The Dealer is the Devil Read online

  The brilliant Bruce Goold with my business partner Louise Ferrier and me at Coo-ee Emporium, 1984.

  I made the counter myself from a slab of red cedar by scaling up a boomerang Bruce Goold had purchased from the Australian Museum shop. The uprights were fashioned out of a broken oar he picked up beside the Palm Beach Surf Club. A ‘Who’s Who’ of Sydney turned up for the opening: actors and movie stars such as Kate Fitzpatrick and Bryan Brown, the comedienne Julie McGregor, maverick filmmakers such as David Elfick and Margarert Fink, the cartoonist Tony Edwards, nightclub owner Arthur Karvan, agent extraordinaire Jane Cameron, and the photographers Robert Rosen and William Yang. Anything was possible, and we thrived. Within a year I’d persuaded a larger bohemian contingent to join us on the strip: the cake artist Anthea Leonard opened Sweet Art, Chrissie Brett opened a marvellous café called La Passion de Fruit, and Janet Alstergren opened Rancho Deluxe, a retro American clothing outfitter. Although Louise moved on after four years, I remained in this location for the next 20 years.

  Coo-ee Emporium, c. 1985.

  Aboriginal craft was a vital component of the Coo-ee Emporium range from its inception – especially handwoven baskets and pottery. Within the first year we added fabrics from Bathurst Island and a range of artefacts which we sourced through The Company warehouse in the Rocks; however, my engagement with Aboriginal Australia really began in earnest after attending the opening of the exhibition Objects and Representations from Ramingining, at the University of Sydney’s Power Gallery in 1984.

  Today, Sydney’s stunning waterfront Museum of Contemporary Art attracts millions of people each year. Its luxuriant setting beside the Harbour Bridge, where ferries glide past the sails of the Opera House, overlooks the site of the landing of the First Fleet in 1788. Few would realise, however, that the reputation of this premier cultural institution was defined from its inception by its engagement with Indigenous art.

  During the museum’s gestation as the University of Sydney’s Power Gallery, its directors clearly signalled a significant part of what would become the museum’s charter of intent. The Ramingining works, which illustrated the Yolngu classification system of the natural world, had been collected between 1981 and 1984 by Djon Mundine, who was to become one of Australia’s most influential Indigenous curators. It was, as Bernice Murphy the curator1 explained, ‘a visual register of interweaving social and intellectual patterns’2 which covered the ceremonial activities of a full 12-month cycle of the Ramingining community’s ritual life. The eagerness with which the collection was snapped up gives some inkling of the tremendous power of the objects. This entire exhibition was purchased by Bernice Murphy and Leon Paroissien, at a cost that represented one-third of the total acquisition budget of the Power Bequest for the next three years.

  The people I met on opening night made this the single most important event that I have attended during my working life. I hadn’t been back to my alma mater for ten years, and had little inkling that the better part of my education was about to begin. As I mingled in the lively opening night crowd, I was introduced to some of the key players of the emerging Aboriginal arts movement. The ‘official photographer’ William Yang captured the excited faces. They included Djon Mundine and Diane Moon, who worked as art coordinators in Central Arnhem Land. I was introduced to the prominent Sydney curators and art administrators Bernice Murphy, Leon Paroissien and Nick Waterlow for the first time. I met the Aboriginal magistrate and activist Pat O’Shane, and was presented to the prominent Arnhem Land elder Wandjuk Marika by his close friend Jennifer Isaacs. Threaded among the eclectic displays, I encountered Gabriella Roy, Anthony ‘Ace’ Bourke and Fay and Gordon Nelson who all worked for The Company’s gallery in Sydney. We watched expectantly as Bobby Bunungurr began to chant to the first haunting strains of the didgeridoo played by the incomparable Don Gundinga.

  Portrait of David Gulpilil at Coo-ee in 1984. (Juno Gemes © Juno Gemes Archive)

  In the 30 years since, I’ve seen so many Indigenous dance groups perform that I’ve become blasé, but in 1984, in this setting, with David Gulpilil dancing, it was a revelation. Always one for a grand entrance, David wove his way through the crowd, adorned with the same beautifully crafted feathered regalia as those exhibited in the surrounding glass vitrines. At the height of his physical prowess and early fame, David was the most graceful and electrifying performer any of us had ever seen. What a night!

  Since moving to the Sydney harbourside, the museum has gone on to showcase each new wave of innovation in Aboriginal art. It has hosted retrospectives and exhibitions of works by artists such as Tracey Moffatt, Dorothy Napangardi Robinson, Kathleen Petyarre and Lin Onus, but it was Mundine’s association with its earliest curators that began the institution’s collaborative engagement with the remote artists of Arnhem Land.

  Mundine, a Bundjalung from the north coast of New South Wales, arrived at Milingimbi in 1979 as ‘craft’ adviser and, in 1981, became the art adviser in Ramingining.3 He has subsequently described his arrival in Arnhem Land as

  ‘like travelling to Mecca’ – this was the place where Aboriginal people owned their own land, spoke their own languages, and still conducted traditional life and ceremonies.

  For a young Aboriginal man brought up on the fringes of the dominant white society, this was a ‘mind-blowing’ experience. He decided not to make any changes to the community’s art practice, a decision that put him at odds with the Aboriginal Arts Board (AAB). The Company’s new management was bent on ‘professionalising’ the industry. Mundine’s brief was to encourage small-scale low-priced ‘suitcase’ art.

  Djon Mundine opening the Ramingining exhibition at Coo-ee’s new exhibiting gallery, 1990.

  The notion of ‘suitcase’ art serves as a perfect metaphor for the way in which white expectations invariably impact upon traditional societies. I am reminded of an hilarious story related by Peter Cooke who worked at Maningrida in the early 1980s. The great bark painter England Bangala was renowned for his life-sized renditions of his crocodile ancestor and, according to Cooke, a newly appointed manager of The Company flew in one day and commissioned Bangala to paint 30 small crocodile barks to be freighted back to the Sydney warehouse. Imagine the manager’s consternation when, several months later, upon opening the highly anticipated packages, he found that each bark portrayed only a small section of the entire animal: an arm, a leg, a piece of the stomach, a claw and a head. Bangala could not conceive of a way to fit an entire crocodile onto a piece of bark so small.

  Mundine was no more likely to adapt the art to suit the market in this way than he was to ‘clean up his act’ by cutting his hair, which he wears to this day as a cascade of floor length dreadlocks. He was after bigger fish – the sort of funding and patronage from major cultural institutions that would enable significant statements affirming communal and spiritual ownership. In 1981, he curated the exhibition The Land the Sea and Our Culture for the Anthropology Museum of the University of Queensland, which purchased a large number of the works.

  By 1983, Mundine had been joined by Diane Moon, a charming and inscrutable blond from Brisbane with excellent art world credentials. The following year, she became the first female art adviser in Arnhem Land, stationed at nearby Maningrida. Together they assembled a set of Morning Star poles and related bark paintings from Ramingining for the Australian Museum, using song cycles recorded previously by anthropologists. Moon expanded this project further by adding Maningrida artists Jack Wunuwun, Johnny Bulun Bulun and Brian Nynawanga. Two collections were purchased by the businessman and entrepreneur Robert Holmes à Court and later shown in the exhibition Magiciens de la Terre in Paris. Moon and Mundine continued to work together for several years as she developed a particular interest in sculpture and fibre art, and encouraged women to market their work under their own names for the first time.

  The response to these highly successful exhibitions encouraged funding bodies to believe that Indigenous people should become the arts advisers of their
own communities. In both Ramingining and Maningrida, several artists were trained as assistants: Charlie Godjuwa worked alongside Diane Moon and Brian Yumbal with Djon Mundine. In Yirrkala, Banduk Marika trained to run the art centre for a short period while the art adviser Steve Fox, a master printmaker, introduced print facilities. In the early 1980s there was an attempt to get Johnny Bulun Bulun to be an art adviser and a small shed was built for this purpose at Garmedi, his homeland outstation. But like many other artists, Bulun Bulun wasn’t really interested. Kinship obligations made such arrangements too politically difficult.

  It was to be through the activities of the non-Indigenous managers that these centres became the major suppliers of bark paintings, figurative sculpture and fibre arts to the few specialist galleries that operated in the early 1980s.

  In Western Arnhem Land the official art centre Injaluk Arts was not established at Oenpelli until 1989. Prior to that, Dorothy Bennett collected for The Company, making monthly buying trips during the dry season with money supplied by the Aboriginal Development Corporation. She sent artworks to The Company’s Sydney warehouse, from which the growing number of privately owned galleries like my own could purchase art and artefacts at wholesale prices. A lot of these were collected for her by a young policeman, Reg Mason. Mason’s wife, Debbie, worked for the local council and many artists would turn to the Masons to purchase paintings between Bennett’s visits. In 1985 Reg left the Northern Territory police force and competed with Bennett to collect from the most accomplished artists, who included Bobby and Peter Nganjmirra, John Mawurndjul, Dick Ngulungulei, Jimmy Njiminjuma, Ivan Namariki, James Iyuna and Jimmy Galareya. Being the closest major community to Darwin and the location of a hotel that served alcohol, many Central and Western Arnhem Land artists and their families moved through or settled at Oenpelli. By the end of the decade, Mason’s reputation for fair dealing had spread across Arnhem Land, attracting Dorothy Djukulul, England Bangala, Mick Kubarkku and Lofty Nadjamerrek to paint for him.

  A wave of innovation was sweeping across Arnhem Land. The demand for diversified product prompted Diane Moon and others to encourage the creation of softwood sculptures depicting totemic ancestor and spirit figures (including Mimi, Wangura and Yawk Yawk spirits) in the central and western areas. While several artists, including Crusoe Kuningbal, actually specialised in this medium, a number of major bark painters such as England Bangala, Mick Kubarkku and David Malangi began making more three-dimensional works. Between 1984 and 1986 the National Gallery of Victoria began commissioning spirit figures from Maningrida in earnest. In the northeast, milkwood (Hibiscus sp.) carvings depicting animals and spirits were painted and finely incised with clan patterns using razor blades. Here the finest carvers were Dunduwuy Wanambi and Bakalungai Marawilli.

  Sculpture proved to be an ideal medium for the thin and fragile Mimi spirits which according to legend emerge from fissures in Arnhem Land rock escarpments. Kuninjku artist Crusoe Kuningbal was renowned for his Mimi figures, which ranged in height from just 50 centimetres to 4 meters. At the time he was said to be the sole owner of the right to depict Mimis in three-dimensional form.

  Jenny Kee, a close friend of mine, is one of the most passionate advocates of her country I’ve ever met. As an Australian fashion designer, she has had extraordinary success; her fresh iconic imagery has graced Diana the Princess of Wales and Parisian catwalks. Karl Lagerfeld used her designs in his collections. Jenny interpreted and reworked Australian flora and fauna, and occasionally integrated Indigenous design elements into her work. When she included an homage to the Mimi spirit on a rug, however, she was publicly attacked and accused, to her horror, of misappropriating Kuningbal’s exclusive imagery. Kuningbal had bequeathed this right to his second-born son Crusoe Kurddal (Gurdal) before passing away at the height of his renown as a sculptor in 1984. Ironically, the burgeoning art market has since emboldened dozens of artists in Maningrida, Oenpelli and Ramingining to make Mimis, Yawk Yawks and other spirit carvings.

  Today, spirit carvings created in the 1980s by Mick Kubarkku, David Malangi, Paddy Fordham Wainburranga and England Bangala represent incredible value when they occasionally appear for sale. Pieces created earlier in the 1960s by Lipundja and Malangi, for instance, have sold for up to $56,900 at auction. Yet, other than Crusoe Kuningbal’s Mimis, which have sold for up to $13,000 each, sculptural pieces created during the 1980s sell for a fraction of this amount. Malangi’s highest price for a piece from this later period is less than $5,000.

  During the year before the 1988 Bicentennial of European settlement, Djon Mundine conceived what was to prove the most powerful work of art produced during my 30-year involvement with Aboriginal art. The Aboriginal Memorial, comprising 200 hollow log coffins, was installed in a cavernous wharf as part of the Sydney Biennale. The poles were adorned with the totemic designs of each of its makers, and arranged in relation to their clan countries right across Australia’s Far North. It was a compelling symbol of 40,000 years of continuous occupation, a locus for mourning, and an opportunity to reconcile Aboriginal Australia’s place in contemporary society. Before this, the most prominent examples of mortuary sculpture were the Pukamani poles of the Tiwi Islands. Hollow log coffins from Arnhem Land were rarely seen in the galleries that exhibited figurative sculpture.

  I remember enthusiastically discussing with Djon the likelihood that these beautifully decorated Lorrkon might now be accepted as sophisticated contemporary fine art. This certainly proved to be the case. Their elevation to an art form has been accompanied by a phenomenal rise in value. Since that time a number of pieces have been amongst the most prominent finalists in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, including Gawirrin Gumana’s winning entry in 2002, and Gulumbu Yunupingu’s work Garak – the Universe, an installation of three memorial poles that won the major prize in 2004. The original Biennale installation, a collaboration between 30 individual artists, is now on permanent display in the National Gallery of Australia. Though the venue is Australia’s most prestigious art institution, I believe the installation would have been far better housed under a glass-encased open air canopy at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra; or on a promontory overlooking the site of the initial dispossession on Sydney Harbour; or at Uluru; or some other equally prominent public location. I have always felt an art gallery is an inappropriate site for the location of Aboriginal Australia’s most poignant memorial.

  SPREAD OF WESTERN DESERT ART

  We didn’t want to sell mass-produced items in our emporium so we had to find alternatives. That meant engaging with artists making anything with a contemporary edge, and sourcing designs that could be translated onto fabrics, furnishings, clothes and homewares. We wanted the shop to jump with bright colours, and reflect the extreme landscape of the Australia in which we lived. So we travelled the country to visit the most exciting artists and artisans in their studios, and commissioned pieces that reflected contemporary Australia and its unique environment.

  In South Australia we found Freya Povey who made glamorous ceramic kangaroo women named after movie stars, like Marilyn Munroo [sic], and glass blowers at the Jam Factory in Adelaide. I discovered the sizzling orange and rust red glazes of Jeff Mincham’s raku-fired pottery. These complemented the distinctive waratah, bottlebrush and wattle fabrics we developed with Sydney artists Bruce Goold (later of Mambo fame), Julia Sale and Deborah Leser. The funky early jewellery of Dinosaur Designs, Kate Durham and Robyn Gordon, joined glassware by Nick Mount and Warren Langley, and the inspired organic ceramics of Jenny Orchard. These artists all went on to become the leading lights of Australia’s craft movement.

  The element that was missing was Aboriginal art. We had nothing authentic to replace those crass ashtrays and tea towels adorned with faux Aboriginal designs. We started visiting The Company’s wholesale warehouse in Sydney’s Rocks district, adding small bark paintings, paper bark collages and of course, genuine boomerangs. But it was slim pickings really, until we found a
single design element that could be used to unify and brand Coo-ee Emporium with a bold tribal look: Tiwi art.

  The Tiwi Design mob, Bathurst Island, 1983. Back row: Danny, Angelo and Mick Munkara, Bede Tungutalum; Front row: Giovanni Tipungwuti, Allan John and Osmond Kantilla.

  The day I met Mick Reid as he was dashing off to become the art coordinator on Bathurst Island, a part of me wanted to hop on the plane in his place. But Coo-ee was taking off – we’d hit a rich vein and business was brisk. Just a few months later I heard from Reid again. He had an idea we should exhibit some of the fabulous Tiwi Design art centre fabrics that young Aboriginal men were printing on the island. Louise suggested we call on her extensive fashion contacts, and begin by getting some designers to make clothes from the material. And that’s how Jenny Kee, Linda Jackson, Katie Pye, Robert Burton and Collette St John took Tiwi art to the catwalk.

  Reid also offered to bring six Tiwi Islanders down for the opening. At that time visiting Aboriginal artists were invariably chaperoned by The Company and put up in hotels, which they found alienating. I relished the chance to host them in my own home, especially after Reid assured me that they would be happy to sleep on my living room floor in front of the TV.

  When they arrived they were, as my stepdaughter Mandala later described them, ‘black as a record’. They were our own age, tall, elegant and bushyheaded, and we showed them a good time. There was Mick Munkara, better known to his friends as Mick Jagger, as well as Danny and Angelo, his brothers. The biggest bloke was the quietly spoken Vivian Kerinauia. But it was Bede Tungutalum with whom I bonded most strongly. Bede and Giovanni Tipungwuti had started the Tiwi Design art centre business, after Bede learned woodblock printing in the church presbytery. Not long before we met, Bede had fallen $1,500 into debt, and the alarmed church authorities took his business away from him and made it into an incorporated company. I don’t think he ever really got over it. He’s now credited as the first tribal artist in Australia to become an accomplished printmaker but he has been bitter about losing control of his own business ever since.