On May 23, 2007 Mbantua Gallery bid for and won Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Earths Creation at Deutscher-Menzies’ Sydney auction. The price Mbantua Gallery paid was $1,056,000.

Why??

The reasons are numerous, simple to us at Mbantua Gallery but perhaps more complex to those who don’t have any experience of traditional aboriginal people in Outback Australia.

Mbantua Gallery has been dealing in art with the people of the Utopia region of the NT for over twenty years. We have intimate knowledge of these people along with a great rapport.

Utopia is a large region of some five thousand square kilometres. It is situated north east of Alice Springs and has a population of around two thousand full blood aboriginal people - many who speak little or no English. There is no main community as such - rather lots of small communities called “Outstations”.

Emily Kngwarreye, who I will refer to as Emily throughout the remainder of this article, lived in this region. I knew Emily for quite a few years prior to her death in 1996 and during those years her principle residence was Boundary Bore and Soakage Outstations. Like a lot of the aboriginal people of Utopia, she would often move from one Outstation to another as well as make bush camps.

She had no children of her own, but did have a large and extended family who Mbantua also have close allegiances with. This close affinity being mainly through art, where Mbantua nurtures many new and established artists who live in the region.

Mbantua Gallery has a very large gallery in Alice Springs, which concentrates almost entirely on art from Utopia. At present the gallery has a 440 square metre museum that has many displays and much literature in relation to aboriginal art and culture. With new extensions planned it is hoped that both the museum and gallery will further attract visitors to be exposed to both the art and culture, and go away with a new understanding.

A museum, I think, is never complete. There is always something to add – so when Adrian Newstead, the General Manager of Deutscher-Menzies told me about this Emily being auctioned, my ears pricked up! He informed me that he believed it would break the record for highest priced Indigenous painting to be sold at auction. (Along with the highest price for an Australian female artist – indigenous or non-indigenous).

I’ve known Adrian for a long time now and firmly believe he is one of the most knowledgeable people in Australian art, particularly indigenous art. I also think he is an extremely straight shooter and calls a spade a spade where art is involved, including the marketing side.

I wanted a special attraction piece for our museum and extensions and this looked like it could be just what was needed.

So, I had to weigh up:-

Could I afford it? Was our business in a position to meet interest repayments as I was in no position to pay for it outright;
Would it be an attraction;
Where exactly would I display it;
What would be the other expense connotations and could we fit those in. e.g insurance, security;
What return, both financial and other, could we expect from such a purchase;
Authenticity – I’m a friend of Fred Torres who originally had the foresight to commission it. (working photographs and a video of it being painted were available; and
Most importantly – do I love it?

After some throwing around in my mind (with and without the assistance of some good red wine), I put the idea to some of my senior staff. Prima facie the reaction was not encouraging as I took them completely by surprise. Then with discussion in regard to aspects I mention in this article, I received full support (I think!)

We then discussed other very relevant points such as:-

1. Benefits to other Utopia artists include:
- sense of pride
- major Utopian painting coming back ‘home’
- being an attraction for visitors who would be exposed to Utopian art (which honestly is just fabulous) in our gallery, which in turn would, and in many ways benefit long term to the present day Utopian artists;
The benefits to Alice Springs. No doubt there will be people who will travel to Alice Springs just to see the painting in our museum. Economic flow on will benefit other businesses as well as ours;
Mbantua Gallery will benefit by the fact that such a purchase will make a statement that we are very serious players in the aboriginal art market. We are in this for the long term and deal in investment pieces;
It will give our gallery good exposure and hopefully apart from the art we stock, our Foundation and Cricket Academy will also get some interest – particularly the Foundation;
I also don’t think Fred Torres and Barbara Weir (the commissioners of the piece) have had the accolades they deserve in their work with Emily over the years. Hopefully in some ways this may help;
We also have around 50 smaller pieces of Emily’s work which we have put on exhibition together. The theme being very different to other Emily Exhibitions, where we want to involve ALL viewers. This major piece can be the drawcard to a new and beneficial understanding.


We also naturally considered the investment side of it all. Adrian Newstead openly stated to the press after the sale that “Earth’s Creation” was more important to Australia than “Blue Poles” which all Australians are aware of. “Blue Poles”, I am informed is presently unofficially valued at around $60m. it was an investment (and I guess a good one) painted by an American. “Earth’s Creation” is also an investment, but painted in a modern contemporary style by a full blood aboriginal woman who spoke little English but was able to, through her paintings, create a very definitive bridge between two cultures. Much is said about aboriginal art being a bridge for understanding Aboriginal culture, and I am a person who raises this a lot, and in our museum it is subtly emphasised. But I believe that Emily was in another dimension to the other artists when it comes down to this. Other artists (and I take nothing away from most of them as I think the majority is “fabulous art”) mostly either painted specific stories (as per Western Desert art) with a few dabbling in abstract during Emily’s reign. Emily on the other hand was the “Lord and Master” of aboriginal contemporary modern abstract in my opinion. There were no boundaries.

Here a woman of somewhere around the age of 80 years (bush born so no records) brought up under the old Aboriginal laws that revolved around mythology, ceremony, initiation and sacred sites. She even had a hole in her nose where a bone was displayed during certain events of her life. She was a woman of immense artistic foresight. So Emily, from this intense cultural background and upbringing, had the capacity to move to “the far side of the ring” and paint inspirational, modern, contemporary, abstract works. Perfectly balanced and in harmony with her vision! Thus creating that incredible bridge for westerners to want to inquire and investigate into this wondrous and very interesting culture.

So having thought and discussed all of this with certain colleagues, I decided that I would pursue this painting. So I organised with our local bank manager a loan facility, and then booked my airfares and accommodation to Sydney. It was still imperative that I had to love the painting. Even though I had seen lots of images and working photographs, I needed to see the painting and observe it for quite a while.

So I went to Deutscher-Menzies in the morning of the auction. I saw Adrian and also Kerry Williams who is Adrian’s right arm. Kerry’s lovely and also very knowledgeable, genuine and switched on. They are really a very credible and sincere team.

When I saw the painting I was personally blown away. It was grandiose, it was magnificent and the balance was something special. And in the middle there was the small group of brown “dab dots” that I felt set the whole painting off.

I purposefully stayed for an hour. I walked around and looked at other paintings, had a coffee, met Rod Menzies, but didn’t commit that I would make a bid (although naturally informed him of my interest). I continued to wander back and stare at the painting from the other side of the room. I was not in the least bit interested in any dribble marks or imperfections that may be seen close-up. I know the Utopia people, I know the environment they paint in and they frankly are not in the least concerned about a few dribble marks. The speed that Emily painted the painting was also a factor that I took into account. Fast was her trademark. She never contemplated, she never pondered. She was a woman of action and for the painting to be so well balanced it could only be done by someone with incredible inner sight!

When you’re thinking of spending a million dollars on a painting and you know you’re interest bill will be somewhere around $85K per year, you do think of all sorts of things. One such thought was that “art experts” often say that there are good Emily’s and bad ones. In fact, I had one of these “experts” look at some of our Emily’s just prior to the auction and state that they thought two or three of them were “sub-standard”. I asked why and she stated that the brown mud colours didn’t work and made the paintings very unattractive. I agreed that they weren’t attractive pieces, but I did state that I didn’t think Emily was always concerned about “pretty pictures”. In the middle of a drought in Utopia, this is exactly what much of the terrain looks like! I’m not sure that I made an impression or not, I’m not sure that I’m even correct, but knowing the people of Utopia intimately, having travelled out their hundreds of times in the heat, the cold, the wet and the dry, I do have claims to some experience and, I believe, insights to Emily’s thinking.

So, of course small episodes such as this add to my thinking (and theme in our museum) as to the genius of Emily. And as I look at each of her paintings everywhere under our gallery theme (and her theme of “whole lot”), my appreciation of her genius grows, and I also start to believe that perhaps she didn’t paint any bad paintings! For example, find a painting that perhaps looks dull and unattractive. Stare into it – use your imagination and you will find something it has resemblance to! Keep in mind her basic statement that her paintings are about everything! She really is extraordinary!

I love the painting! The colours are fantastic, it’s balance is unbelievable – especially knowing where she painted it. My imagination allows me to see so many things and of course those brown dab marks in the middle just complete it. So on all of this, I decided to bid for it.

I arrived at the auction later that evening. Never having been to and bid at an art auction before, I can’t believe how nervous I was. Incredibly nervous in fact! I decided that my limit was $1.1m (including commissions). I also definitely wanted to break the record for highest price paid for an Indigenous piece and also Australian female artist for various reasons. But I would have been satisfied to just beat it, however history says the bidding went considerably over the record. I had one more bid in me and that was it. Fortunately, whoever I was bidding against had exhausted there last bid!

The painting was now Mbantua Gallery’s. It was coming home. The crowd applauded, the press were taking photo’s and asking for interviews and Fred Torres, the man who originally commissioned the painting was first to congratulate me and expressed his glee that it was us that bought it, and that it was going back to Alice Springs. I then went outside with the press to have a chat and I recall stating how nervous I was and then asking them not to print that. I think I said I should be “Territory Tough”. However, I later thought “God I was nervous. So what!”

I also invited Fred across to the interview and I sincerely hope he gets due recognition, as does his mother Barbara Weir who later told me that she sewed the four large canvases together.

The painting is currently on tour in Japan with The National Museum of Australia and will arrive in Alice Springs to a specifically designed wall in our museum complex in August 2008.

TJ

Tim Jennings
General Manager
Mbantua Gallery