The Dealer is the Devil

by Adrian Newstead

  At the opening of her 2011 exhibition at Trevor Victor Harvey Gallery, Simon watched from the wings as she addressed the crowd. The ‘mafia’, she declared, ‘wants us to stay in misery and poverty so that we continue to rely on them’. She pointed out that up to 50 mainly Papunya Tula artists were happily painting over Christmas on Yanda’s property, outside Alice Springs.

  Ultimately, Rothwell’s 2006 article created a ‘line in the sand’. Today, state galleries, major art prizes and most of the elite galleries and auction houses routinely reject works, regardless of quality, that are sourced by independent dealers. At the time Anderson openly scoffed at these protocols, in 2011, her new partner was also standing in the wings. He was none other than Nicolas Rothwell.

  UNE GUERRE DE TERRITOIRE

  A good ten years before Rothwell’s ‘Scams in the Desert’ article, a 25-year-old teacher started work at the Mount Liebig Primary School in the Northern Territory. Young Arthur Papadimitriou had been intrigued by the Western Desert Aboriginal people since the age of 12, when he flew over the vast swathes of the outback on his way to Greece, his parents’ homeland. At Mount Liebig, which was established as an outstation of Papunya in the late 1970s, he began to collect paintings from his students’ parents and grandparents. He recalls:

  There would be a knock at the door from Turkey, Billy, Mick, or Ronnie. I loved the works they showed me. Being a young teacher, I didn’t have a lot of money, but what I did have, I spent with the artists.

  There was no art centre in Mount Liebig then. Papadimitriou was on a primary school teacher’s wage of $27,000 a year but, given the prices at the time, he paid the artists generously. He was also buying paintings through Glenis Wilkins, the young woman running the Mount Liebig store who became the manager of Watiyawanu Artists – Mt Leibig when it became an incorporated art centre in 1995. Dozens of other contractors in communities across Australia were doing the same thing. It was something of a free-for-all, yet many people like Papadimitriou were simply acting on impulse. It was a nascent and completely unregulated market. In fact, when an artist came through, Wilkins often used to cut out two pieces of canvas, and she and Arthur split the resulting paintings. Daphne Williams, the manager of Papunya Tula at the time, was aware of what they and others like them were doing. As Papadimitriou told me, ‘Daphne said she had no problem with it, because we lived on the community.’

  Arthur Papadimitriou with Billy Stockman, 1995.

  Arthur kept buying in this ad hoc and enthusiastic way for the next few years. He was an unsophisticated collector, but he did receive some good advice. During a holiday in Melbourne in 1994 he met Tim Klingender, the freshly appointed Aboriginal arts specialist for Sotheby’s, who advised him to concentrate on the work of particular artists. Melbourne dealer Scott Livesey enthused over a work Arthur had collected from Ronnie Tjampitjinpa. Over the next two and a half years that Arthur spent in Mount Liebig, he bought 38 more paintings.45 ‘Like a good Greek boy’46 Papadimitriou returned to Melbourne in mid 1996 when his father was bedridden after a stroke. He’d done nothing with his collection but now decided to give some of it away. Over the following five years he donated eight paintings to the collection of the Benalla Art Gallery, in country Victoria. This donation resulted in the 2001 exhibition Desert Dreaming and cemented his relationship with the gallery director Simon Klose. Much later, in 2007, Klose told a local newspaper:

  Arthur feels like he’s the custodian of the art. He has to make sure the trust the Aboriginal community placed in him, in giving him this artwork, gets through to the public in the right way.47

  This was just a year after Papadimitriou had met the French Ambassador (the Honourable Pierre Viaux, together with his wife, Marie-Françoise) who had enthused about the Musée du quai Branly in Paris which was about to open.

  The Musée du quai Branly was President Jacques Chirac’s last extravagant gesture before moving out of office. The building is certainly impressive. Constructed over five years, it is located just a stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower. The 800-square metre curved exterior wall is covered with 15,000 living plants, punctuated by square windows. The architect, Jean Nouvel, envisaged a sanctuary without walls, marked by the symbols of forest and river, and the obsessions of death and oblivion.

  My own impression on approaching the entrance for the first time in 2009 was of a manufactured wilderness. I was encouraged to feel like an intrepid explorer by the sounds of drums and other ‘primitive’ instruments as I made my way along a 180-metre ramp, illuminated by a river of language written in light. Passing by the vast store rooms veiled behind a cylinder of tinted glass, I arrived at the main gallery floating 10 metres above the gardens. Here Australian Aboriginal artefacts and paintings vied for attention amongst hundreds of exquisite indigenous objects, all bathed in amniotic light. Though I found the selection of Australian artefacts underwhelming, I was impressed by the eight Australian Aboriginal artworks that had been incorporated into the walls, floors and ceilings. These had been curated by Hetti Perkins and Brenda Croft. The concrete outer wall featured Lena Nyadbi’s Jimbala spearhead markings in relief; Aboriginal ceiling murals on successive levels included Gulumbu Yunupingu’s depiction of the universe and Ningura Napurrula’s Central Desert homeland. Tommy Watson’s imagery was reproduced in enamelled metal. John Mawurndjul’s painstakingly hand-painted ceiling and pillar in the bookshop had taken a team of artists three weeks to complete.

  John Mawurndjul’s ceiling and hand-painted column in the bookshop at the Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

  The museum staff entrance featured a painting designed by Paddy Bedford and, outside, along Rue de l’Université, the window glass was etched in designs by Judy Watson, through which could be seen a photo series by Michael Riley. Clever mirroring and night lighting were used to make snippets of the ceiling paintings visible from the street below. Since 2013, 7 million people per year look down from the Eiffel Tower to see a work by Lena Nyadbi painted as big as a football field across the rooftop.

  The museum’s construction took place against a backdrop of demonstrations and strikes. Its staff were already concerned that the cultural objects, many collected from colonial empires, were going to be arranged according to their aesthetic rather than cultural context. The French are famous for this. Having returned several times, I think the demonstrators were right. The French instinct for cultural appropriation means the museum’s displays are more about the objects than the people who made them.

  The Musée du quai Branly was still in the construction phase at the time Papadimitriou met Pierre Viaux at a formal dinner in the Ambassador’s honour, and was enthralled by his description. The only thing that stopped him offering his entire Aboriginal art collection to the French government was a swift kick under the table from Ian Cuming, the Benalla Gallery Chairman. Instead, he offered the museum the pick of his collection. Some months later, Stéphane Martin, the President of the museum, chose a major work by Turkey Tolson. The generous donation was reported shortly thereafter by arts writer Katrina Strickland in the Australian Financial Review.

  Unexpectedly all hell broke loose. The article triggered a diplomatic incident. Not everyone viewed the donation as a wonderful and selfless gift.

  It was a Turkey Tolson that didn’t come from Papunya Tula. Angry emails demanding the painting be withdrawn flew back and forth between Brenda Croft, the Aboriginal art curator of the National Gallery of Australia, and Paul Sweeney, the manager of Papunya Tula. Papadimitriou found himself caught in the crossfire, a casualty of the politics surrounding art centre patronage. He was publicly accused of ‘exploiting the artists, forcing himself into the spotlight, endangering the community arts cooperative, and embarrassing the Australian government’.48

  Papadimitriou was devastated. The timing couldn’t have been worse. His five-year-old son, who had been diagnosed as autistic, was yet to speak or call him ‘Dad’. His reputation was being attacked by people who had never even tried to talk to or meet him. His
moral character was impugned and his motives questioned. He had intended to build a cultural bridge. Instead, he put the French government into a difficult diplomatic position. His detractors hadn’t even bothered to investigate his character.

  Had they done so they would have found a gentle, humble, family man who only ever bought paintings through art centres after his departure from Mount Liebig. As communications passed back and forth between Australia and France, the French remained resolute. The French Ambassador defended him and the Musée du quai Branly President, Stéphane Martin, and his Oceanic art specialist, Philippe Peltier, were determined to accept the gift.

  What happened to Papadimitriou in Mount Leibig has happened to hundreds of people working in Aboriginal communities. Friendships like those he forged with the painters in Mount Liebig have flourished for decades between thousands of white and black people all over Australia. Whenever I come across paintings exchanged under these circumstances, I judge them on their artistic merit and the documentation the donors or sellers are able to provide. Quality is everything. I believe in the maxim: ‘A great painting is a great painting is a great painting.’

  Tellingly, Papadimitriou’s love of Aboriginal culture was not diminished in the slightest by this experience. He was invited to France for the official opening of the Musée du quai Branly. On 20 April 2006, during the official celebrations, he was wined and dined at the Presidential Élysée Palace and invested as a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his contribution to French and Australian culture.

  Bravo Arthur!

  OFF THE BEATEN TRACK

  During my time with Warlpiri people I have often been awed by their acumen. I’ve watched little old Lorna Fencer set hard-nosed art dealers running in circles to find money to satisfy her demands. Men like Ronnie Lawson could organise large gatherings, travel thousands of kilometres each year to attend ceremonies, sing thousands of verses relating their songline, and manage the lives of large extended families with skill and good humour. Abie Jangala walked the 800-kilometre Tanami Track between Yuendumu and Lajamanu in his youth. Jimmy Robertson was a station foreman in charge of large teams of men building stockyards in some of the most remote and inhospitable country in Australia before eventually moving into Lajamanu. He spoke 11 languages including English, and managed to support two wives and more than a dozen children with apparent ease.

  Lajamanu was always a step too far away from the Territory administrative centres of Alice Springs and Darwin to receive art funding. Yet, in the absence of an art coordinator for all but a brief period, many great artists managed to continue painting through sheer persistence and some help from the occasional volunteer like Lava Watts, a native of New Guinea who had married the town administrator. Lava devoted most of her time during the early 1990s to helping the artists. Between 1997 and 2002, Anne and I would drive up twice a year with canvas, paint and money. We assisted the art centre with workshops by liaising with Jim Butler, the shop manager of the Lajamanu Progress Association. Butler was concerned for the welfare of the artists and willing to do whatever he could to assist, but he avoided direct involvement in the unfunded art centres’ management and operations. He did, however, transfer funds to artists, pass on messages and help Coo-ee to develop a relationship with Lynette Tasman Napangardi, the second, and youngest, wife of Norman Kelly Jampijinpa. Coo-ee hired Lynette during the late 1990s as a translator and cultural assistant, in order to complete artwork documentation for us. Norman Kelly’s first wife, Lily Kelly Napangardi, lived in the southern extreme of Warlpiri land, in Mount Liebig. By 2004, Lily was a finalist in the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, and in 2006 she was selected as one of Australia’s 50 most collectable artists by Australian Art Collector magazine. The news travelled by bush telegraph to Lajamanu, prompting Norman to pack his Toyota for the drive south, leaving Lynette, wife no. 2, behind.

  There was no art business and no money in the Mount Liebig community prior to the 1990s. The cars people drove around in were beat-up old sedans held together with bits of rubber and chewing gum, packed to the gunnels with relatives. Most were lucky to get through the desert on corrugated unmade gravel roads. Every 20 kilometres a brush fire would be moving through the spinifex beside a car that had conked out. I later learned that the Warlpiri use the smoke to signal for help and to clear the ground of snakes and ants while they wait for the car to be patched up, or for someone passing to offer a helping hand. These days the people have more money and the roads hum with 4WDs.

  In 1987, Glenis Lynch, then in her mid 30s, hightailed it out of Townsville and an unhappy marriage, driving a beat-up old Ford Falcon almost 2,000 kilometres to Borroloola, in the Gulf Country in the Northern Territory, with three young children and a dog in tow. After scoring a job running the local inn she met her next husband, Tim Wilkins, a local tradie who’d built many of the first houses in Kintore, Kiwirrkurra, Lajamanu and Balgo Hills. Together they moved first to Haasts Bluff, where she became the store manager and bought her first Aboriginal paintings. Later, in 1990, they moved on to Mount Liebig.

  Many important artists were living in Mount Liebig, including Billy Stockman, Young Timothy Dempsey, Turkey Tolson, Mick Namarari, Long Tom Tjapanangka and Mitjili Napurulla. They moved in and out of the community while visiting family or attending sorry business. As Papunya Tula did not visit, Glenis Wilkins – as she was known since her marriage – got into the habit of handing out canvas just as Papadimitriou did. Sometimes she shared the art materials with him and other interested locals, as they felt obliged to buy everyone’s paintings – not just those by famous artists. She recalls, ‘If you bought a painting by Ronnie Tjampitjinpa, for instance, you would have to buy one from his wife Mary.’49

  Though she was purchasing paintings with her own money, Wilkins never sold them to anyone visiting the community or to galleries. She did put a couple into Sotheby’s in 1996. At this time, no-one discriminated against works such as this. She once told me that Tim Klingender didn’t care that they did not have Papunya Tula provenance, a fact substantiated by Arthur Papadimitriou.

  Wentja Napaltjarri at the opening of her solo show at Coo-ee Gallery, Bondi Beach, in 2005.

  Around 1996, Peter Malavisi, a male nurse at the clinic, suggested they should start up an art company to service the artists. Glenis organised the women and began putting on community events to raise funds while Malavisi worked on the incorporation of the fledgling company. Malavisi, Wilkins and Faye Cameron (who was in charge of Aged Care) all worked voluntarily to establish Watiyawanu Artists – Mt Leibig, which applied to join the central desert advocacy body Desart. Despite their best efforts, Watiyawanu never received any funding at all from outside the community. The art centre itself was built from the profits that were donated by the store committee, but it was manned entirely by volunteers. No external funding ever eventuated to hire an art coordinator or any staff. Yet all the artists wanted to be paid in cash ‘up front’, and wouldn’t paint without it.

  By the early 2000s, several Watiyawanu artists had gained distinction through exhibitions staged in Sydney at Mary Place Gallery and at the White City tennis centre. These exhibitions were stacked with paintings by famous and not so famous artists that had accumulated over the years. They included works by Lily Kelly, Wentja Napaltjarri, Ngoia Pollard and Bill Whiskey.

  Then along came Neil Murphy, the best salesman that ever worked for me at Coo-ee Art Gallery. A highly educated, widely read connoisseur, Murphy lacked the funds to support his excellent taste, and so became my curator. He always insisted that the finest paintings should be sold to whoever conferred the greatest prestige upon the artists. This often brought us into sharp conflict, as the need to turn over stock in order to cover our sky-rocketing overheads was relentless. At the time I finally moved out of our expensive Paddington premises and relocated the gallery to Bondi, I had to choose who to keep on among the valued members of my team. I had little choice but to let him go. His reaction
was characteristically dramatic. He complained I’d thrown him ‘out of the Kingdom!’ but at Wilkins’ invitation, he soon headed off to Mount Liebig, where he was to have a profound influence on several artists’ careers. With his natural entrepreneurial flair he swiftly identified the most talented – though few of the good works ever came my way. Lily Kelly was producing the best work of her career within a year. Murphy sold two major pieces to the Art Gallery of New South Wales for $17,000 each, as well as carefully placing important works into the best private collections. But as soon as her husband, Norman, saw how much money his wife could make, he took her off to Alice Springs to paint for the dealers. This was a tactical error for which she later paid a heavy price. At Sotheby’s July 2007 sale, a work she originally painted for Murphy in 2004 sold for $39,600. After she left Mount Liebig for Alice Springs none of her paintings ever sold for anything like that amount again.

  Disappointed and frustrated by her defection, Wilkins and Murphy turned their attention to Ngioa Pollard and Wentja Napaltjarri. These artists held highly successful solo exhibitions and rose to national prominence within just two years. In 2006, Ngoia Pollard won the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, and major works by Ngoia and Wentja began to sell for sums in excess of $40,000. For a brief moment, they became the hottest artists in the market. No sooner had Ngoia won the Telstra Art Award, however, than she too began painting in Alice Springs.