Whiteley on Trial

by Gabriella Coslovich

  Wraight told the jury to disregard the false letter of provenance that Gant had given to Archer. The relationship between Le Tet and Gant was ‘complex’ and the provenance document with Le Tet’s forged signature was simply Gant’s way of saying, ‘Look, this painting is the real deal’. What? Because it was common practice to falsify documents in order to prop up the veracity of an artwork? Wraight’s delivery was so earnest that one might almost believe it.

  John Ribbands was up next, suave and breezy, reinforcing the idea that his client, Aman Siddique, had created nothing more sinister than copies at his Easey Street studio.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with making a fake that looks like a Whiteley, feels like a Whiteley, but in fact isn’t a Whiteley,’ he said, coining one of the trial’s classic lines. ‘It only becomes an offence, it only becomes something wrong if you try and hoodwink someone into believing it is a Whiteley.’

  And Siddique, of course, had done nothing of the sort. ‘We say he painted a copy of what was an original Brett Whiteley painting but, as I said, that’s not against the law.’ Once the ‘copies’ left his Collingwood workshop, Siddique had nothing more to do with them, Ribbands said.

  ‘You won’t hear any evidence that Mr Siddique was paid any money for his participation in this so-called agreement.’

  The long-awaited trial made television news that night and the suspect paintings had starring roles. My mother texted me to say that she had seen the Whiteley art fraud story on Channel Nine.

  ‘The paintings are beautiful,’ she wrote. ‘I like the blue bay.’

  Guy Morel, in a neat grey suit and checked blue-and-white shirt, was first in the witness stand. The prosecution was starting with maximum impact. This was where the Crown’s story began, fifteen years after Whiteley’s death. From the dock, Gant glared at the man who had betrayed them. Siddique continued his note-taking.

  Morel solemnly recounted how his colleague Jud Wimhurst had alerted him to what was going on. Just as he had at the committal, Morel described how he had placed a chair on a workbench, stood on it and taken photos over the storeroom’s 2.5-metre partition.

  When Morel started working with Siddique around 2002, he was given a key to the storeroom. In 2005 or 2006, Siddique asked Morel for his key as he had forgotten his own. Siddique never returned the key to him. Morel met Peter Gant soon after starting at Easey Street. The dealer was frequently at Siddique’s—sometimes two or three times a week, other times months would go past before he would see Gant again.

  In the dock, Gant and Siddique were passing notes to each other. Arms crossed, Siddique now stared at his former friend with an arctic anger. Borg distributed copies of Morel’s photographs to the jury, the first exhibits tendered to the court. The judge and the jury flipped through the two small photo albums, the sort that had once been popular for holiday snaps. Was the jury as impressed as I had been when I first saw Morel’s photographs at the committal? The jurors’ faces revealed nothing more than diligence.

  Morel’s evidence was not infallible. His bizarre authentication of the catalogue A Private Affair had to be explained. Borg confronted the matter head on. She had Morel describe how he had taken the catalogue to the International College of Printing and Graphic Arts in Brunswick and spoken to two qualified lithographic printers. In September 2010, Morel wrote his report verifying that the catalogue had been produced by lithographic offset printing. He wrote it despite having contacted police three years earlier about the suspected fraud and despite knowing that the orange painting pictured in the catalogue appeared to be the same painting he saw in Siddique’s storeroom. Borg pre-empted the question that the defence would no doubt ask, and that the jury itself must have been asking.

  ‘Why did you participate in the production of this report?’

  ‘Well, I was caught between a rock and a hard place, and I produced the report as requested so they weren’t suspicious of me of taking photos and working with the police.’

  So they weren’t suspicious of me.

  In cross-examination, the defence barristers challenged the idea that Siddique’s storeroom was a mysterious, off-limits zone. Wraight pointed out that a key was clearly visible in the lock of the storeroom’s sliding doors in one of the very photos that Morel had taken. How worried could Siddique possibly be about what he was doing in the storeroom if he was leaving a key in the door? Didn’t this suggest that in Siddique’s mind at least there was nothing untoward going on in there? That he was just making copies never intending them to be sold as the real thing? Wraight planted the seed of doubt and Ribbands pushed it further in. Hadn’t Siddique also kept a spare key in a drawer near the storeroom? Morel could easily have accessed the storeroom by getting the key out of the drawer. Morel did not deny it.

  But other questions seemed to backfire. Wraight asked Morel who had asked him to verify the catalogue. Siddique, he replied. Surely this played into the prosecution’s side? Why would Siddique be taking such an interest in having Gant’s catalogue verified? Might this suggest a conspiracy between the two? Too late, the question had been asked.

  Morel knew, didn’t he, that there was an ‘issue’ with the orange painting when he was asked to write a report about the catalogue. Morel did indeed: ‘I knew it was because of the discussion Siddique and Gant were having.’ Another response Wraight could have done without.

  The barrister tried to get Morel to agree that it would be difficult today to find a lithographic printer to create A Private Affair. Morel disagreed. Lithographic printing was still available.

  ‘At the end of your report you draw a conclusion that, “The catalogue was produced by four-colour offset printing process to a high quality by Kenneth James print in Melbourne. The production date was prior to 8 November 1989.” You were satisfied with that finding when you wrote that report?’

  ‘I was satisfied from what was relayed to me, and I wrote that for the purpose, for Gant and Siddique.’

  For Gant and Siddique.

  After the two defence barristers were done, Borg tidied up. ‘Other than the date in the catalogue, and what you were told was the date from the catalogue, was there any actual testing done on the catalogue itself to determine the age of the paper?’ she asked Morel.

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  The jury heard next from Jud Wimhurst. With his spiky hair, goatee beard, rectangular black-rimmed glasses, black shirt and dark jeans, he looked the part of the artist. He told how one morning in mid-2007, he turned up for work at Siddique’s Collingwood workshop and found the upstairs storeroom open. It was ‘the one and only time’ he’d seen it unlocked.

  ‘I went to see what was going on,’ he said. ‘You know, I wasn’t sure if someone had broken in or something like that, so I just went to have a look at why the door was open. Sitting in the room looked to be a series of Brett Whiteley paintings. They didn’t appear to be completed.’

  A few months before, another painting had arrived at the Collingwood studio. It was a big, brown Whiteley painting of Lavender Bay. Siddique had asked him to remove the painting’s frame. Wimhurst had been surprised at how rudimentary the frame was—it was nailed straight into the side of the painting. After the frame was removed, Siddique had asked Wimhurst to help him carry the ‘brown’ painting upstairs. The painting sat on the floor, leaning against a couple of tables. It stayed there a long time, always getting in the way. At a lunch soon after the painting was delivered, Gant and Siddique told Wimhurst how they had gone to Sydney to buy the painting for a client. In the dock, Siddique vigorously shook his head.

  Several weeks after that lunch, a group of unusually sized door panels were delivered to Siddique’s workshop. The panels were not painted or finished in any way; the wood had been left raw. Wimhurst asked Siddique what they were for. They belonged to Gant, he had said. Why, then, had they been delivered to Easey Street? Wimhurst asked. They were for Gant’s house, Siddique said.

  ‘I asked whether he was making a house for dwarves. He just
kind of chuckled and shut the conversation down.’

  A day later, the doors were gone.

  The jury declined the offer of a break and at 3 p.m. was introduced to the third witness of the day, Richard Grabsch, owner of M & J Quality Doors. So there were two ‘door men’ in this story? This one had manufactured the doors that Richard Simon had delivered to Siddique. Grabsch had not appeared at the committal. He was a significant addition to the witness list—he would be able to tell whether the suspect paintings had been painted on doors manufactured by his company.

  Borg handed Grabsch a photograph taken by Morel in September 2008, showing a stack of wooden panels or doors leaning against the metal stairs on the ground floor of Siddique’s workshop.

  Grabsch recognised the doors—they were part of an order placed by Richard Simon of Door Impressions on 19 August 2008 for ten doors with ‘clean faces’. Simon had also ordered four doors on 18 July 2007, again making the ‘unusual’ request for ‘clean faces’. All of these doors had lauan plywood faces and a honeycomb paper core.

  In Morel’s photo, Grabsch could see the words ‘Door Impressions’ written in black texta on the edges of two of the doors. He also identified a black texta mark—a cross—that his company would put on the edge of doors to signal that the order was complete. He noted that at least two of the doors had joins in the middle of them. He explained that doors over a certain size would require joins, and that at least one door in the August order would have needed a join, and at least one in the July order was also large enough to have a join. Behind me sat Big Blue Lavender Bay—a join clearly visible, running horizontally through its middle.

  More significantly, Grabsch recognised the ‘finger-jointed timber’ that his company had used—that is, small pieces of timber joined together to create larger pieces. Finger-jointed timber was easy to identify because of the different coloured wood used in the process, and that’s what Grabsch could see at the end of the panels in Morel’s photo—a dark piece, a light piece, and so on.

  ‘During that period of 2007 and 2008, we were importing this finger-jointed timber from Indonesia,’ he told the court. ‘It would certainly suggest, highly suggest to me, that these would have been our doors.’

  Grabsch had visited Siddique’s Collingwood workshop with Stefanec and seen a blue and an orange painting there. He identified the paintings in the courtroom as those he had seen. The blue painting didn’t have a frame on it at the time, and Grabsch identified a black cross on one corner of the end of the door consistent with the marks that his company put on doors at the end of the manufacturing process. He also saw ventilation holes that were the same as the ventilation holes his company made on doors.

  Wraight had no questions for Grabsch. Ribbands asked whether the texta marks placed on doors were always crosses. They were not, Grabsch said, and agreed that it could be a tick or a cross or some other sort of black mark. He also agreed that it was likely that other companies in Melbourne would have been making similar ventilation holes on their doors.

  ‘Do you really have to go through all this in that sort of tedious detail?’ the judge snapped the next morning when Borg began to go through the Crown’s case once more.

  They had been arguing about the admissibility of Richard Simon’s conversation with Siddique about million-dollar paintings being painted on doors for the past two days. Their argument now spilled into its third day while Simon sat in the drafty corridors of the Victorian Supreme Court, waiting for Borg and Croucher to resolve their differences.

  Finally some sparks, but they were happening out of earshot of the jury. It was like a play where the best lines happen in the wings. Borg was like a dog with a bone, she was not letting this one go. The Crown’s case depended on Simon’s evidence to show the agreement between Gant and Siddique, and she wanted the jury to hear it. The conversation showed criminal intent, she said. I was barracking for her even though I understood that the judge had a point. The conversation between Simon and Siddique had taken place on 5 November 2008, after Big Blue Lavender Bay had already been sold and Orange Lavender Bay was already in production. The conversation could only relate to Lavender Bay through the Window, and it was unclear whether it did.

  But was the judge treating Borg fairly? He was cutting her off, telling her not to panic, not to get thrown off course, suggesting she was speaking ‘without purpose’. I turned to the court reporter next to me and asked whether this was normal? Had she seen other judges take barristers to task so strongly? She shrugged and said that the judge seemed impatient with Borg. We were both perplexed, unsure what to make of the prickly rapport between the two.

  The judge wanted to know whether Simon was asked about this conversation at the committal hearing. Borg said yes and read out the relevant parts of the committal, putting the conversation on the trial transcript in what seemed a calculated move. The judge grew visibly annoyed as Borg read on and on. He looked at her sternly, face turning red.

  ‘Sorry, is there something you are particularly pointing me to, or …’ he said.

  She toiled on. The conversation between Simon and Siddique, which had occurred in Gant’s presence, was fundamental to the Crown’s case—it was evidence of Gant and Siddique’s ‘continued participation in a joint criminal enterprise’. The judge could not understand why, on the Crown’s hypothesis, someone who was part of an agreement to create paintings in the style of Brett Whiteley would then ‘be telling someone who’s got nothing to do with anything that these things might be worth a million dollars?’

  ‘Because accused persons often say stupid things,’ Borg replied.

  The comment did not amuse Siddique—he angrily shook his head.

  I was beginning to wish the judge would put Borg out of her misery and simply make a ruling. During a short break in the proceedings, I heard Borg turn impatiently to Wraight and say, ‘Listen, he’s not letting me talk.’

  The morning dragged on with prosecutor and judge wrangling. Borg was threatening serious action if the judge ruled against Simon’s evidence—an interlocutory appeal. I added the term to my growing legal vocabulary. It meant that Borg would take the impasse to the Court of Appeal, thus delaying the trial even further. Her revelation incensed the judge. He told her that if Simon’s evidence was so important she should have said so before the jury was empanelled and it could have been dealt with during pre-trial hearings. In the dock, Siddique calmly sketched the judge as he challenged Borg. The prosecutor tapped her manicured fingernails on the wooden table as she fielded the judge’s barrage of questions. The two argued until lunch, without resolution. In the end, the judge said he would make a ruling in the morning. Richard Simon would have to wait for another day. At 2.20 p.m. the jury was brought back in.

  Sydney art dealer Ralph Hobbs looked sharp in his dark blue suit and elegant tie finely patterned in white and black. He was a tall, solid man with a courteous manner. He explained that when Anita Archer phoned him in November 2009 to tell him that a Whiteley Lavender Bay painting was available he was very excited.

  ‘When it came in, I was less excited,’ he told the court.

  ‘It felt anaemic or flat, for want of a better term. It wasn’t as vibrant as the great Whiteleys are. It’s a funny statement, but it just didn’t feel right.’

  Didn’t feel right. Tricky emotions were sneaking into the court.

  Hobbs asked his valuer to do some research on the painting. ‘What concerned me was this slightly grey area about how it had actually come to be in the possession. Anything from an artist’s studio not via a gallery always raises a flag for me,’ Hobbs said. The provenance wasn’t strong enough to satisfy Hobbs, and he sent the painting back to Archer in Melbourne.

  Wraight’s cross-examination scored no points for the defence, although I was intrigued to hear that Hobbs was ‘pretty sure’ that Archer had also showed him the orange and blue paintings that were in court. So she had been involved with all three?

  If further checks on Lavender Bay throug
h the Window had established a satisfactory provenance, would Hobbs have hung on to the painting? Wraight asked.

  ‘If we were 100 per cent certain that the painting was authentic, as I said, then it would have become a discussion about price,’ Hobbs replied. ‘Because at nearly a million dollars, I would argue that it wasn’t a great Whiteley if it was a Whiteley.’

  If it was a Whiteley.

  Antonio Rincon seemed overwhelmed by the formality of the Supreme Court. His English was faltering and he had trouble understanding some of the questions. At one point he answered ‘yes’ when he meant ‘no’, and had to double back. The jury laughed at the mistake—but it was an empathetic laughter.

  His dark hair had grown longer since the committal and he seemed to have aged. He wore a black leather jacket, dark denim jeans and polished black shoes. In a hesitant voice he confirmed that he had worked with Brett Lichtenstein from 1996 to 2000 and learnt how to make 23-carat-gold, water-gilded frames in Whiteley’s preferred style. Siddique had ordered and been supplied with three such frames from him: one on or about 22 November 2007, another on or about 6 January 2009 and a third on or about 16 April 2009. Siddique gave Rincon the frames’ dimensions but never asked him to fit them. He did not see any of the paintings on which the frames ended up—until he was asked to inspect Big Blue Lavender Bay when it was being examined by Sloggett’s team. Rincon identified the frame as his. Asked to examine the paintings in court, Rincon confirmed that the frame on Big Blue Lavender Bay was his. The frame on Orange Lavender Bay was not.

  In cross-examination, Ribbands asked Rincon about his particular method of making Whiteley-style frames—Rincon had devised an improvement on the original method. Ribbands handed Rincon samples of a wooden board, a curved gold frame and a small black frame. Rincon held on to them with a bewildered look.

  The Lichtenstein method of framing included a gold outer frame with a black inner frame known as a ‘baguette’. This black inner frame fitted around the canvas or board itself, but would never intrude onto the painting—it was meant to create a contrasting black edge around the painting. The black baguette was nailed directly into the canvas or wooden panel. Removing the frame, and black baguette, would leave nail marks on the canvas or wooden panel and the frame itself might be damaged in the process.