The Dealer is the Devil

by Adrian Newstead

  Tommy Watson never wanted to be an ‘art star’. He only ever wanted to paint on his own terms, and has never chased acclaim. He is now considered one of the most successful, if controversial, Aboriginal artists of the 21st century. His ‘rise and rise’ could be read as a ‘how to’ for crossing the threshold from being the latest discovery to the hottest thing in the market. From obscurity in 2002, he rose to become the 27th most important artist of the movement by 2007, and the 11th by the end of 2010.28 By this time his records had transcended those of any other ‘living’ Aboriginal artist. Ultimately Watson’s status can only be attributed to the quality of his work, for it is the work itself that completely seduced the market.

  FIRE, FIRE, BURNING BRIGHT

  I conoclastic art movements, and even extremely conservative ones, are usually driven by the young. Hungry to throw off the rules and conventions of a previous generation, they’re bent on blazing a new trail. The modern Aboriginal art movement has been somewhat different. The most venerated leaders have been elderly despite the obscurity of their birthplace and the remoteness of their traditional land. Many have only been able to interact with the sophisticated, high stakes, international urban art world through the intervention of a sympathetic white person – a friend, art coordinator or dealer: someone whose help and patronage has made the artist’s ‘career’ possible. With Emily, it was people like the Holts who opened doors to the east coast establishment. Rover Thomas was picked up by Mary Macha, and Tommy Watson was promoted by John Ioannou. In the case of Paddy Bedford, it was Tony Oliver.

  I have rarely met Tony Oliver, and have never got to know him. I do know he is the son of dairy farmers and he studied at the Preston Institute of Art in Melbourne in the 1970s, where he was mentored by art world luminaries such as Peter Booth, Betty Churcher and Dale Hickey. In his youth he gravitated to the seedy streets of Fitzroy, where bohemia flourished in the dilapidated old working-class terrace houses, factories and mews. His studio in Brunswick Street was a step away from the Black Cat Café and the Last Laugh, where artists and comedians had begun to move in alongside the local Aboriginals and Slavs. Encouraged by Churcher, he opened a gallery in Gertrude Street and earned his degree by curating his first exhibition there. He went to New York, hung out for a time with Warhol, did the galleries, and surveyed all the hottest artists and their agents (including Philip Guston’s gallery representative, David McKee). Back in Australia, he showed works by Warhol, including a series of Marilyns, and sold two Gustons to curator Bill Wright for the Art Gallery of New South Wales collection. Oliver’s Reconnaissance Gallery lasted five years, during which time he represented Sydney-born Tasmanian artist Tim Burns, Paul Boston and the innovative abstract Glaswegian painter David Band, amongst others.

  I’ve been told that a personal crisis led Oliver to retreat from the art world to a Buddhist monastery in Thailand for a year, followed by another year in New York where he infiltrated the modernist scene, befriending key artists and their dealers. After returning to run an eponymous gallery, he buckled under the pressures of business, and became disillusioned by the reluctance of Melbourne collectors to support American art. His life began to unravel. He moved to Wollongong, determined to throw himself into constructing a career as a painter. Here, adjacent to Thirroul, where D.H. Lawrence wrote Kangaroo, he immersed himself in Australian art, voraciously reading and painting. His hero at the time was the Australian abstract expressionist Tony Tuckson.

  On a foray back to Melbourne in the mid 1990s he wandered into Kimberley Art Gallery in Flinders Lane, a step that would change the course of his life. Gallery owner Peter Harrison invited him to stay and run a studio for visiting artists from the Kimberley. It was here that he met Freddie Timms, with whom he struck up an instant friendship. Profoundly affected by Timms, and by the work of Rover Thomas, Oliver filled sketchbook after sketchbook with studies of the Kimberley masters.

  As Timms prepared to return to the Kimberley, Oliver was invited to pack his swag and join him. Even today it is an honour to be invited up to ‘country’ by any Aboriginal person. On this first landmark trip, Timms introduced him to Chocolate Thomas and Hector Jandanay. Hector talked to him about starting a business based on cross-cultural sharing and understanding. This would be a marriage of interests and beliefs that Hector called ‘two-way’, just as Gija people had intertwined their own law with the Bible stories. The idea that they could own their own business ignited the flame that eventually became Jirrawun Arts, an Aboriginal corporation owned by the artists themselves, with Oliver as the manager.

  By the time I met him several years later, he was staying with the artists in an old house in Kununurra five minutes from Kelly’s Knob. We sat on the wide verandah watching the rocky outcrop glow red and gold at sunset. Paddy Bedford and several other men rested on their swags as the temperature dropped. Oliver looked as if he’d been born and bred in the dusty Kimberley landscape. Judging by his rugged appearance and grim expression, he had been to hell and back. He didn’t pay me much heed but he and Anne got on famously.

  From the outset Hector and Paddy held the Jirrawun mob together through their moral and cultural authority. As Jirrawun grew it included Rusty Peters, Churchill Cann, Goody Barratt, Rammey Ramsay, Phyllis Thomas and Timmy Timms. By 2004, Jirrawun Arts had become a registered company limited by guarantee, with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous representation on its board. Corporate, financial and intellectual backing came from businesses as varied as the Argyle Diamond Mine and the Melbourne legal firm Arnold Bloch Leibler. Its patron was Sir William Deane, Australia’s Governor General from 1996 to 2001.

  By cleverly positioning the Jirrawun artists, Oliver soon found himself the darling of the art curator set. Because he knew the Melbourne art scene, he was able to entice leaders from the academic, marketing, legal and business sectors onto the board. They included prominent Indigenous academic Professor Marcia Langton AM, marketing and advertsing guru Tim McColl Jones, the legal and social activist Helene Teichmann, and influential art consultant Sandra Ferman. The cream of Melbourne’s legal profession, such as Ron Merkel and Justice Ray Finkelstein, worked pro bono. Oliver even tried to get New York dealers onto the Jirrawun board.

  The Jirrawun model had a lot to offer its artists. It was able to provide the individual support and promotion that an art centre servicing large numbers of individual artists within the community context would have difficulty emulating. Jirrawun artists did not turn up to paint quickly for a bit of money, although according to Oliver they would often arrive looking as if they had ‘come out of a war zone’. At Jirrawun they could eat and rest for a few days before starting to paint. They could look through Oliver’s art books, think and talk. Gija linguist Frances Kofod recorded their stories and later documented their paintings. Oliver told me once that major works, like Rusty Peters’ Water Brain (a monumental eight-panel painting, now on permanent display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales), took five years of talk and just four days of painting. Similarly, Jirrawun’s ‘star’ artist Paddy Bedford would work for several days on paper with gouache, and then graduate to custom board before being ‘loose enough’ to work on large canvases. The old man didn’t start painting until he was 80, but within five years he had become the seventh most successful artist in the history of the movement.29

  Tony Oliver and Paddy Bedford discussing Musée du quai Branly Paris commission and design in 2003.

  In 2004, Jirrawun relocated to a purpose-built artists’ studio and gallery in Wyndham, described by Nicolas Rothwell as ‘a declaration of cultural autonomy in steel and glass, a white cube of Gija modernism’.30 By this time Oliver and the Jirrawun Board had become masters of marketing and promotion. On public occasions Bedford and the other artists were always immaculately dressed, like funky old-time jazz musicians, in expensive zoot suits and beautiful ties. This became the Jirrawun signature style.

  Paddy Bedford participated in numerous Jirrawun shows during his lifetime,31 and lived to complete six
solo exhibitions before his death in 2007. 32 By that time, 20 paintings had already appeared at public auction. Of these, 19 sold for an average price of $43,825. Almost immediately after his death I sold Joogoomoondiny – Grawler Gully, a 122 x 135 cm canvas painted in 2004, at my Lawson~Menzies sale for $300,000.

  Bedford’s painting style featured richly ochred surfaces, in which minimal arrangements of circular shapes were centred upon a linear band and delineated by white dots. Though generally small, his intimate colourful paintings in gouache on paper were as successful as those executed in ochre. He was amongst the few selected to contribute to the permanent installation at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris, and was honoured in 2007 with a touring retrospective exhibition and a major catalogue by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. Following the opening of his retrospective exhibition at Sydney’s Muesum of Contemporary Art, John McDonald, art critic for The Sydney Morning Herald, was moved to write, ‘If one had to choose a single Indigenous artist to represent the state of Aboriginal art, it would be hard to go past Paddy Bedford.’

  Oliver exposed the Jirrawun artists to the work of modernist painters such as Mondrian, Delaunay and Guston. He provided them with exotic materials like gouache and encouraged discussion about painting and art practice while they worked. In doing so, he clearly influenced the stylistic development of these artists. This was most obvious in the work of newcomers like Rammy Ramsay, but could also be detected in subtle ways like the background textures and materials used in Paddy Bedford’s paintings, the spatial arrangement of works by Rusty Peters, and the formats of works by Peggy Patrick.

  Paddy Bedford, Joogoomoondiny – Grawler Gully, 2004. Natural earth pigment on linen, 122 x 135 cm. Carrying a presale estimate of $60,000–70,000, it sold in Lawson~Menzies November 2007 Australian Aboriginal Art sale for $300,000, setting the artist’s record price.

  Jirrawun strategically established representative relationships with influential exhibiting galleries, but always held back some of the better works to be sold to the most prestigious and well-heeled collectors direct. Oliver orchestrated spectacular spit roasts in the Kimberley for privileged visitors. Sated and spoilt in the company of famous artists, they found the paintings, and the knowledge that their money was going directly into Jirrawun Arts, absolutely irresistible.

  Such was the influence and prestige Jirrawun curried, that when seven of the artists travelled with Oliver to Parliament House in Canberra for the opening of an exhibition called Jirrawun in the House, politicians of every stripe, including Natasha Stott Despoja, Amanda Vanstone, Rod Kemp and Peter Garrett, reputedly jostled to be photographed with them.

  Tony Oliver became an art world hero. By contrast, John Ioannou was loathed and vilified despite everything he did for Tommy Watson’s career. For years I’ve struggled to understand how this came about. The Kimberley was the scene of an internecine war waged amongst those who worked with Aboriginal artists from the time I first went there in the 1980s. The enmity I observed was at times nothing short of toxic. How did Oliver walk into that grey area, and emerge sanctified? Accusations were definitely levelled at him. There were rumours that he painted Bedford’s paintings himself, and no-one could dispute the fact that the Jirrawun artists’ works did significantly improve during the decade he spent in their company. Was that because he had pioneered a brilliant new collaborative approach? Or did he wield undue influence? The Jirrawun model was certainly lauded in the media. Art in Australia magazine called it ‘the Rolls Royce of new systems for the management of Aboriginal art’. In its heyday, it was the most profitable, privately financed, Indigenous-owned and controlled business in the history of the movement. But in June 2007 Paddy Bedford died. Emotionally and physically exhausted, Oliver made his exit. Within a year the business collapsed, the website disappeared and the staff dispersed.

  Oliver and the artists had envisioned Jirrawun as a safe haven. The Wyndham gallery, and the land it stood on, was big enough to protect the lifestyle and health of all those who worked there. According to Oliver himself, however, 90% of his time with the artists was spent being a de facto social worker, and eventually he simply burnt out. During his tenure, the artists became wealthy beyond their dreams, stayed in the best hotels, wore beautiful clothes and lived high on the hog. But once Jirrawun closed, their circumstances markedly declined. The dysfunctions of life for a Kimberley Aboriginal prevailed.33

  The Jirrawun dream ended, and those artists that remained gravitated back to Warmun, or stopped painting altogether.

  Oliver settled in Vietnam, where he established a family and now paints his own work while promoting several local elderly artists. To this day he claims to have left Jirrawun without a single painting. He was scrupulously careful to work as an employee and drew only a modest wage. Early in his career he had been advised by James Mollison, arguably the greatest gallery administrator Australia has ever seen, to become a painter or a curator, but never a dealer. Idealistically, he has followed this advice throughout his career. Oliver has told me, however, that he regrets not owning a single work by Paddy Bedford, or Warhol, or Guston – in fact, none of the artists he has promoted since his student days in the emerging Melbourne art scene. ‘I’ve always been too idealistic for sentimental reasons,’ he told me recently. ‘The paintings that have passed through my hands would have made me a millionaire twenty times over, if I had them today.’

  • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

  The other great success in Australia’s northwest began quite differently. In 1998, a vivacious 20-year-old city girl with a mop of curly red hair landed in Broome armed with little more than an art degree and a bucket load of enthusiasm. Emily Rohr met local Indigenous custodians by walking up to the tree where she found them sitting, and settling down to unwind and relax in their company. Immediately at ease, she began her journey of discovery into the rich culture of the 28 different local language groups of the region. She found a small 100-year-old weatherboard cottage in the bustling heart of Broome’s historic Chinatown, and decided to convert it into an art gallery. Though unassuming and remote, her Short Street Gallery rapidly became one of the most influential Aboriginal art businesses in Australia.

  At the very same time that 80-year-old Paddy Bedford was painting his first canvases with Tony Oliver, 1,000 kilometres to the north of Broome, a 16-year-old boy tentatively walked up Rohr’s rickety stairs with a roll of canvases under his arm. Daniel Walbidi is now recognised as one of the most exciting and talented young Aboriginal artists in Australia. But on that day he came to tell Rohr about his Yulparija elders. They had left their country in the Great Sandy Desert during the 1960s and 1970s, after devastating drought had forced them to walk north and west, travelling hundreds of kilometres before settling at the old Bidyadanga cattle station, in the traditional lands of the Karrajarri peoples, 250 kilometres south of Broome. Their arrival at the Catholic mission, previously known as La Grange, swelled its population to 800, and made it the largest Indigenous community in the state of Western Australia. The Yulparija struggled to maintain their identity and Dreamings amongst the larger saltwater clans, but they hunted, fished and attempted to live a traditional life. They longed to return to their freshwater country and reconnect with the spiritual places that underscored their traditional beliefs.

  So divided was the community that not long after Walbidi’s meeting with Rohr, the Yulparija artists were actually banned from painting, and physically evicted from their homes by the extremely divisive CEO and council at Bidyadanga. This prompted a number of them to move to Broome, where they came to prefer painting outside their community.

  Led by the determined young Daniel Walbidi, they formed a formal partnership and registered the business known as Yulparija Artists of Bidyadanga. They signed a memorandum of understanding with Short Street Gallery to act as their exclusive marketing agent. Sell-out shows in Melbourne and Sydney, organised with Rohr’s assistance, followed. Their success led the elderly Bidy
adanga artists to begin referring to Daniel as their ‘young-boss’.

  Daniel Walbidi himself had revealed a natural talent for visual art in high school. His desire to record the traditional knowledge and the compelling stories of his elders after the loss of their desert homelands drove him to encourage Jan Billycan, Weaver Jack, Alma Webou and other important Yulparija elders to experiment with paint.

  Walbidi’s own meticulously detailed and abstracted topographical depictions of places and journeys noticeably altered after Rohr and filmmaker David Batty accompanied the painting group on a visit to their longed-for ancestral lands. 34 On the trip, Walbidi came to fully comprehend the power and depth of his Indigenous inheritance: flying over the country, clearing out the old waterholes, hunting for game and bush food, building campfires, and singing and dancing the ceremonies of his ancestors. After this his paintings became drenched with colour. White salt lakes and yellow sand dunes turned to silver and gold, as he psychologically reached for the essence of what he had seen and the stories he had been told. His vision of country was flooded with meaning. Yet, he has been open to the influence of the modern world and contemporary art practice. A decade later, his work is truly inspired. He has not been seduced by the art world. His output remains small. Today, his paintings are amongst the most sought after of his generation.

  Sadly, most of the Bidyadanga artists have now passed away after painting for no more than ten years at the end of their hard lives. Amongst them Jan Billycan, Weaver Jack and Alma Webou stand out as those whose work is most likely to endure. In particular, the clashing hues of Jan Billycan’s works strike a note of discord, paralleling her people’s upheaval and their adaptation to change following the departure from country devastated by drought. While she never spoke about her renowned talent as a medicine woman, others believed that Billycan’s stories originated in the cellular memory and lifeblood of the body. She perceived continuity between land and body, which she rendered in confident, gestural lines and emphatic colours. Starting with a familiar desert iconography of dunes and waterholes, she shifted imperceptibly into the body’s organs, cellular shapes and fluid systems. Bright purples and deep indigo cohabited with oozy greys and muddy greens. The disturbing rawness of her painting was anchored in real memory and real history.