Welcome to our first Indigenous Fine Art auction of 2022. We are delighted to have collected 103 significant Indigenous Australian artworks with a total value of $1,949,800 – $2,645,500.
The sale includes a number of highly significant artworks. Amongst them is Ginger Riley Munduwalawala‘s early Fishing and Hunting in Limmen Bight, 1987, estimated at $80,000-100,000 (Lot 49). This rare piece comprises two separate paintings—respectively catalogued as GR4 (top half) and GR16 (bottom half), which would indicate they were the fourth and sixteenth paintings the artist ever completed. The painting was created in a softer palette than the artist’s later work, with the upper and lower portions depicting separate stories in comic-strip format. The narrative seems to flow from line to line.
Among many fine works, my personal favourite is far from the most valuable in the sale. Millie Skeen’s Nakarra Nakarra is a delightful work and is estimated at just $10,000-15,000. Of all the senior women artists at Balgo Hills during the early 1990s, Millie’s art invariably demonstrates the verve and pride with which these women took to painting, thereby creating a distinctive art movement. Her works stand out – for both the beauty of their realisation and the intimacy of their execution – as exemplars for future generations of Balgo artists to emulate.
With Emily Kngwarreye currently showing at Gagosian Gallery in Paris, we are delighted to feature several lovely works, including the beautiful 1990 painting of Nrange, the sacred grass seed (Lot 30). It carries an estimate of $80,000-$110,000 and was included in the exhibition Painters of Australia: Two Generations at Gagosian Gallery Hong Kong in 2020.
We are pleased to have secured another fine work by Albert Namatjira (Lot 34), carrying a wonderful backstory. Its former owner was the instigator of the famed Ampol Redex Trails, Terry Southwell-Keely, the former war correspondent who initiated the Walkley Awards.
There are several fabulous Kimberley paintings by Rover Thomas, Queenie McKenzie, Jack Britten and Freddie Timms, as well as two charming works by centenarian, Patsy Anguburra Lulpunda (Lots 1 and 25). Rover’s early board, Three Owls at Pompei Pillar, 1981, is especially noteworthy and carries a presale estimate of $60,000-80,000.
Early Papunya boards include Charlie Taruwa’s Cave Dreaming and the very rare Possum Dreaming by Long Jack Phillipus, both of which were created in 1972 (Lots 35 and 36). Long Jack’s painting was ‘discovered’ in the studio of a deceased sculptor in British Colombia by a fellow artist friend who had no recollection of his friend having ever travelled to Australia. The painting features two sacred Tjuringas (or shields), representing the long journeys of the Possum spirit men.
Other magnificent paintings in this sale are the major works by Bill Whiskey (Lot 31) estimated at $70,000-90,000; Kathleen Petyarre’s Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming – Sandhill Country 1999, which featured in the artist’s retrospective exhibition at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary art in 2000 (Estimate 40,000-60,000); Paddy Japanangka Lewis’s 183 x 300 cm Mina Mina Jukurrpa (Lot 75), estimated at $80,000-120,000; and Tommy Watson’s wonderful Iyaka, 2015 (Lot 55) which has been repatriated from France and carries a presale estimate of $70,000-100,000.
There are so many other pieces worthy of fine collections. The sale includes lovely artefacts from the Central Desert, Arnhem Land barks and poles, several excellent Tiwi pieces, and a number of interesting urban works by Arone Meeks, Ian Waldron, and Richard Bell, among others. Richard Bell is, deservedly, the artist de jour. His ground-breaking installation Embassy will be exhibited this year at the Tate Modern Turbine Hall to mark the 50th anniversary of the original Aboriginal Tent Embassy.
I do hope you enjoy this catalogue and can make it in to see the works in the flesh.
Let’s hope that lockdowns and outbreaks are by then behind us, so that we can welcome as many of you as possible to the preview and viewing, which will be held for a full week prior to the auction at 7pm on March the 8th at our beautiful Redfern gallery.