘carpetbagger’ originated in the United States after the Civil War. It has evolved since that time to imply that the people so labelled are ‘here today, and gone tomorrow’, and therefore unaccountable for their actions. In elite art circles the term is used as an execrable epithet. No reputable dealer operating from a fixed main street location could stand for this slander.

  In his article, Eccles posited that in Alice Springs, however, the expression was not so tainted. The Aboriginal art industry, he observed, ‘is constantly undermined at home by distrust and disparagement between its [mainly white] factors and facilitators’. He went on to comment that ‘carpetbagger’ is a favourite term of insult that particularly plays up the gulf between the art-trained gallerist and the rough bushy, who may actually have spent more time among Aboriginal people.

  All fair comment, but then Eccles, whose journalistic style often borders on the tongue-in-cheek, made the fatal mistake of getting carried away, and in doing so stepped on very sensitive toes indeed. In the same article he went on to write:

  So, Nathan King of the Red Sand Gallery is a carpetbagger in most urban eyes. He’s identified a star artist, ‘stolen’ him from his community, got him churning out probably inferior paintings – rushed, lacking spiritual intensity – in a bleak back room in Alice, and will have underpaid him by the ‘principled’ standards of established capital city galleries.17

  The Kings were so outraged they didn’t listen to my advice and proceded to sue both Harper and Eccles for libel. As chance would have it, I was contacted to value the paintings at the heart of matter, and subsequently spent an entire day as an expert witness, explaining the complexity of the Aboriginal art market to the Supreme Court in Darwin. Tommy Watson had inadvertently become the key protagonist in a dispute that was already polarising opinion and splitting desert communities. It was suggested that it even threatened the very existence of the art centre model.18 By 2006, the Western Desert Art Mob advocacy body and Papunya Tula had all but declared war against independent dealers and their affiliated galleries. It culminated the following year, with a reckless article by Nicholas Rothwell that portayed independent dealers as exploiters of defenceless Aboriginal painters. Rothwell’s opinion soon softened, but by then a Senate inquiry had reshaped the landscape.19 The following years saw independently sourced artworks shut out of the collectables market, and their provenance rejected.

  Meanwhile, back in the Wingellina community, the pot was on the boil. The Irrunytju art centre had originated as a rather humble place for the local women to congregate. In 2001 they had raised the money to get it started by assiduously selling second-hand clothes around the region. Their first exhibition with Brigitte Braun in Perth was well received and word spread quickly across to the east coast. Soon Vivien Anderson Gallery in Melbourne and Gabriella Roy in Sydney were also exhibiting the Irrunytju women’s paintings. Several of the old men then requested their own area to paint on the verandah, and it was granted. The women’
s goal was to make the art centre an incorporated entity, so that the proceeds of all exhibition sales would not be siphoned off into community projects such as grading the football oval for the season. By the time Mary Knights became the art coordintor in 2003, the centre was desperately short of money, and she had to work fast to secure her own wage as well as generate funds for the centre itself. By nurturing a network of affiliated galleries, she had organised the charity auction that the artists whole heartledly supported. They had committed 100% of all the proceeds to create a trust fund to run Irrunytju Arts.

  Mary Knights may well have known that Tommy had gone off to Alice Springs to sell paintings, but it wasn’t until March 2005 that she learned that he had sold a body of more than 40 works there. In April, Terry Ingram wrote about the growing storm in his ‘Saleroom’ column in the Australian Financial Review.20 Tommy’s Red Sand paintings were beginning to appear at auction and in advertisements in the national arts press.

  Indignantly, Knights fired off a letter to Shapiro Auctioneers, and copied it to art coordinators, curators at the major state galleries, and advocacy bodies. The ensuing fracas highlighted the impasse over provenance between the different camps within the Aboriginal arts industry. Those artists who remained at Irrunytju working with Knights felt Tommy had deserted them. Nevertheless, the senior artists continued to produce paintings for their scheduled exhibitions around the nation.

  Unfortunately for Mary Knights, all her hard work for the Irrunytju community was undone when an unstable youth, returning home from a stint in jail, took an axe to her house. Without a local police force to deal with him, the community went into lockdown and although the local people managed to get her out of the house safely, a traumatised Knights was advised to get out of town, which she duly did, never to return.

  A wild card now entered the fray in the person of John Ioannou, a former tribal art dealer. Good-looking, suave and erudite, with expensive tastes in cars, clothes and antiquarian objects, Ioannou was more than just a passionate collector. After a peripatetic youth spent in Australia and Greece, and a stint as a musician and songwriter, he’d become a very successful tribal art dealer during the 1990s and the owner of a rare collection of exquisite Oceanic shields.21 He was not interested in running a community service for Aboriginal people. He had much grander designs.

  Ioannou met Tommy Watson at a funeral in Alice Springs in 2005. He was planning to open a gallery in Sydney and had already struck a deal with the council and artists in Peppimenarti. Now he offered Watson 50% of the income from sales through his gallery.22 With Tommy’s help he began to learn, and in time master, the notoriously difficult Pitjantjatjara language. I have rarely met an art coordinator who has achieved such a feat.

  For his part, Watson told Ioannou that he wanted to live on an outstation and travel regularly in good vehicles, just as Jimmy Pike and many other important men had done 20 years earlier, with the help of a ‘boss’ who looked after his business with the outside world. The deal was struck.

  The Kings’ libel case against the Art Market Report and Eccles came before Justice Brian Martin in the Darwin Supreme Court in July 2007. Ioannou, simultaneously acting on Watson’s behalf, sought a charge of unconscionable conduct under the Commonwealth Trade Practices Act, claiming that Tommy had been remunerated unfairly. Judge Martin ruled, however, that there had been a failure of contract, not underpayment. As a result, it was agreed that Tommy Watson should receive a payout that was equivalent to 50% of the value of those paintings that remained in the Red Sand stock room. Of course, Ioannou picked the five most highly prized paintings. Of the $530,000 valuation, Tommy received paintings conservatively valued by me at $265,000. Ioannou announced to the press:

  This is a very important victory for our Indigenous artists. This fairness issue has been festering for many years in commercial art practice and I applaud Tommy for standing up for his rights. I am honoured to have been able to support him. Tommy has authorised me to say that he is very happy with the out of court settlement.23

  In regard to the libel case brought by Peter and Nathan King against the Art Market Report, Justice Martin ordered mediation between the parties, and an undisclosed settlement was reached out of court in their favour.

  Having opened expensive venues in Sydney and Melbourne, Ioannou could not afford to be white-anted in the field by uncooperative art coordinators. He wanted to act as a private business adviser to the Irrunytju art centre, and got the Wingellina Town Council to appoint him. This gave him the power to employ a new male art coordinator. He also formed alliances with some of the most senior men, thereby changing the art centre’s focus from a women’s meeting place to a workshop supplying Agathon Galleries with its finest work. Knights’ carefully constructed alliance of professional galleries24 that had represented Irrunytju artists was in ruins. Ioannou’s thwarted competitors, all female gallery owners, were ‘spitting chips’.

  Machinations like these had characterised Ioannou’s style since he had first appeared on the art scene, and led many to portray him as the ‘Mr Big of Aboriginal art’.25 He had spent time on remand over a domestic dispute, which didn’t help his reputation as a bully, even though his wife testified in court that he had never physically harmed her during their 12-year marriage. (After an appeal to the Supreme Court the charges against him were dismissed.)

  In 2007, Ioannou, now a fluent Pitjantjatjara speaker, agreed to be initiated. Watson and the other jilpis (old men) who supported him had introduced him to important artists in Blackstone, Warakurna, Tjukurla and other communities further afield. He had never intended to confine his activities to just one artist or community, and wanted to work with the best male painters, wherever they lived. He upgraded the art centre at Irrunytju by adding a painting room, air conditioners, heaters and blankets. He provided cooked food for the artists three times a day. Accomplished artists who were visiting relatives in Wingellina could paint in comfort and prepare a body of works for solo exhibitions at his own galleries that were heavily promoted through art magazines. Though he was most interested in the men, many highly talented women continued to paint for him. Those who painted for Ioannou eventually included most of the emerging stars of the Western Desert, as well as the 2007 Telstra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award’s People’s Choice winner, Helen McCarthy.26 Paintings by several of these artists were accepted as finalists in the 2008 Telstra Art Award at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. This led the art coordinators belonging to the Western Desert Art Mob advocacy group to offer the museum an ultimatum: they would shun the awards, unless all works painted for Ioannou were withdrawn. Controversially, the museum refused to play ball, and the boycott went ahead.

  Tommy Watson’s career continued to soar. One of his earlier paintings, Wipu Rockhole, which he created at the original Irrunytju art centre, was used to form a ceiling mural of baked enamel on stainless steel for the Musée du quai Branly in Paris in 2006. Seen from the Rue de l’Université, it presents a radical transposition in medium, a traditional painting embedded in the architecture. The following year, John Ioannou submitted a major work, Waltitjatta (2006), to Lawson~Menzies’ Sydney auction. It was held by Tommy Watson’s trust fund, set up as part of Ioannou’s agreement with the artist. In the sale catalogue I estimated its value at $80,000–100,000, but following intense buyer interest the painting sold for a staggering $240,000. This set a record price at auction for the work of any living Aboriginal artist. Watson pocketed the tidy sum of $190,000 for a single work of art, surely the highest pay packet ever received by any Aboriginal person in Australia’s history.

  Tommy Watson, Waltitjatta, 2006. Synthetic polymer paint on linen, 204 x 251 cm. Held in the artist’s trust, this work set Tommy Watson’s record of $240,000 when sold through Lawson~Menzies in May 2007.

  ‘Most gallerists could not do what I do to get the quality works that I get,’ Ioannou was quoted as boasting in The Sun Herald in March 2009. Certainly he had an unerring
instinct for the most gifted painters, and knew how to advance their careers and promote them. It was on Ioannou’s watch, however, that the Irrunytju art centre closed its doors for the last time in 2010. There is general agreement that the quality of the women’s paintings declined after he took over, but they were also aging and were no longer the main focus of the art centre. The majority of the artists he courted either left Wingellina or died. Eileen Stevens and Wingu Tingima moved away to Nyapari and worked exclusively for Tjungu Palya until their deaths. Anmanari Brown and Tjayangka Woods moved to Blackstone community and painted for Papulankutja after the tragic death of Anmanari’s husband, Kumanara Dawson. Alkawari Dawson remained at Irrunytju until her death. Tiger Palpatja moved back to Amata and painted for Tjala Arts.

  By 2012 both Agathon’s Melbourne and Sydney galleries had closed and Ioannou‘s fortunes appeared to be on the slide. Yet, in the same year, he posted a ‘revolutionary’ new plan on his website: he would build a state-ofthe-art Aboriginal art centre in Alice Springs as ‘a major step in reducing the exploitation of Aboriginal artists which has been so much part of the arts industry in Alice Springs’. The new centre would be situated on nearly 3.5 hectares close to the airport, and jointly owned by Agathon Galleries, Tommy Watson and his family. Ioannou promised new models of financial transparency, a board comprised of prominent Indigenous leaders and even a dialysis machine. He would provide a safe haven for Aboriginal artists who had become accustomed to painting pictures for independent operators (the so-called carpetbaggers) in return for small amounts of cash or second-hand cars.27 But a year later the industry still awaited the outcome. Ioannou had gone to ground, and Tommy was painting for independent Alice Springs art dealer, Chris Simon.