Aboriginal Art Blog.com

Consultation on draft Indigenous art code of conduct

2009-01-16T21:59:00.002+10:30

A draft commercial code of conduct for the Indigenous art industry is now available for public comment.

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T14:10:00.004+10:30

Happy 2009 from Aboriginal Art Blog.com

Wishing everyone a very happy new year!

There will be some major changes at Aboriginal Art Blog.com this year starting soon.

The blog will be given a completely new look very soon and will be completely revamped which will benefit readers dramatically.

I will also be in a position this year to devote more time to updating the blog with much more information on a much more regular basis.

This was not always possible in 2008 but I'm very excited about being in a position to this in 2009 so make sure you check back often as Aboriginal Art Blog will become the must stop destination for everything in the world of Aboriginal Art!

Merry Christmas!!

2008-12-22T00:02:00.004+10:30

Hi everyone, Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a safe New Year.

It's been a very interesting year for the Aboriginal Art Market. It has been incredibly successful for many within the industry despite the world economic crisis in the last few months. Some galleries and dealers haven't noticed any downward trend in the amount of business they are conducting in comparison to previous years whilst others have found things have definitely tightened up.

I believe it is times like these that can be very positive on niche industries such as Aboriginal Art. In particular when the industry has just experienced a period of unprecedented and sustained growth that has seen the Aboriginal Art Industry make massive leaps forward in terms of respectability, interest, awareness and status within the global art market.

During this time, many new players have entered the market whilst many non-aboriginal focused galleries decided to add Aboriginal Art to their portfolio of artworks offered. Many of these people no doubt saw the opportunity to cash in on a booming industry. I don't believe there is anything wrong with that, as long as their method of operating is ethical and they have a genuine desire to become a real part of the Aboriginal Art Industry and support the artists through the highest of highs as well as the times when things might not be as simple as saying "hey we sell aboriginal art, you should get some it's huge"!

That is why these times can be great for an industry like ours! It has an almost magical way of weeding out the people who were just along for a quick ride, the ones who have no desire to support and grow the industry, the bad operators who struggle to operate below "perfect economic conditions" and the downright scammers who just want to make a $!

It's like the economic version of Darwin's theory of natural selection, it leaves an industry much stronger and better off with higher quality people throughout, which can only be a good thing for everyone!

What will 2009 bring? It's hard to say............part 2 in the new year, I need to meditate on it ;)

Tourism goes walkabout

2008-10-18T20:57:00.003+10:30

Never one to take a backward step, this article from Andrew Bolt discusses the new tourism ads promoting Australia. Whilst the jury is still out, the one thing i think the ads will definitely do is help with the promotion of Aboriginal Art as well as get potential visitors to think about "going bush" on their holiday "down under".

From an Aboriginal Art market point of view, the ads put the outback (where many of the best Aboriginal Art galleries are located) and Indigenous people at the forefront of tourists minds which can only be a good thing. Whether the campaign will be a success though, only time will tell. It's certainly a big risk and a very different approach. At least they're trying :)

Tourism goes walkabout

Article from:

Andrew Bolt

October 17, 2008 12:00am

ITS no-spin name spells it out: Tourism Australia is meant to sell Australia to tourists. Lots of them.

But now check Tourism Australia's new Come Walkabout ads: it's decided instead to sell spiritual therapy to urban salvation-seekers.

These two commercials, released this week and destined for screening in 22 countries, are invitations to a church, not a holiday. And to a very exclusive, family-unfriendly church, with not even the hint this time of Lara Bingle's famous bouncing breasts.

Sigh. Loosen up, guys.

Once again, the taxpayer-funded Tourism Australia has fallen to the modern temptation to preach, rather than please. Forgetting its last disaster, it's spending $40 million to advertise not Australia, but its own chic, green-tinged sensibilities.

Result? Go to my blog to see them for yourself.

What's most remarkable is not that director Baz Luhrmann's new ads are the first for Tourism Australia that spend more time on New York and Shanghai than on the country they're actually meant to be selling.

It's that the only glimpses shown of Australia are of the very bits few foreign tourists bother to visit.

Forget Sydney, with its bridge or Opera House. The Gold Coast, with its hotels. The Reef, with its resorts. Melbourne, with its MCG.

Ha! That's just where the crude crowds in their novelty T-shirts flock by the planeload. This time we're flogging places where few tourist buses go and no trains reach - outback places where jaded urbanites fancy they can commune with the Nature gods of tribal peoples, far from modern man and his buildings.

Luhrmann actually opens one of his two commercials in rainy New York, showing us a chic professional woman, perched over a late-night laptop, and losing it with the stress.

Her partner is whingeing to her on the phone: "It's always work. You're not the same person I fell in love with."

A hundred years ago, a woman in such existential despair may have consulted a priest. Thirty years ago, she'd go for a shrink. And 10 years ago, she'd go to a life-skills workshop by some guru she saw on Oprah.

But this is 2008, and salvation comes instead from a little Aboriginal boy, near naked, whose mere presence turns off televisions, computers and all the electronic machines of busy-busy.

He pours sparkling red dust in her hand and whispers: "Sometimes we have to get lost to find ourselves, sometimes we have to go walkabout."

How wonderfully mystic! And just how I plan my own holidays, consulting not a travel brochure but a fistful of dirt.

Only then does Luhrmann shift the scene to Australia, with Professional Woman and Whinger plunging into what may look like the pure waters of Katherine Gorge, but is actually Nature's own baptismal font.

You see, these urban spiritualists have just been reborn. Professional Woman emerges glowing newly, and the captions proclaim: "She arrived as Ms K. Mathieson, Executive VP of Sales. She departed as Kate."

As Luhrmann, director of Moulin Rouge, explains: "The land itself, the place itself, transforms her character." Mine, too, as you can tell.

Lurhmann's Shanghai ad tells of the same awakening. This time it's a stressed, emotionally dead Chinese finance manager who gets dust dropped into his hand, leading him to dance at dusk on a dining table set on a patch of our vast Outback.

How marvellously that will play to the kind of privileged professionals who salve their monied conscience by buying Wilderness Society calendars for their en suite and carrying their French brie home in green bags.

But I'm looking at these ads as an ever-eager tourist and wondering, what would my kids be doing while I bathed in spirituality?

Where would we shop afterwards? Where would we stay? How much time and money would it take to actually get to these distant places? And what would we do the next day?

Oops. Did I just break wind in church? But you see, there's a reason why just 150 foreign tourists a day visit Katherine Gorge, many of them backpackers with skinny wallets not worth fighting over.

And there's a reason you'll find tens of thousands at places where there's plenty to see, lots to do and enough Australians around to make them feel welcome. Like reef cruises. Wildlife parks. Big cities. Stuff for the kids.

Most tourists are, after all, more pragmatic than religious, and want to fill their too-few days of vacation with fun and value, rather than ommmms and clapping sticks, with a long and dusty trek afterwards to the airport.

I'd have thought Tourism Australia knew that already, given the history of its own ad campaigns.

Paul Hogan's "shrimp on the barbie" ads, after all, remain the most famous and loved, remembered even today by many who saw them 20 years ago.

How irresistible was his Australia - of beaches, bikinis, barbecues and an Opera House on the sun-lit harbour. It was an Australia populated by charming people who said "g'day" in charming accents, and not at all like Luhrmann's - at its best without a local to be seen or endured.

It worked, of course. Tourism to Australia doubled in the five years Hogan's ads played.

But such happy populism has always had its critics in our creative class. The artist-feeding Australia Council, for instance, said the Hogan ads made it "cringe", and Tourism Australia must have grown equally sensitive because in 2004 it decided to give us more tone.

You won't remember most of the ads it shot in that $120 million "See Australia" campaign because half were so bad they were scrapped before they were even released.

One showed Aboriginal artist Barbara Weir, sitting in red dirt in faded clothes, quoting DH Lawrence in her local language and painting dots.

Another had poet Les Murray reciting lines from his work: "Shorts in that plain like are an angelic nudity. Spirituality with pockets!"

And a third had a Brett Whiteley seascape come to animated life, to the gasps of Michael Parkinson. They may have catered only to our pretentions, but the Australia Council hailed them as "sophisticated, subtle and sexy".

Yes, as travel ads they worked. Trouble was, those who saw them wanted to travel fast to any place but where they were, or were watching.

Chastened, Tourism Australia flicked the switch back to more traditional fare of kangaroos on golf courses and Bingle on the beach wondering: "Where the bloody hell are you?" - perky stuff that saw traffic to its website leap 30 per cent in a year.

But the arts lovers have waited for their chance to seize back Tourism Australia, which seems the last battlefield of the culture wars.

And now they have it. The Bingle ads were a bungle, declares new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd - "a rolled gold disaster" - overlooking the fact that any dip in tourism had more to do with our dollar having gone up a third in value, pricing us out of many budgets.

So now we have Luhrmann, selling his Church of New Age Australia. What was Tourism Australia thinking?

Well, maybe it figured it could double the impact of its tight budget by commissioning ads that tie in closely to Lurhmann's outback epic, Australia, out in cinemas next month. I guess it's banking on the film being a look-at-us smash, even though it stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.

But I suspect from the launch ads that Luhrmann may have also given in to the fashionable urge to improve us locals, rather than lure in strangers.

In introducing the star of his ads, 12-year-old Brandon Walters, also in Australia, he made a boast that showed his heart of Reconciliation gold: "Our next leading man is about four foot high, (with) long, sort of gold hair, and is an Aboriginal boy."

A sweet and noble art-house conceit. But rather unlikely, to be bluntly pragmatic. Which is a lot like the vision sold by Tourism Australia's ads, really, and the hopes that rest on them.

Link to original article

Winning painting 'singing' to judge

2008-08-16T10:02:00.005+09:30

Here is another article about Makinti and her fantastic win in the 25th Annual Telstra Indigenous art awards.

I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate Makinti on her award. She is a fantastic artist and fully deserves the honour that this award brings.

Winning painting 'singing' to judge

BEN LANGFORD

August 16th, 2008

A PAINTING that sang out to one of the judges has won a revered artist from Kintore the $40,000 Telstra Art Award.

Makinti Napanangka, who is in her late seventies, was not in Darwin to collect her prize at last night's awards ceremony at the Museum and Art Gallery of the NT.

Her untitled work depicts designs associated with the Lupulnga rockhole dreaming site.

Judge Hetti Perkins said the controversy surrounding ethical concerns about some entrants was in her mind when she was considering the winners.

"We were very aware of it," she said.

"But we were so preoccupied with the aesthetics that I don't even know if we would have got into the ethics."

Six art centres withdrew their works after ethical concerns over some entries but the paintings at the centre of the storm did not figure among the winners.

The other judge, artist Judy Watson, said Napanangka's painting sang to her.

"It just was like singing across the space," she said.

"When you look away from it, its double-vision follows you - it's still there. The colour stays with you."

Napanangka's work, through Papunya Yula Artists, is already highly valued and will increase following her win.

The Telstra National Aboriginal and Islander Art Award's three-dimensional prize went to Nyapanyapa Yunupingu, whose painting is accompanied by a video where she describes being attacked and gored by a buffalo.

Other category winners were Doreen Reid Nakamarra from the Warbuton Ranges in Western Australia (general painting), Terry Ngamandara Wilson from Gochan Jiny-jirra in Arnhem Land, (bark painting), and Dennis Nona from Badu Island in the Torres Strait (works on paper).

The art award is part of the Darwin Festival.

Link to Article

Makinti Napanangka Wins Telstra Award

2008-08-16T01:05:00.006+09:30

Congratulations to Makinti Napanangka on winning this years Telstra Indigenous Art award!

Makinti Napanangka wins $40k indigenous art award

Article from:

Suzanna Clarke

August 16, 2008 12:00am

NORTHERN Territory painter Makinti Napanangka has won the $40,000 25th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards.

The problem-plagued awards were announced in Darwin last night, August 15.

Queenslander Dennis Nona from the Torres Strait was named as the winner of the $4000 Works on Paper award.

One of the awards' two judges, renowned Queensland artist Judy Watson, said: "Makinti's painting sang across the space. It has an inner light, and outshines everything else."

The awards were overshadowed by a controversy that saw seven Aboriginal arts centres pull their works in protest at the involvement of artists represented by private art dealer John Ioannou, who was appointed to run a Western Desert art centre two years ago.

Mr Ioannou has denied allegations he used bribery to obtain his position.

Three of the five winners, including Ms Napanangka and Mr Nona, were too ill to attend last night's presentations.

"We (the judges) support the artists who made the stand on behalf of the arts centres, but at the same time that didn't influence us in our judging," Ms Watson said of the controversy.

Mr Nona was the winner of last year's main award.

Ms Watson described his print of entwined yam vines, as "a very strong work, despite its fragility and delicacy".

Winners in other categories, from the total of 117 works, were Doreen Reid Nakamarra from WA for the General Painting Award, Terry Ngamandara Wilson from NT in the Bark Painting Award and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu from NT for her 3D work.

Federal Arts Minister Peter Garrett this week announced an injection of $37 million to the indigenous arts sector, including $8 million for Aboriginal art centres and arts support organisations. This partly addresses recommendations made by the Senate indigenous art inquiry last year.

Mr Garrett has also given qualified support for an industry code of practice, being developed by the National Association for the Visual Arts, to combat "carpet bagging".

"All Australians will enjoy the cultural benefits which will flow from the projects that receive these funds; the dance, festivals, music, television and radio productions, the art and crafts, and the revival and strengthening of our indigenous languages," Mr Garrett said.

STROKE of genius . . . Makinti Napanangka from Kintore
in the Northern Territory has won the $40,000 25th
Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards.

Link to original article

Art Resale Royalty Scheme Reality

2008-08-10T09:51:00.006+09:30

The Government have announced the resale royalty scheme they committed to introducing will become reality. It's a very interesting situation indeed.

I'm all for anything that will put more money into the pockets of Artists and their families. Whether this royalty scheme is the way to go, is hard to say. Details haven't been finalised yet however it would be safe to say that this is going to create a big shake up in the arts industry and may create more problems than it solves.

One question that needs to be asked now is "what is Art", and "what qualifies and what doesn't and if it doesn't what right does the person who believes they have a legitimate claim to participation in the royalty scheme have"?

The proverbial can of worms that this opens is enormous. It shouldn't be possible for one section of the art sector to participate in this scheme when others who justifiably have a claim can not. So I'm guessing that the royalty scheme will cover all types and areas of Art in Australia. Where does that begin and end?

There is some unique as well as weird and wacky stuff out there considered by the creator and it's admirers to be ART.

It may sound like i am being pedantic to make a point, however i strongly believe that it is a genuine issue and one that is not easily solved. As an example just off the top of my head, and I'm sure there are many better ones, imagine a car enthusiast who restores a car and adds a completely unique artwork to the entire car through a custom paint job. The owner may very well consider it more a piece of unique Australian Art than a car. If he was to sell it and then down the track it's value increased dramatically and it was resold, could he expect a royalty?

Music is considered art. Does that mean they now have another royalty avenue to pursue? Could that old collection of vinyl records that is suddenly popular again or holds a rare "unknown" recording from a famous musician incur a payment to the owner?

I have a Ricky Ponting signed limited edition framed print. If Ricky cements his place as one of the greatest batsman of all time and i decide to auction it down the track am i required to pay a royalty to Channel Nine who licence the product and flog them mercilessly in between every over of a cricket game? Or is memorabilia not art? What if it was unique compared to others or a one one off? Art prints are not unique and they are considered most definitely art.

Britannica Online defines art as "the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others."

Wikipedia states:

Art refers to a diverse range of human activities, creations, and expressions that are appealing or attractive to the senses or have some significance to the mind of an individual. The word "art" may be used to cover all or any of the arts, including music, literature and other forms. It is most often used to refer specifically to the visual arts, including media such as painting, sculpture, and printmaking. However it can also be applied to forms of art that stimulate the other senses, such as music, an auditory art. Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy which considers art.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art

As you can see, it's a mine field!

There are other issues as well. What if an artwork is resold multiple times overseas? What obligation would the owner of an artwork purchased overseas from someone already overseas have? How could the integrity of the system be upheld? More importantly, does this create a potential "loop hole"

Whilst this scheme has clearly been aimed at the Aboriginal Art sector of the market, you can't have one rule for Aboriginal art and a different one for art from every non indigenous sector.

Other issues also arise relating to the estates of many deceased artists. Often there is conjecture as too who has legitimate claim. This scheme may complicate and magnify these issues. Could this lead to protracted legal fights with claims and counter claims?

The other issue, which is a major one is that the market may "factor in" these potential royalties in advance. This may mean that buyers will expect to pay less upfront for a artwork knowing they may have to pay a royalty down the track. If the market does this, then the galleries and dealers may have to factor that in when determining how much to pay the artist for a piece. This would seem almost a certainty, the big question is, how may artists will be happy to receive less today for their work, with the possibility that they may get a "kickback" down the track, and that's a big maybe! And it very well maybe after they have departed this world.

If you know Artists, many will not be happy with that situation.

I think Adrian Newstead makes some very valid points in the article below. It's also interesting to note that the Government Senate Inquiry rejected the proposal for the scheme.

I also respect that some artists and associated people within the industry believe this scheme is a very good thing and i understand why they believe that. Whether that turns out to be true in reality is very much up in the air. There are many issues that this creates to solve a perceived problem that possibly could be addressed in other ways that wouldn't have such wide spread and unquantifiable issues for the industry.

Only time will tell and hopefully as more details come to hand some of the issues raised will be eliminated.

Artists to be paid for every sale, forever more

Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri's 1977 work Warlugulong, which sold for $2.4 million.
Photo: James Davies

Richard Jinman and Joel Gibson
August 8, 2008

AS AUSTRALIAN art continues its record-breaking run at auction, the Federal Government has come good on a promise to share the spoils with artists and their families.

It is determined to introduce a resale royalty scheme this year giving artists a percentage of the sale price whenever their work is sold. The details have yet to be finalised but some industry bodies have called for a flat rate of 5 per cent on all sales and for the royalty to apply to all works sold for more than $500. That would mean an artist who sold a work 10 years ago for $500 could reap up to $10,000 if it was sold again for 200,000.

For some artists, particularly big names such as the late Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri and Brett Whiteley, whose work has sold for record prices since their deaths, the scheme will generate large sums of money as their paintings are sold again and again on the secondary market.

The Government committed itself to the resale royalty yesterday as part of its response to last year's senate inquiry into the indigenous art market.

It says the scheme will not only benefit famous artists and their estates. If the threshold is set low it will also benefit thousands of less famous artists such as Jeffrey Samuels, 51, who has been painting since he was seven.

For Samuels, whose work is owned by the Art Gallery of NSW, it was "about time" the art industry developed a conscience. The Ngemba man from Bourke subsists on welfare and has never been informed of a resale of any of his works.

The Arts Minister, Peter Garrett, said the resale royalty and a new code of conduct to regulate the industry were cornerstones of the Government's efforts to bolster and clean up an industry blighted by exploitation.

"I think we're really starting to describe a pretty substantial agenda for the future," he said.

But the Government's determination to install a resale royalty - a move the Senate inquiry rejected - was condemned by the art consultant, Adrian Newstead. He says it will be "an absolute disaster" for the indigenous and non-indigenous art markets which are already starting to falter in weakening economic conditions.

Mr Newstead says a "very, very small number" of works by indigenous artists have sold for more than $100,000. "Only 17 living and deceased indigenous artists have generated secondary market sales in excess of $1 million. Had there been a resale royalty on indigenous art since 1994, 86 per cent of all the money that would have been collected would have gone into the estates of seven dead artists."

Mr Newstead said the royalty was a distraction from other, more difficult, issues.

"A resale royalty is no substitute whatsoever for enlightened government policy in the area of indigenous health, education and community development. This is the Government's responsibility, not the responsibility of people who sympathise with Aboriginal aspirations and put their money directly into their pockets."

There was criticism, too, of the Government's decision to back a system of self-regulation for a market often characterised by the exploitation of artists by so-called carpetbaggers. An art market analyst, Michael Reid, said self-regulation was doomed to failure and the Government should have launched a "focused strike" on exploitation using legislation.

"I pushed the importance of the accreditation of art dealers just as you accredit taxi drivers, dentists and even lawyers. We need to respond vigorously with immediate codification in terms of the law in terms of who can and who can't deal in Aboriginal art. Those people who will opt into the code, we don't need to regulate, and those who don't need to be regulated."

But the royalty deal was "amazing" news for artists, said the celebrated Yolngu artist Gulumbu Yunupingu, 61, from Gunyungarra in Arnhem Land. The eldest sister of Aboriginal leaders Galarrwuy and Mandawuy Yunupingu, she has seen her works bought for $800 and resold for $6000. Her value has soared in recent years after she won the 2004 National Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Art award and was one of seven indigenous Australian artists selected to create site-specific works for the Musee du quai Branly in Paris in 2006.

At the Garma indigenous festival yesterday, she said: "We have been trying for maybe seven years to get this done. I'm very thankful to Mr Garrett. It's an important step for many, many artists like me."

Link to original article

Govt response not far away

2008-08-03T03:52:00.003+09:30

It wont be long beofre we have the Governments response to the Indigenous Art Inquiry. Much has been said about the inquiry and some of the issues it hopes to address and I plan to speak more about it before and after the findings are realeased so stay tuned.

Govt finalising response to Indigenous art inquiry: Garrett

Posted Tue Jul 29, 2008 6:04pm AEST

Federal Arts Minister Peter Garrett says the Government is finalising its response to a Senate inquiry report on the Indigenous art industry released more than a year ago.

The inquiry recommended a national code of conduct for the industry and a $25 million fund for community art centres.

The National Association for the Visual Arts has renewed its calls for the Government to implement the report's recommendations, amid new allegations of unscrupulous art dealing in central Australia.

A spokesman for Mr Garrett says the Government is providing additional support to Aboriginal art centres, including $250,000 for the Ikuntji community at Haast's Bluff north-west of Alice Springs.

He said there was also $1.5 million in the recent Budget to establish a resale royalty scheme for Aboriginal artists.

The scheme, due to be in place early next year, would provide artists whose works are sold on the secondary art market with an ongoing income.

The spokesman says the Government is also waiting to consider a national code of conduct being developed for the industry.

What's right isn't always black or white

2008-08-03T03:26:00.003+09:30

At what point does "Aboriginal Art" become "Aboriginal Art"?

Is it the style of art or the artist that determines this?

Is Aboriginal style Art by a white man Aboriginal Art?

Is western style art like landscape, portrait, abstract or expressionism by an Aboriginal person also Aboriginal Art?

Interesting questions that would no doubt divide the opinions of artists and art lovers everywhere.

The issue has taken an interesting twist with the investigation by the ACCC into the selling of Aboriginal Art by non-indigenous artists.

This is an issue I have often pondered and after much consideration i have arrived at a simple straight forward view.

If an artwork is painted in the traditional styles associated with Australian Aboriginal Art then it is Aboriginal Art regardless of the artist being indigenous or not.

If this art was to be displayed or sold it is imperative that it be clearly stated that the artwork was completed by a non-indigenous artist. I also believe that it would be prudent to avoid using the term "Authentic" Aboriginal Art as this serves little purpose but to confuse the issue as the term is commonly used to distinguish artworks by indigenous artists against cheap "souvenir" gifts that are often "mass produced" and sold in tourist outlets.

The article below describes a very interesting situation and without further information it is hard to pass judgement. It will be interesting to see how the ACCC proceed and if they have similar beliefs on what constitutes Aboriginal Art?

Row over Aboriginal art

Thomas Chamberlin

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

NON-Indigenous Cairns artist Stephen McLean (Duk Duk) says his career is in tatters after the Australian consumer watchdog's investigation into his dealer selling his work as "authentic Aboriginal art".

As industry and dealers yesterday expressed their anger over claims made by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Mr McLean said he had never pretended to be indigenous, despite going by a tribal name.

Doongal Aboriginal Art and Artefacts, which has galleries in Cairns and Kuranda, is expected to face the ACCC in the Federal Court in Brisbane next month for allegedly selling bogus Aboriginal art made by three non-indigenous artists.

The local artists are Mr McLean, his brother Paul Whiteman "Kulangu Balanda" and Diane Sharp.

The ACCC says Doongal’s owners, Farzad and Homa Nooravi, misrepresented to the public that the work was created by artists of Aboriginal descent through their website, signs and certificates of authenticity saying "original Aboriginal art".

Mr McLean yesterday said he started selling his art by his real name in 1990, but was later asked by Shirley Collins, the indigenous owner of Raintrees Aboriginal art gallery in Darwin, to use the tribal name "Duk Duk".

He later sought traditional testimonies from Aboriginal people after seeking permission to paint in his own Aboriginal style.

Mr McLean said he had not made a cent since Mr Nooravi took his and the other artist’s paintings off the shelves three months ago.

"I’ve always maintained how white I am when selling to galleries or privately," he said.

"I get treated the same as the local indigenous people. I’ve seen paintings of mine that I’ve sold to him (Mr Nooravi) for $1000 that have sold for between $5000 and $10,000," he said.

Yesterday, Kuranda’s Aboriginal Galleries of Australia owner Jim Bonnell said he backed the ACCC investigation on authenticity.

Not-for-profit contemporary Cairns arts organisation KickArts said it found the ACCC allegations "alarming".

"These are allegations that still need to be proven," director Rae O’Connell said.

Article courtesy the cairns post

Melbourne Art Fair is here!

2008-08-03T03:21:00.003+09:30

Melbourne Art Fair

Robert Nelson, Reviewer

The Melbourne Art Fair has a cultural significance beyond its amazing collection of 80 galleries.

Genre

Decorative/Design, Photography, Sculpture, Multimedia, Painting and Drawing

Location

Royal Exhibition Building

Address

Nicholson St, Carlton Gardens, Carlton

Date

30 July 2008 to 3 August 2008

Online Bookings

artfair.com.au

The Melbourne Art Fair has a cultural significance beyond its amazing collection of 80 galleries represented in stalls throughout the enormous Royal Exhibition Building. The convenience alone would justify the event, as you get to see and compare galleries of a great range that would take you many kilometres and days to cover, especially, of course, the international galleries, which always bring great excitement to the local scene.

The significance of the event is not just that the public enthusiasm for art is visible, with visitors and collectors talking to people from galleries. It's also a chance for the art scene to recognise itself as a community, a mob that has a public and a mission, often pursued selflessly and altruistically against the liabilities of running a gallery in town.

The commissioned works, exhibited at centre stage, have a considerable role in shaping the event because they have the potential to create a keynote for the bustling arcade of shopfronts. This year, both commissioned works rise to the occasion, reflecting two related vital issues in contemporary society: our relations with the Third World and the imminent meltdown of the First World economies due to dwindling petrol.

David Griggs has constructed a tent (Frog boy's dissertation into a new karaoke cult, 2008), painted with large billboard imagery, uniting the use of canvas in its twin role as tarp and picture. His bright images are painted with hired hands from the Philippines, using a skill that is, alas, under threat of disappearing through new technologies.

With the facility of Indian billboard artists, Griggs' paintings have embedded in their construction the ethical quandary of Western capital buying cheap off-shore labour. Europe is especially clever at this game: it gets the tough work done in sweatshops but adds value through clever image-design and messages, so the commodity becomes lucrative for the entrepreneur in global markets. As in the famous Marxist analysis, very little of the profits is returned to the workers.

Griggs has achieved an ingenious inversion of what normally happens. In the art market, artists do the work but others make a killing out of the investment, leaving crumbs to the artist in the garret. Griggs has made a new solidarity between himself as commissioner and hired labourers, as both seek to keep something alive that might otherwise perish. Inside the tent, Griggs is seen in a video purchasing a large crucifix to take to a local family as a gesture of identification.

Taking on the other side of our scary world, Peter Hennessey with My Humvee (inversion therapy) has constructed a mostly wooden Humvee armoured personnel vehicle with blind windows and stood the fortified car on its nose. It's the famous car that has been seen - the right way up - taking Americans on their tour of the embattled OPEC nations. Hennessey's spectacular, perfect crash has both military and economic overtones, as the wheels of manufacture have lost touch with the earth.

Together with military breakdown, his humbling of the Humvee is a token for every petrol-dependent quarter of society; because sooner or later, they will all have their noses rubbed in the consequences of our collective headstrong ecological blindness.

The precarious black monument balancing on its bullbar sends out waves that ricochet throughout the Art Fair. For example, it's felt in the beautiful sculpture of a disembodied and exploded motorbike by Richard Goodwin at Christine Abrahams. Called Red Octopus, the sprawling machine has fallen out of assembly through stresses beyond its nuts and bolts.

So, too, the slightly sick lament for automotive love in Scott Redford's appropriations of road culture at Gould Galleries. The panels plastered with zooming logos are flattened out, as if prepared for the tomb, morbidly turned into paintings on the end of speed.

Even the scene of an airport by Joanna Lamb at Johnston Gallery makes you uncomfortable, as if the jet has lost the wherewithal to reach the runway. The jumbo is already a pale antique, ironically fossilised by the absence of fossil fuel. In other pictures, her streets have no motor cars in them: the roads themselves - all designed for cars - seem deserted and obsolete in their graphic width.

Even the Aboriginal art this year has become galvanised as so much more than a beautiful commodity, especially with the leadership of urban indigenous artists. Brook Andrew at Tolarno Galleries, with spooky historical material in top production values, and Gordon Hookey at Nellie Castan Gallery with a confronting gallows and pungent imagery, provide a historical and political centrepiece to contextualise the beautiful productions from the desert.

Outdated laws hurting international Aboriginal Art sales

2008-08-03T02:46:00.002+09:30

Here is a very interesting article about the problems Aboriginal Art collectors from overseas can face when purchasing expensive and important pieces.

With the market having experienced phenomenal growth this decade, sometimes laws that seemed adequate just a few years ago can quickly become outdated and problematic.

Hopefully the government can recognise this and move quickly to rectify the imbalance that is now obvious in today's market.

Buyer beware

The rest of the world is being denied Aboriginal art by outmoded government laws, writes Benjamin Genocchio.

JOHN WILKERSON IS waiting for his painting. Last July, the New York-based collector of Aboriginal art bought Tommy Lowry Tjapaltjarri's painting Two Men Dreaming at Kuluntjarranya (1984) at Sotheby's annual Aboriginal art auction in Melbourne for $576,000. He paid for the artwork, and Sotheby's went about the process of applying for an export permit. He is still awaiting a response.

A decade ago, the Federal Government amended the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act 1986 to keep valuable national heritage objects - specifically Aboriginal paintings produced at Papunya during the early 1970s - in Australia. Since then, every Aboriginal artwork at least 20 years or older with a market value of more than $10,000 has required export clearance.

I am all for banning the export of art of national cultural value. For example, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri's 1977 painting Warlugulong also sold at Sotheby's last year for $2.4 million to a dealer acting on behalf of the National Gallery. This was a work of real national significance, one of the most important 20th-century Australian paintings, and rightly deserved to remain in Australia.

But the law protecting cultural heritage is no longer serving the interests of Aboriginal artists, the international promotion of Aboriginal art, or the market. I would even go so far as to say that it has been very damaging to the art market as a whole, and to the world's awareness of the best Australian Aboriginal art. If we do not change the law, the international market will wither and die.

Take Two Men Dreaming at Kuluntjarranya. Not a single Australian art museum or public institution bid on the painting when it was put up for auction, according to Sotheby's. It contains no representations of especially important secret or sacred Aboriginal ancestral material, nor does it have massive historical significance. It is from 1984. Wilkerson bought it fairly on the open market. But a year later he still hasn't heard a word about its status, other than that its export was "deemed contentious" by "experts".

The problem here is at least twofold. On the one hand, the export permit guidelines have not kept pace with the galloping market for art. The average price for a work by a young or emerging Aboriginal artist is $5000 to $10,000, while established artists charge between $50,000 and $100,000 a painting. This means that potentially every work of Aboriginal art now being sold could be subject at some point to our protectionist, nationalistic export laws.

There is also an inexplicable discrepancy between the breadth of export controls applied to Australian indigenous and non-indigenous painting. Export controls on non-indigenous Australian paintings (photographs, sculpture and works on paper are governed by separate guidelines) only apply to artworks at least 30 years or older with a market value of more than $250,000. This sounds more reasonable. Why, then, is the law not the same for both?

Then there is the length of time it takes for the export permit process. This is a real disincentive to international collectors of Aboriginal art. According to Sotheby's Tim Klingender, it is "not unusual" for the export permit process to take "a year or year-and-a-half" to complete.

Meanwhile, the artwork typically sits in storage at the auction house, bought and paid for but unable to be delivered. (The Tommy Lowry recently received a temporary export permit for exhibition in the US in 2009 and is being reframed prior to shipment.) If the export permit is denied, the buyer is stuck having bought a work they can't take out of Australia.

Nobody likes the idea of foreigners buying up our precious heritage. I know I don't like it. That is why we have the law. But the legislation as it stands today is so sweeping in its scope that overseas museums and private collectors are effectively prevented from acquiring any important Aboriginal art. We are damaging, in the process, years of efforts by art centres, dealers, auction houses, museums and the Australia Council to promote Aboriginal art internationally.

We are also short-changing artists, as foreign money increasingly heads elsewhere in the international art market. This has a real impact. Having visited dozens of Aboriginal art communities over the years, I know all too well how poor most artists are. I also know art making is often their only independent source of income. Artists do not benefit directly from record auction prices for their works when they are sold by private collectors, but it can often enable them to charge equivalent sums for new works. This means more money in their pockets.

Big secondary market prices also give people confidence in buying the very best - and expensive - contemporary Aboriginal art, so it has other benefits as well. Think about this for a minute: if one said that contemporary Chinese art could not leave China, or that Damien Hirst's many and varied artworks could not leave Britain, or that Jeff Koons' sculptures could not leave the US, do you think that the value of these works of art would have risen so significantly?

I am not advocating scrapping Australia's cultural heritage laws. What I am advocating are export controls that balance the desire to protect our nation's cultural heritage, the rights of owners, and the promotion of a buoyant international market for Aboriginal art. But, most importantly, I am arguing for laws that recognise that if cultural property has a value beyond a particular country that gives it significance, then it is also worth sharing.

Benjamin Genocchio, a former art critic for The Australian, lives in New York where he writes for The New York Times.

Here is the original article featured in The Age

Raymond Walters Japananka exhibition

2008-08-03T02:38:00.003+09:30

Raymond Walters Japananka To Hold Exhibition

by Paul Cashmere

One of the Australian Aboriginal communities most respected artists Raymond Walters Japananka will hold an exhibition in Melbourne next week.

Raymond`s art comes from the lineage of Clifford Japaitjarri Possum, considered by many to be the Aboriginal art worlds most renowned artists.

One of the more recent well-known works of Raymond was his commissioned design of the V8 Supercar for Team Vodafone 2008.

His works is noted for its use of colour and texture of traditional drawings. “During the dreamtime and many generations between then and now, our culture and traditions were created during ceremony on the `Stomping Grounds`. We still to this day use the grounds of our ancestors,” said Raymond.

Raymond Walters Japananka works will be on display from Wednesday 23 July at The Katrina Manton Gallery, 325 Montague Street, Albert Park.

Out of the desert exhibition opens in Sydney

2008-08-03T02:15:00.004+09:30

Foxtel viewers may have seen the ads for the following exhibition in the last few weeks.

Great to see such a fantastic exhibition being promoted on national TV.

If you have the opportunity, be sure to have a look!

Papunya Artwork Exhibition opens at the Australian Museum

The Aboriginal exhibition, ‘Papunya Painting: Out of the Desert’ at Sydney’s Australian Museum opened last Saturday featuring a collection of rare Indigenous artworks.

There are early masterpieces of the renowned 1970s Papunya Tula art movement that spanned more than a decade and transformed understandings of Aboriginal art.

Within the exhibition there are 37 paintings and 24 cultural objects, two paintings of which are accompanied by music played overhead in the museum. They include the 1974 ‘Ngurrapalnga’ by Uta Uta (Wuta Wuta) Tjangala Old Man Dreaming and 1974 ‘Possum Men of Yirtjurunya’ by Anatjari (Yanyatjarri) Tjakamarra.

All the paintings are of Dreaming stories and feature ‘dot patterning’, some such as the 1975 ‘Budgerigars in the Sandhills’ by Billy Stockman Tjapaltajarri consisting of splashes of bright pink colours symbolising the travels of his Budgerigar ancestors.

Yet the acrylics, according to Vivien Johnson, curator of the exhibition, were still being developed at the time they were painted, showing just how innovative the artworks really are in their experimentation and depiction of contemporary Aboriginal culture.

A must see at the exhibition is the 1975 painting ‘Trial by Fire’ by Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri that needs to be examined from afar to completely capture its haunting presence. An ash coloured patterning is used to create the smoky shape of human figures upon a dot pattern background.

There is also a ‘Tjitji Gathering Place’ for kids, a perfect area for kids on school holidays to relax, play and learn, with tables where kids can trace their own ‘dot patterning’ artworks.

Throughout the exhibition kids can also engage themselves by reading the information tiles placed next to each artwork and object, whilst following a honey ant trail that takes them from start to finish.

‘Papunya Painting: Out of the Desert’ will run at the Australian Museum until November 2 2008.

Admission is $15 adult; $10 concession / WYD08 pilgrims; $7 child (5 – 15 years); Free for children under 5 years of age.

WARNING: Visitors should be aware that this exhibition includes images and names of deceased people that may cause sadness or distress to Aboriginal People

Time to step on some Aboriginal Art

2008-08-03T01:50:00.003+09:30

Here is a great idea. Aboriginal Art you can walk all over!

It seems so obvious but up until now quality carpets have not been readily available featuring Aboriginal designs.

No more worrying if 87% off RRP is a great bargain or a Persians ticket to retirement :)!

Aboriginal Art seems the perfect fit for the rug market and now there is a company offering the concept in a serious manner to all art enthusiasts.

Be sure to have a look at the websites!

Stunning carpet art

Stylex Carpet introduces an exclusive range of new designs in woven axminster and hand-tufted, hand-carved rugs. Their new axminster line, Quadrato is a minimalist interpretation of the ultimate Italian style available in four stock colours with custom colours available. Constructed of the finest wool, Quadrato is suitable for commercial or residential premises and will provide years of quality performance and fine floor fashion.

Stylex has brought a new twist to aboriginal art by introducing the Dreamtime in textile form. In collaboration with Glen Austin and three Aborginal artists, “Forty Thousand Spirits” is a collection of original designs interpreted in hand-carved, hand tufted rugs.

Their beauty is breathtaking, their colours extraordinary, and their stories magical. Each Dreamtime art piece rug in this 13 piece collection is sized at 2m x 3m (78.5” X 118”) Weight – 80 oz/ yd2 and is priced upon application. Dreamtime Rugs are Museum/Heirloom quality constructed of 100% Pure New Virgin New Zealand wool.

The entire collection may be viewed at dreamtimerugart.net.au The new Stylex web site at www.stylex.com.au is packed with loads of great new carpet and rug design ideas. The site has been designed to load fast for easy and quick searching.

Boycott of Art Award draws wide spread criticism

2008-08-03T01:43:00.002+09:30

With the Telstra Indigenous Art awards rapidly approaching, a furore has erupted over the boycott by a number of art centres. I personally don't agree that this is the best way to with issues that they may have.

Telstra have been a fantastic supporter of Indigenous art and the award has become the most prestigious in the country.

Concerns about the transparency of the guidelines for competitors seems a stretch from my point of view as it has always been tough for artists, galleries and art centres to have their works selected for the awards. If they accepted works on a whim then maybe there would be a legitimate issue but if you ask many people, it is very difficult to get selected. For this reason it surpises me that a question mark about quidelines has arisen.

I feel that the issues run much deeper than guidelines regarding entry to a competition and have much more to do with certain people's thoughts on how art centres should or shouldn't be managed.

That is a whole separate story and the Telstra awards do not deserve to be potentially tarnished due to disagreements over issues the organisers and Telstra have no control over.

There are much better ways to argue a cause than to drag the whole industry down by trying to make a point through the very public, well known and supported Telstra awards.

The bottom line is that the artworks in this years Telstra awards will deserve to be there, no doubt about it, and the only realistic question regarding the entries will be that many others did not make it that probably deserved too, if numbers permitted.

Some will say that it is unfortunate than many fine artworks miss out but it certainly shows the art world that the guidelines for entry are not compromised.

Boycotting of indigenous art award attacked

Ashleigh Wilson, Corrie Perkin

A RESPECTED Northern Territory gallery owner has slammed a decision by remote art centres to withdraw their work from the nation's most prestigious Aboriginal art award.

Organisers of the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards went to ground yesterday after The Australian revealed works from six Aboriginal art centres had been withdrawn.

The works, all short-listed for the final round, were pulled following rumoured ethical concerns from the centres about other entrants in the competition.

It is believed the origins of the dispute go back two years, when a prominent private dealer took over the operations of a western desert art centre in competition with other community-owned art centres.

Darwin gallery owner Karen Brown yesterday called on the art centres to explain their reasons for withdrawing their works from an event aimed at celebrating leading Aboriginal art. "Withdrawing their artists is insulting all the other artists (in the awards) as well," Ms Brown said.

"Let's get together in the industry and discuss it. This is a time of celebration of great artists and great work."

John Oster, executive officer of Desart, the umbrella group for Aboriginal art centres in central Australia, told the ABC most people in the industry were fair, reputable and legitimate. "However, there are perennial stories that keep surfacing, they almost surface by the month about unethical and nefarious goings-on," he said. "And that doesn't do the industry any good."

Dianna Isgar, co-ordinator of the remote Papulankutja Artists, said she did not enter any of her centre's artists because of concerns about the transparency of the guidelines for competitors.

As the controversy threatens to overshadow next month's awards, Telstra's sponsorship manager, Greg Swain, yesterday reaffirmed the company's commitment to the event.

National Association for the Visual Arts executive director Tamara Winikoff said the dispute highlighted the need for an industry-wide code of conduct.

Artist Roseanne Kemarre Ellis, who sells paintings through the Amoonguna Arts Centre on the outskirts of Alice Springs, is one of the many indigenous artists who entered the awards but missed out on selection. "Everybody should put in their painting for the Telstra award," she said.

Joy for Jim as helicopter kid turns up 50 years on

2008-08-02T13:20:00.004+09:30

Fantastic story below about Aboriginal Artist Helicopter Tjungurrayi and the man that rescued him as a sick boy.

With so much media attention in the last few years about the many unfortunate incidents involving Aboriginal people and their interaction with the white man in the past, this story shows that many good deeds were done by many good people.

It's great to hear these stories and I tip my hat to Victoria for a great piece that reveals an intriguing story of how one of our leading artists became known as Helicopter!

Joy for Jim as helicopter kid turns up 50 years on

Victoria Laurie

MORE than half a century after plucking a sick Aboriginal boy from the vast desert interior of Western Australia, helicopter pilot Jim Ferguson has learned that the boy survived to become a respected artist who still paints today.

The discovery came when the 79-year-old retiree read an article about the Canning stock route in The Weekend Australian last month, which recounted the story of artist "Helicopter" Tjungurrayi's childhood rescue and transfer to Balgo, where today he paints colourful canvasses worth tens of thousands of dollars.

For Mr Ferguson, a 50-year-old mystery was solved. Until then, a few old photographs and a newspaper report from the time were all that remained of his 1957 encounter. "I assumed the boy had died. I'm absolutely thrilled that after all these years, he's still alive and I played a small part in that."

Last week, he was put in telephone contact with Balgo community's Warlayirti art centre and was told that Helicopter wanted to talk to him. "Thank you very much for taking me to Balgo," the robust 61-year-old artist said. "(I'm) happy now."

Now confined to a wheelchair in his home at Willaura, Victoria, Mr Ferguson was a 28-year-old conducting aerial surveys east of Well 40, along the Canning stock route, when he saw a young woman. "I wondered where she was from. We hadn't seen any blacks at all, although the size of trees indicated water not far below the surface."

On the next trip to Well 40, the woman appeared again. Shortly afterwards, the bushes around the camp began to rustle. "Suddenly about half a dozen men appeared from behind these bushes dragging their spears in the sand. Matman (the team surveyor) grabbed the .303 and I pulled out my revolver, but all was OK. They stuck their spears in the ground." Mr Ferguson then posed the group for a photograph.

The woman then brought forward a pitifully thin boy, about 10 years old, with swollen joints. Mr Ferguson thought he might have had rickets, although it is still not known what was wrong with him. He felt the child might die without medical attention. "I gestured that they could come back with us to Balgo, and walked away."

The pair clambered into the helicopter. He then flew them 290km to Balgo mission. Mr Ferguson last saw them sitting in a Land Rover, the woman clad in a floral dress, and the boy naked. "I never knew what happened to the boy and his mother. I thought they were dead."

Helicopter, whose nickname stuck, told his rescuer he had not been afraid of getting into the helicopter, especially when he looked down. "I saw a little truck on the ground, but I thought it was a porcupine (echidna)."

He said the woman was Kupunyina, his aunt, who lived until 1986. Several of the men in the photographs are still alive. One, his artist half-brother Brandy Tjungurrayi, was with him at the art centre this week.

Unwittingly, Mr Ferguson had captured in his photographs a group of extended family members who would go on to become stars of Australian art. In the centre was Freddie West, the first Papunya Tula dot painting artist. Next to him stood a young Brandy. On the left was the late artist Wimmitji and his brother Micky Candle.

Today, an exhibition featuring the work of Helicopter will end in Melbourne's Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi. When Helicopter next visits Melbourne, a frail Jim Ferguson will attempt a trip into the city. "It might be the last thing I do, but I've decided I'd like to meet him."

Link to original article

Aboriginal Art and Wealth Building

2008-07-03T00:08:00.002+09:30

A recent article in The Australian talks about finance books and their trend away from "getting rich quick" strategies to emphasising value, innovation and diversity, in line with a more conservative, considered investment climate.

Aboriginal Art was mentioned in the article and i thought it would be worthwhile listing it here for those who didn't see it in The Australian.

A considered approach to building wealth

Derek Parker | June 25, 2008

THE recent crop of books on personal finance underlines the trend towards DIY investment, running the gamut of possibilities across the spectrum of experience.

In the past year there has been a shift away from "get rich quick" tomes towards books emphasising value, innovation and diversity, in line with a more conservative, considered investment climate.

For novices and experienced investors, an essential text is Martin Roth's Top Stocks 2008, now in its 14th year of publication.

Roth has refined selection criteria that reveal the best performers on the ASX. This year 107 companies make the grade.

He is interested in solid, proven companies rather than the more speculative breed, and he provides useful information on performance, history and prospects, as well as comparative data and in-depth ratio analysis.

A good companion for Top Stocks 2008, given the commodities boom, is Top Resource Stocks 2008, by Allen Trench, Mickey Thompson and Leonard Lau.

It looks at the largest 100 listed companies in the mining and energy sector and supplements company information with geological data.

For investors who are new to the business of stock trading, a good place to start is Stuart McPhee's Trading in a Nutshell.

It explains the mechanics of buying and selling as well as the basics of technical analysis and pattern recognition.

McPhee also points to the need to know when to cut your losses and when to let the profits run, which is a matter of having a plan and knowing what you want to achieve.

This emphasis on self-discipline and organisation is also a theme of Value: Finding Hidden Gems on the Sharemarket by James Carlisle.

Compared with McPhee's chartist approach, Carlisle prefers to focus on company accounts and financial data, including quality of management and broad economic trends.

The key is to find companies that are on the verge of growth. This requires detailed research and a measure of intuition.

But despite their different emphases, McPhee and Carlisle agree that occasional losses are inevitable, and portfolio diversification is a good way of minimising the risks.

For those who prefer to more tangible investments, property remains a good option, and Peter Cerexhe's Smarter Property Investment is a good place to start.

Cerexhe notes that investment in property is a long way from a sure-fire path to riches and he does a good job of explaining what can go wrong and how the traps can be dodged. The chapters on selecting the best property in terms of purchase price, ongoing costs and potential for capital gain are particularly useful, and he provides helpful advice on dealing with lenders over finance.

He also includes a comprehensive section on tax matters, an area often overlooked in connection with property investment.

A less conventional, but potentially lucrative, area of investment is art.

Michael Reid, in How to Buy & Sell Art, explains that art investment is not for everyone, but it can add valuable depth to a portfolio, especially for super funds.

Reid casts a wide net, ranging from buying methods to up-and-coming artists.

He includes an extensive section on the booming area of Aboriginal art and provides a comprehensive listing of galleries, auction houses and collecting associations as well as a glossary of specialist terms.

Investors who prefer to look to the far horizon will find Jim Rogers' latest book, A Bull in China, an interesting perspective on China and Hong Kong.

He identifies the areas of China's economy, such as energy and technology infrastructure, that are doing particularly well and points to the leading companies in those fields.

But a problem is that Rogers, while always entertaining, tends to skip over some of the regulatory issues around investing in China, such as the limitations on non-Chinese holding large amounts of Chinese currency and repatriation of profits.

An even broader canvas is a feature of When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change by Mohammed El-Erian, who oversees $US800 billion as co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management in the US.

He looks at the shift in global economic weight to countries that were once considered chronic under-achievers and then examines how these trends affect investment decisions.

He suggests that a balanced portfolio should include equities from fast-developing countries as well as bonds and hedging instruments.

As a practical strategy, this is probably better suited to large investors than smaller players, but the book offers interesting insights into how the financial architecture is changing.

Link to Original Article

Darwin Festival & Telstra Aboriginal Art Awards are coming!

2008-07-02T23:41:00.004+09:30

The Annual Darwin Festival is coming up again soon.

As someone who has attended the festival a number of times I can attest to the claims that it is the premier festival for the top end of Australia and the Asia Pacific Region.

August is a busy month in Darwin with not only mainstream events like the Darwin Cup but a plethora of Art cultural events incorporated around the Darwin Festival including the National Aboriginal Art Awards, The Indigenous Music Awards and the Garma Festival.

The centrepiece is the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards - commonly known as The Telstras.

The opening of the Telstra's will be held on Friday 15th August 2008 at 6pm at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Conacher Street, Bullocky Point, Darwin

It is a fantastic night and has become a very important event within the Aboriginal Art Industry.

I have listed below some links to articles containing more information on the Telstra's as well as some of the other events being held during August

Telstra Aboriginal Art Awards

Garma festival

Darwin Festival

Top End Turns it on while nation shivers

Question Marks over Rover Artwork

2008-07-02T23:26:00.006+09:30

Interesting article below about the withdrawal of a Rover Thomas Painting from a recent Auction. Any time this happens it will always make the national press due to the hysteria regarding possible fake paintings in the industry.

I think it is important to remember that this by no means means the painting wasn't a Rover Thomas artwork and I also believe there is an enormous amount of unfounded scaremongering regarding fake artworks within the industry, regardless of the legitimacy of this individual case
I plan to expand on this further in the near future but I think it is important for people within the Art industry to not fall victim to the sensationalism the same way many other people do with more mainstream industries or issues.

Auctioneers withdraw Rover painting over concerns at listing

Corrie Perkin

AUCTION house Lawson-Menzies yesterday withdrew from sale a painting by indigenous artist Rover Thomas after concerns that important information had been overlooked in the auction catalogue.

The 1983 painting, Bedford Station, was to have been auctioned last night at Lawson-Menzies's sale of contemporary Australian and Aboriginal art in Sydney. As reported in The Australian yesterday, art experts have expressed unease that a reference to Melbourne art dealer Neil McLeod's ownership of the work did not appear in the L-M catalogue.

This was despite an entry in the June 2000 auction catalogue of L-M's sister auction house Deutscher-Menzies that stated the painting was "acquired directly from the artist by Neil McLeod at Connie's wash house (Rover's sister- in-law) at Warmun in 1985".

The L-M catalogue entry for Bedford Station - estimated at between $60,000 and $80,000 - states: "Painted in 1983 at Warmun, one of three works acquired from Connie's wash house (Rover's sister-in-law)."

Mr McLeod, a photographer, artist and collector, has worked with Aboriginal artists for years. Some, like Thomas, stayed with him at his studio in the Dandenongs in Melbourne's outer east, including Jack Dale and David Mowaljarlai.

Over the past 18 months, The Australian has reported industry concerns about some artworks painted by Thomas in June 1995, during a visit believed to be of between one and two weeks' duration to Mr McLeod's studio.

Art specialists say they are unsettled by brush strokes and painting style, colours, and details of how some works were acquired. Mr McLeod could not be contacted. It is believed he befriended Thomas in the 1980s when the artist first started painting on boards and canvas.

Last night's auction reaped $2,715,600, including buyers' premium, with 122 of the 137 lots sold. This brought in $15,153,480 to the auction house this week when combined with Wednesday's Deutscher-Menzies Galleries auction which included the $6.9 million sale of Pablo Picasso's Sylvette (1954).

In total, the two auctions sold 231 of 263 works catalogued.

Link to original article

Diversity the name of the game

2008-07-02T23:18:00.005+09:30

Contemporary exhibition will surprise, says art curator

One of the works from the Culture Warriors exhibition (National Gallery)

An exhibition showcasing the diversity of Indigenous Australian art is about to open at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Culture Warriors features 90 works from 30 Aboriginal artists from all states and territories.

The eldest of the artists is 95 and the youngest is 25.

Curator Nici Cumpston says visitors will be excited.

"I think some people will be surprised by what Indigenous art looks like in the 21st century," she said.

"I hope visitors will appreciate the depth and dynamism in this exhibition and come away having discovered something new about contemporary Indigenous culture."

To complement the exhibition, the Art Gallery is also showing some of its latest Indigenous acquisitions and a display of recent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prints.

Culture Warriors will be in Adelaide until August 30.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/19/2280064.htm?section=entertainment

Stolen Aboriginal Paintings found!

2008-04-01T19:17:00.003+10:30

Good news everyone!

The Aboriginal Art stolen overnight in Darwin has been recovered

Stolen Aboriginal art found in Australian bushland

Tue Apr 1, 2008 2:23am EDT

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Seven historic Aboriginal paintings were found in bushland in the northern Australian city of Darwin, several hours after they were stolen from a Northern Territory art gallery, police said on Tuesday.

The seven paintings included six works from the Papunya Tula, or Western Desert Art Movement of central Australia, which popularized the indigenous art movement in the 1970s with their dot paintings of traditional stories.

"The paintings ... were located in bushland near the Darwin Bowls and Social Club," police said, adding one man had been taken into custody for questioning over the theft.

Papunya Tula paintings are among the most popular and valuable in Australia, with a 1977 work by the late Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri selling for A$2.4 million ($2.2 million) in 2007.

Gallery director Anna Malgorzewicz said the paintings were historically significant works.

"They are one of the first bodies of work from that area, so they (are) historically very significant," she said.

Aboriginal Art Works Stolen

2008-04-01T11:43:00.004+10:30

Some bad news today with the overnight break in at the NT Museum and Art Gallery. People within the Aboriginal Art industry need to be vigilant and on the look out for these pieces. Making it impossible for the thieves to sell the works is the best way of reducing thefts like this in the future and will also help to recover these works.

'Priceless' works stolen from gallery

April 01, 2008 10:03am

Article from: AAP

At least eight works stolen from gallery
Thieves broke window to get in
Gallery is renowned for Aboriginal art

AT least eight priceless artworks have been stolen in a heist at the Northern Territory Museum and Art Gallery in Darwin.

Police said security staff at the museum, in the Fannie Bay district, raised the alarm shortly before 4.30am (CST) today after finding thieves had smashed a window to get inside before fleeing with the paintings.

The stolen works include six Papunya Tula style paintings as well as a central Australian watercolour painting from the Namatjira family.

The gallery is renowned for its collection of Aboriginal art.

"At least eight paintings have been taken from the display area in the museum," Darwin Police Watch Commander Bob Harrison said.

"We've had the museum staff initially attend and they've told us that the value of the paintings is priceless, so we are carrying out further investigations.

"We're getting our forensic people and our investigators to carry out further investigation at the scene."

Heist ... an example of work by the Papunya Tula artists, Kaakuratintja (1979) by Uta Uta Tjangala, similar to those stolen from an art gallery in Darwin / Image supplied

Link to original article

Emily makes inroads into Japan

2008-03-23T23:11:00.005+10:30

I reported on March 8 about an exhibition in Japan featuring Emily Kngwarreye. Well the exhibition has been picked up by local press in Japan so i decided to feature the article here on Aboriginalartblog.com. It's a very well written article, well worth the read!

The Japanese market has always been a little strange for Aboriginal Art. Whilst the Japanese love of Australia as a holiday destination is well known, their appreciation of Aboriginal Art has taken a little longer to develop. It seems at long last Aboriginal Art is making inroads into the Asian market. Hopefully the Japanese will come to appreciate our Indigenous art in the same way as many other people from other parts of the world have!

Emily's Country

Akino Yoshihara / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

OSAKA--An Aborigine community in the boundless red desert of central Australia nurtured a gifted artist who was full of dynamism and creativity. Emily Kame Kngwarreye, who lived in a remote region on the edge of the Simpson Desert for more than 80 years, had no exposure to the Western art world for most of her life. Nevertheless, she is highly admired by international art experts and collectors as one of the great abstract painters of the 20th century.

The sophisticated artistic expression in her paintings is often compared with that of Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. In fact, the development her art followed is regarded as parallel to that of contemporary art itself.

Some readers may still remember a Sydney auction that stunned the art world in 2007. Her 1994 painting Earth's Creation was sold for more than 1 million Australian dollars (about 95 million yen), marking a new record for a female Australian artist.

Margo Neale, a senior curator of the National Museum of Australia, says Emily's paintings appeal to Western viewers because they are not "readable," unlike other conventional Aborigine paintings, which have visible motifs.

Emily--as she is most commonly known--was born around 1910 in her paternal clan's country, Alhalkere, in the Utopia region, about 230 kilometers northeast of Alice Springs. As a senior custodian of her people's culture, she had been involved in body marking and sand drawings for decades before starting batik work in 1977 as part of government-funded education programs.

In 1989, when she was in her late 70s, she moved to acrylics on canvas, and produced between 3,000 and 4,000 works in the eight-year period until her death in 1996 at the estimated age of 86. Her studio was an open-air space on the ground where she usually sat cross-legged.

Emily, who was unable to write, painted from her shoulders instead of her wrists, making her paintings look extremely gestural.

Neale says Emily's brushstrokes were the natural and spontaneous brushwork that many Western artists struggle to achieve. "Hers are totally exuberant, free and direct," she says.

The exhibition, titled Utopia: The Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, is currently on show at the National Museum of Art, Osaka. It explores the life of the extraordinary artist through more than 110 works, including batik dyed textiles, from 65 collections.

The exhibition, for which Neale is curator, came to fruition due in large part to the persistence of the National Museum's director, Akira Tatehata, who refers to Emily as a "miraculous painter."

Tatehata recalls his first encounter with her art at a retrospective exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery in 1998: "I was stunned [with her innovative art] because I didn't understand how an aboriginal genius whose life was unrelated to Western art culture could achieve the highest level of contemporary abstract art."

He says he was impressed by the way she created modernist pictorial space in her paintings, because he found her space was similar to the space that has been used for centuries by the great Western masters.

The exhibition will surely smash viewers' stereotyped images of aboriginal art, which is often perceived as primitive.

Although her abstract paintings are rather difficult to interpret, her art cannot be separated from the indigenous culture and tradition of Alhalkere, which is deeply connected with her life and spirituality.

Neale says, "No matter how original and profound her formal virtuosity, her style and methodology derive from very local aboriginal practices in which she was rigorously schooled."

She adds, "Her cultural traditions are quite Japanese in many ways, [such as] the reverence for nature, ritual, ancestor worship and the idea of the past in the present."

Aborigines pass down their cultural narratives about their worldview, known as Dreaming. These Dreaming stories are important records of their ancestral activities. For Aborigines who did not have a written language, painting helped them memorize history and laws, and retain their culture.

Likewise, Emily paid homage to her ancestors through singing and dancing for women's ceremonies, called Awelye, while depicting aspects of her Dreamings, such as pencil yams, grass seeds and emus, in her paintings.

Neale says it doesn't matter how different the paintings look; they are all about the same subject, her ancestral Alhalkere.

"It's her reason for being and source of her creative power," she says.

Emily's first painting, Emu Woman (1988-89), which was produced as part of a project organized by the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association, caused instant excitement for the quality of its aesthetics. The painting consists of decorative dots featuring ceremonial marks made on women's breasts in earth tones.

However, Yasuyuki Nakai, curator at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, argues that her style maintains flatness and simplicity while also expressing many ideas.

He also says that she--whether consciously or unconsciously--neutralized colors by skillfully using combinations of receding and advancing colors, applying black dots to white lines and brown dots to ochre lines, for example.

The degree of abstractness she employed grew over the next few years as she started to use colors indicative of her home while sticking to dots ranging from fine to coarse.

Emily is said to have determined which colors she would use not only by her emotional state but also by the changing seasons.

Kame--Summer Awelye I (1991) is painted in colors of yellow, orange, red and pink in the form of layers of fine dots, expressing wildflowers in full bloom throughout the dry land after summer rain.

In 1992, Emily went to Canberra to be awarded an Australian Artists Creative Fellowship by then Prime Minister Paul Keating. While there, she saw her own paintings hanging at the National Gallery of Australia.

Nakai says Emily's style of dot paintings had completely changed by that point, adding that it was a turning point in her career.

"Seeing her own work in Canberra may have made some impression on her because she was considering stopping painting at that time," he said.

The Alhalker[e] Suite (1993), a large-scale installment composed of 22 canvases, shows her prodigious talent in the use of diverse colors.

Nakai says, "Emily appeared to have created the composition of the paintings to make each look distinctively different by skillfully arranging warm and cold colors."

Moreover, experiments in brushstroke can be found in some of her paintings of this period.

Five untitled paintings displayed side by side were painted with a big shaving brush belonging to an artist and gallery owner whom she had known for a long time. The large multicolored dots that look like chrysanthemums were created as a consequence of the strength in her hand. As she slapped the canvas with the brush, the hairs splayed out in all directions, causing the paint to follow suit.

In early 1994, the expression of her paintings shifted from dots to minimal stripes derived from ceremonial markings on women's bodies. Because of the simplicity of the lines, the flow of the brush can be clearly observed. Some lines represent single strokes while others indicate the brush was lifted up in midflow, adding unique movement in the paintings.

Those minimal stripes, however, were transformed into meandering lines, becoming more bold and powerful a year later.

Challenging the limits of her physical strength, Emily depicted the yam as her major Dreaming story on a series of large canvases with flagging energy. In fact, the yam is important to her not only as a staple food, but also as an analogy for her life.

Her epic work Big Yam Dreaming (1995), measuring three meters by eight meters, was completed in just two days.

The white lines intertwining with each other against the black background represent hidden roots growing under the surface of the ground. The picture symbolizes the life force of the roots, which causes cracks on the surface of the ground.

Emily's distinctive dots and lines completely vanished from her final series of 24 paintings depicting Alhalkere, produced two weeks before her death in September 1996. Despite being in poor health, she never lost her desire to paint and asked for a brush about 10 centimeters wide. Consequently, her brushstrokes became bold and smooth.

The small canvases feature slabs of vivid colors, including rose, ultramarine and red. The direct and immediate action of the brushstrokes looks somewhat tensed, reflecting her mental state in those days, but also shows her unbelievable vitality and great confidence in her work.

No matter how her style of painting changed, her deep affection for her country, Alhalkere, remained in her mind through her life.

*Note: Emily's paintings have no established position in which they must be shown, so their display may vary depending on publication or exhibit.

Utopia:

The Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye

Until April 13, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (until 7 p.m. on Fridays). Closed Mondays.

National Museum of Art, Osaka in Kita Ward, Osaka, a 10-minute walk from Higobashi Station on the city's Yotsubashi subway line.

Admission: 1,300 yen for adults; 1,000 yen for university students; 600 yen for high school students. For details, call the museum at (06) 6447-4680 or visit the Web site at www.emily2008.jp. The exhibition will tour to the National Art Center, Tokyo, in Minato Ward, Tokyo, from May 28 to July 28.

Ticket Giveaway

The Daily Yomiuri is giving away five pairs of tickets to Utopia: The Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye at the National Museum of Art, Osaka.

To apply for the tickets, send a postcard to arrive by March 20 with your name, address, age and telephone number to: Daily Yomiuri Ticket Giveaway, 5-9 Nozakicho, Kita Ward, Osaka 530-8551.

Link to original article

Holidaying in Australia, Outback style!

2008-03-23T22:35:00.003+10:30

Here is a great article from an American about what it is like to take a holiday in Australia Outback Style! For anyone thinking of coming to our wonderful country, this will give you a brief insight into what you can expect!

Make it more than 48 hours in the Outback

From Aboriginal art to a singing dingo, Australia offers the trip of a lifetime

March 23, 2008
By Drew MacKenzie Special to The Sun

The Outback is a whole lot more than just a big rock in the middle of the desert, which is like saying the Grand Canyon is just a whole in the ground.

Each year thousands of tourists fly into Ayers Rock in Northern Territory, Australia, to spend less than 48 hours visiting the world's most famous monolith, now officially known by its Aboriginal name Uluru. But, though that's a must-see of course, they're missing out on an exciting cultural experience combined with a touch of luxury and adventure that can easily be considered the trip of a lifetime.

Instead of Ayers Rock, my wife, Emily, and I flew into Alice Springs, rented a car and headed for the beautiful Vatu Sanctuary, a mini-Shangri-La where we stayed in one of the three splendid villas. On the outside, there are magnificent fountains and ponds, as well as a solar-heated pool, not to mention the abundant bird life, while on the inside there's an impressive display of indigenous art from the owner's gallery in town, Gondwana.

Ayers Rock is increasingly being referred to as Uluru. The rock symbolizes a growing recognition of the important place Aborigines hold in a land they occupied before white settlers arrived. Courtesy of the Australian Tourist Commission

After learning about the origins of Aboriginal art at the Mbantua Gallery and how their dot paintings often explain their history, we headed over to the sizable Desert Park on the town's outskirts. With its extensive collection of local plant life, visitors learn how Aboriginal tribes survived off the land for 20,000 years while also spotting kangaroos and other creatures in the wild. Although the live Birds of Prey exhibition was captivating, more fascinating was the sprawling hall with its darkened rooms allowing visitors to see desert animals, like deadly brown snakes and adders, in their natural habitats.

After some gallery and museum hopping in town at Todd Mall, we dined at the fashionable QC restaurant and indulged in the tasting plate for two, consisting of a mixture of succulent specialties. The next morning we headed out early for the 465-kilometre drive to Uluru/Ayers Rock, making certain we were topped up with water and gasoline, just in case. On the way we stopped at Stuart's Well roadhouse for refills and were entertained by the famous Dinky the Singing Dingo, who howls while accompanying himself on the piano. Really!

With its red sand and changing flora, along with sightseeing stops for massive Mount Conner, the five-hour drive is gruelling but not boring. Finally, the famous sandstone rock Uluru, one of the world's great wonders, rises up in the distance, and the awesome sight made every mile worthwhile. With an hour, we were ensconced in a room at the luxurious five-star Voyages Sails in the Desert Hotel at the Ayers Rock Resort, where we were quickly loathe to leave our luscious surroundings.

However, wanting to learn more about Aboriginal art, we rode to the Dot Painting Workshop at Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park where an indigenous artist, with a translator, showed how the locals paint, mostly with dots of varying colors, to describe their lives and culture. Afterwards, we visited the gargantuan 300-meter high rock, taking two Uluru walking tours that amazed with its sheer size and scope, and even catching sight of a wild dingo. Some people take the 8-kilometre, three-hour base walk as well.

The highlight of the Red Centre was the incredible candlelit Sounds of Silence dining experience, which at $150 a person seems steep at first but cheap in the end. After a coach drives diners onto a gravel road and drops them off on a mound in the desert, they have panoramic views of both Uluru and Kata Tjuta. While sipping champagne, the sun starts to slowly set, resulting in incredible color changes on Uluru and even a rainbow effect in the sky. A didgeridoo player then thrills diners with his music and Aboriginal history, which is followed by a gourmet barbecue with Australian delicacies and classic national wines. The candles are then extinguished and we're treated to a lecture on the spectacular shining stars above, a real-life planetarium that includes the Milky Way and Southern Cross.

The next day we took it easier with an hour's drive to the dramatic Kata Tjuta, aka the Olgas, and went on the vigorous but enthralling Walpa Gorge Walk. That still left plenty of time to wallow in the hotel's huge pool and our room's round Jacuzzi tub before having dinner at the plush restaurant Kuniya, where the damper bread with spices was just remarkable and the Barramundi special unforgettable.

The following morning there was a 306-kilometre drive to Watarrka National Park, home to famed Kings Canyon, the Outback's miniversion of the Grand Canyon. And although we stayed at the Kings Canyon Wilderness Lodge, we weren't exactly sleeping rough. With a comfortable cabin and king-sized bed, plus en suite facilities, we dined by campfire under the stars, feasting on tasty kangaroo and camel meat, and mouth-watering bugs. Ten minutes away, potential adventures include helicopter flights, camel rides and quad bike rides, with guides to prevent anyone getting lost in the wilderness.

Up before dawn the next day to walk the Canyon's rim for three hours before the sun made it unbearable, our outgoing guide led the way to the top, a strenuous rocky climb even for the moderately fit. The weathered domes of the Lost City were breathtaking while the Garden of Eden with its dark pool and lush plant life at the bottom is well worth the long trip down. Make sure to get a picture of yourself in the spot where "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" was filmed.

Although the arduous drive back to Alice Springs takes another four hours, it ended with a relaxing night at the recently-renovated Aurora, the only hotel on the bustling Todd Mall. After visiting the Reptile Centre with its venomous snakes and crocodile exhibits, we found the perfect way to end our stay, the Red Centre Dreaming dinner show. As wild kangaroos and wallabies come down from nearby hills to feast on scraps around the stage, the entertainment starts with a lecture on indigenous culture. It's followed by a three-course meal as Aboriginals, wearing body paint, put on an amusing display of traditional dancing and ancient tools like the boomerang.

Join in the fun, like I did, and make a fool of yourself trying to play the didgeridoo, because it's back to reality tomorrow.

Random facts

• There are 600,000 wild camels in Australia, and camel meat is becoming increasingly popular. Decades ago, camels were first imported from the Middle East and now they are being exported back there because they're purebred.

• The distance between Alice Springs and Kings Canyon will virtually be cut in half when a 100-kilometer gravel road cutoff, now used only by SUVs at a safe speed, is paved in the next few years.

• The didgeridoo is the oldest wind instrument in the world, and the Aborigines began playing it 1,500 years ago. The hollowed out tree branch measures up to 10 feet long and is played in keys from D to F.

Ayers Rock is increasingly being referred to as Uluru. The rock symbolizes a growing recognition of the important place Aborigines hold in a land they occupied before white settlers arrived.
Courtesy of the Australian Tourist Commission

Link to original Article

Aboriginal Art remains strong in the auction market

2008-03-23T22:03:00.005+10:30

With the art auction market feeling the pinch currently, it was great to see that Aboriginal Art is still as popular as ever!

The below article is quite long and mainly deals with recent auctions involving non indigenous Australian Art but the bold part shows that despite the lull in the current auction market, Aboriginal Art sales remain strong, to the point that records have been broken at recent auctions.

This is great news for the industry and shows that the popularity of Aboriginal Art is able to transcend the current art market vulnerabilities.

Sombre times as art buyers sit on their hands

Peter Fish
March 22, 2008

There were long faces and numerous unsold lots at Deutscher-Menzies's big Sydney art auction on Tuesday. Even the auctioneers themselves didn't bother trying to put a positive spin on the sale, for a change.

You won't see a lot of gloating and chest-beating from DM's bitter auction rivals Sotheby's, Deutscher and Hackett, and Bonhams & Goodman, which have big sales coming up next month and a trail of anxious vendors with high expectations.

DM said the ratio of lots sold on the important first night of the two-night auction was down as much as 66 per cent, compared with previously claimed levels of about 75-85 per cent, saying many buyers seemed to be sitting on their hands. It figures the sale raised $8.3 million, excluding any after sales. That sold ratio means one-third of the 141 lots on offer - more than 46 paintings and sculptures - will go back to disappointed vendors.

The firm's national head of art, Tim Abdullah, said no one at DM was expecting this year to rival last year's boom, but even with lowered expectations the results were disappointing. ArtSmart was unable to attend, being caught up at the office till late, but there was plenty of anecdotal evidence that the mood at DM's Kensington premises was sombre, with bidding sporadic at best.

The auctioneer is claiming an artist record for its star lot, Russell Drysdale's Country Child at $1.68 million, but some observers point out the hammer price for this work, $1.4 million, was right on the button of the estimated range, given in the catalogue as $1.4 million to $1.8 million. Before the sale DM was whipping up expectations of $2 million plus. It's a worthy work, but is regarded as something of an old chestnut since it's been offered over and again in the saleroom - at least twice at DM itself in the past 10 years.

One of few standout prices was the modernistic rowing study The Eight, just 31 centimetres by 22 centimetres, by the British linocut artist Cyril Power. It paddled up a storm with a price of $44,000 compared with a $24,000 to $30,000 estimate, amid bidding from Britain, the US and Canada. Power was a member of London's Grosvenor school.

Sid Nolan's Kelly in the Landscape - unmasked in this column last week as the retitled Ned Kelly And Two Figures In The Bush, which sold for $306,200 at Christie's in 2005 - went for $660,000. That's more than double the 2005 price but still below expectations.
Important works by Salvador Dali and Rosalie Gascoigne were among the unsolds.

Indeed the auctioneer itself admits most of the major works were knocked down at the lower estimates. Did they all really find new homes or will some be discreetly reoffered around the trade in coming weeks, as has happened after DM sales before?

In the following night's sale, a somewhat more downmarket offering under the banner of DM's stablemate Lawson-Menzies, there was a considerably improved sold ratio of 84 per cent, and a number of records claimed for Aboriginal art. In the present squeeze on financial and credit markets - which almost certainly means few will be buying pictures with borrowed money - the art auction market is rapidly developing the jitters.

There are reports that Sotheby's and Deutscher and Hackett have been approaching dealers, showing off their wares and trying drum up interest in their upcoming sales. All around town there is the sound of vendor expectations being massaged downwards and estimates being cut to the bone. And it's unlikely the art gallery business will escape the pinch, despite the unseemly rush for Arthur Boyd's signature Shoalhaven River studies we reported last week.

Even the mercurial Rodney Menzies, who owns and runs Deutscher-Menzies and its stablemate Lawson-Menzies, was apparently in a dour mood on Tuesday, describing the sale as a tough day at the office.

Running a specialist art auction division with teams of well-paid specialists and high insurance and other overheads is an expensive business. There are many mouths to feed, as one insider said this week. Tough times could be ahead, particularly for those solely dependent on the flighty Australian paintings market - like the relative new boys on the block Deutscher and Hackett, run by the former DM men Chris Deutscher and Damien Hackett.
In such conditions it is handy to have a second string to the bow. Sotheby's and Bonhams & Goodman may be glad they retained a foothold in the less hype-driven decorative art and Australiana market, and in the case of B&G cars and collectables.

Rod Menzies might even discover his inner Annandale - perhaps he'll turn to his neglected Lawsons general auction business, run out of a seedy warehouse, as a beacon of steady saleroom cash flow.

Asian daggers, wavy or straight

Fanciers of the kris, the wavy or straight-edged blade that was once a symbol of pre-Islamic manliness and rank throughout much of Indonesia and Malaysia, will find much to admire on the website of Hermann Historica in Munich. The firm has catalogued a huge sale of historic weaponry and armour on April 9 and 10 including more than 60 kris, plus many other edged weapons from the East. Most of the kris on offer date from the early 20th century century, including a large number of Balinese examples. Many of the blades have gold details, said to indicate a royal or aristocratic provenance. Many have interesting pamor, the patterning that results after the kris maker folds in different metals as part of forging the blade, as well as carved hilts in ivory, horn or rare woods.

Among them is an "executioner" kris, so-called for its long, straight blade that was used to penetrate the unfortunate victim's heart from above, entering through the shoulder. The catalogue is at www.hermann-historica.com.

H marks Lachlan's dump

Noble Numismatics is offering another of its vast auctions of coins, notes, medals and other numismatic material in 16 sessions starting on April 8 and running through to the following Friday in Sydney. A highlight is the coin collection of the former Sydney taxi repairman John Wilson, which occupies a catalogue of its own. Wilson is known for seeking out coins in the most pristine state. As the catalogue says, he put quality first and price second. Most of the coins are the finest known examples of their type - which means they are sure to attract fancy prices. Among the many sharp and shiny specimens on offer, perhaps the least prepossessing is Wilson's "dump", the little coin that Governor Lachlan Macquarie punched out of his stock of Spanish dollars to provide distinctive coinage for the struggling colony.

The dump is marked on the front with a crown and the wording New South Wales, and the date, 1813. The outer "doughnut" that remained after Macquarie's moneyer punched out its centre was of course the legendary holey dollar or five shilling piece.

By striking coins worth six shillings and threepence from the dollar, which was worth five shillings, the canny Macquarie managed to add considerable value for his colonial treasury. The Wilson dump still shows traces of the host coin beneath the overstruck design, and also just visible on the reverse is the initial H, for the moneyer Macquarie used, the convict known only as Henshall.

Despite looking a bit scratched compared with its smart neighbours in the catalogue, the dump is attractive and relatively well preserved - hence the beefy estimate of $50,000. Whether it will get anywhere near the $99,025 one fetched last year remains to be seen.

The main sale includes four other examples with estimates from $4000. There are also some later replicas - the inclusion of which is controversial in a numismatic world where it's not unknown for copies to be resold to unwitting buyers as originals.

Among the items are a number of Tsarist-era Russian icons and other items including a collection of 19th and early 20th century silver cigarette cases. These are decorated with embossing, engraving, niello-work (a process of inlaying black pigment) or coloured enamels. Designs include prominent buildings, hunting scenes and animals.

Link to original article