Quai to the Kingdom

TEARS flowed freely at last week’s press preview of the landmark Aboriginal art commission at the Musée du Quai Branly, the new museum in the heart of Paris dedicated to non-western art. Surrounded by the media and basking under the artwork that has colonised the ceiling of one wing of the complex, East Arnhem Land artist Gulumbu Yunupingu broke down as she contemplated the moment. “I can’t believe I am here in Paris, underneath this, my gift to you. My painting brings us together and brings us healing; I am proud that you people here in Paris recognise my painting ... We standing here together. We are standing here strong.”

It was a cathartic moment at the end of a four-year journey that began when French President Jacques Chirac personally petitioned Prime Minister John Howard to join in his pet project on the Seine: a museum, a paean to the diversity and creativity of the world’s people, a project that could not be complete, implored Chirac, without a cultural contribution from Australia’s first people.

The $398m project, the first major museum to open in Paris since the Musée d’Orsay in 1986, attracted controversy from the outset. First due to its origins in two vast state collections of art and artefacts (some 350,000 objects) pillaged primarily from France’s former colonies, and secondly for its self-serving function as Chirac’s bricks-and-mortar legacy in the city where it all began for the former mayor.

In a multicultural nation recently racked by a rioting immigrant population drawn from former colonies, Chirac said the museum was an homage “to peoples who have suffered conquest, violence and humiliation”. Curiously, no solidarity with such black-armband sentiments was forthcoming from the large Australian contingent of benefactors, bureaucrats, curators, artists and their representatives in Paris to celebrate the product at hand, the $1.4m Australian Indigenous Art Commission at MQB.

There was much talk about this being the largest ever Aboriginal art commission, about the respect in Europe for Aboriginal painting, that it was finally being recognised in the cradle of modern art as one of the great movements of the 20th century. All of which is true, but the tone was hollow. As one local dealer in Aboriginal art complained, it was a story not underpinned by cultural cringe but overlaid with “cultural arrogance”. Another local said it had been “a difficult collaboration from the French side. The Australians seemed to think because they were paying for it, they could dictate to us.”

Official claims from both camps that the project puts “Australian indigenous art at the heart of the architectural project” are overstated if not inaccurate. The Australian artists’ efforts augment not the museum proper but its administration block: an ancillary, conventional modern office building which bears no immediately apparent relationship to the striking, unique structure housing the main collection. Putting architect Jean Nouvel’s protean reputation to one side, rather than a meeting of media, it appears the art has been accommodated into an already designed structure.

This accommodation, overseen by Sydney architects Cracknell & Lonergan, has nevertheless installed a visually stunning result, melding the designs and motifs of the eight artists into what are essentially typical workplaces, and avoiding what could easily have been a lapse into mere décor. The works, by artists of such standing as Yunupingu, Paddy Nyunkuny Bedford, and John Mawurndjul, are elegantly transposed onto the building’s surfaces using the structure as a gigantic framing device. As co-curator Hetti Perkins noted: “It is finished and it is good.” However, while the ceiling designs have been installed to be seen by passers-by from the street, the public will not have unfettered access inside. The permanent exhibition of Australian indigenous works in the MQB suffers for being tucked away and hung in relative obscurity, doing an injustice to the works on display, headed by a selection of barks acquired in the 1950s arranged floor to ceiling as if in a fin-de-siècle salon.

The Australia Council has attracted criticism for jumping at high-profile overseas opportunities which play well at home but leave no lasting footprints. This may be changing, with the announcement of a three-year program to promote indigenous art overseas, of which the MQB is the first project.

And when arts-loving adman Harold Mitchell was approached by the AC to donate $350,000 to secure the project to completion, he had long-term caveats. “We were excited by the project but suggested they take it a step further. So we pitched in another $150,000 for a publications program for 10 years and set up our young curators’ program.” Each year a young indigenous Australian curator will take up a residency at MQB and develop a project in conjunction with the museum.

Ironically, Mitchell admitted he doesn’t collect Aboriginal art himself. “Bugger me, I just don’t,” he told The Bulletin. “But I will now. I actually just believed in this project – I reckon it will be very good over the long term both for Aboriginal people and Aboriginal art. And we’ll be going up to some of the art communities later this year and we’ll make sure we pick up some pieces then.”.
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First published in The Bulletin

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Deal Me In: Shaun Dennison

Christie’s entered the burgeoning fray of the indigenous art market in October with a 168-lot auction in Sydney. The man plotting the strategy for the venerable French firm is tyro auction specialist, Shaun Dennison. Melbourne-based Dennison, a management consultant by trade and an art collector by passion, has only been collecting himself since 1996 – the year Emily Kame Kngwarreye died. Christie’s new Modern Aboriginal art specialist, spoke to Michael Hutak at the Paris preview of the sale in September, then by email after the sale in October.

Michael Hutak: Can you remember the first artwork you bought?

Sean Dennison: No but I remember the first show I attended, in 1996, it was a show of paintings by Emily (Kame Kngwarreye) at Lauraine Diggins, the first works in Ochre. The show was a complete sellout but the works weren’t particularly good for Emily and I immediately decided to find out more, and it just became my mission to understand this work and this market.

MH: How did you arrive at this venture?

SD: First I began collecting, then advising other people on what to collect. Then last year I met (Christie’s Australia managing director) Roger McIlroy. Roger had been keeping a watching brief on the Aboriginal market, waiting for the right conditions to enter the market. The turning point was last year’s Sotheby’s Aboriginal art auction which was incredibly successful - over $7 million in works sold. The market looked easily strong enough to handle more competition. And here we are – not forgetting three or four other auction houses have jumped in as well.

MH: How are you able to run a consulting business (Farrier Swier) and Christie’s “Modern Aboriginal Art” department at the same time?

SD: Well, you’re looking at the department – it’s all me, what you see in this catalogue is my selection and reflects my taste, these are my estimates, the lot. So it gets down to a time management issue and being self-employed there are a lot of synergies.

MH: You’ve never hung out a shingle as a dealer or advisor, what qualifies you for the job?

SD: Because I have a passionate and I would say deep knowledge gained in many different ways from being a collector. As a collector I have followed the auctions very closely and I have been advising people on buying works from the start. Dabbling in my passion got to a point where I’d had enough and wanted to do something.

MH: Have you suspended your own collecting?

SD: I only acquire works for myself through the primary market. Christie’s have a strict conflict of interest policy. I cannot buy any works in this catalogue.

MH: Having never put together a sale before, are you concerned about getting the pricing levels right first time?

SD: Auctions are pretty process-oriented things. It’s very structured. Do I have the eye for a good work? I’ve got that. Do I have an idea of what sells, I think I do. Are the estimates pegged at the right level, that’s yet to be seen. But also, there’s an abundance of material out there that people want to sell and it’s a relatively easy market to research. We’ve deliberately kept the sale modest at 168 lots to maximise the quality. I’ve looked at at least a thousand works and I have echanged an incredible amount of email.

MH: What do you mean when you define your sale as “Modern Aboriginal Art”

SD: I think it’s about time Aboriginal art was more defined in its various sectors. We’re trying to narrow the focus so ‘Modern Aboriginal art’ is works on board, paper and canvas from 1971, from Geoffrey Bardon to the modern day. It’s notable for what’s missing: bark artefacts, water colours pre-1970, so no (Albert) Namatjira or Hermannsberg artists. Also it’s a segment where some artists may not have appeared at auction before, such as Max Mansell.

MH: What is your attitude to provenance in choosing works for auction?

SD: Our policy is to only offer works whose provenance can be traced back an acknowledged Aboriginal art community, and/or by artists known to be represented by a gallery. In other words, I don’t mind if they don’t work for an art community as long as they’ve signed on with a representative or a gallery. I’m looking for relationships between artist and dealer such as Maggie Watson Napangardi and Gondwana, or Ginger Riley and Alcaston. I’m looking for an artist’s commitment to an agency because I think that’s where the top quality emerges. Our commitment is to quality and it worries me when an artist is painting for ten or 20 different sources.

MH: In the 1000 or so works you’ve sifted through for this sale have you seen any being passed off as the work others?

SD: Put it this way, I have seem some works which are either extraordinarily bad works [by name artists], or they are fakes.

MH: Why have you decided to preview in Paris and New York?

SD: It gives vendors the confidence to consign for a start. A key criteria for getting involved in this was that I take the work to the world. New York was an easier choice, there always been a market for Aboriginal art there. Paris, rather than London, I chose because of it’s access to the European market. My expectation from what I’ve seen here is that around half our sales will be overseas collectors. Although it may be hard to tell as most of the big collectors have local advisors and agents who may bid for them. Here in Paris there’s been several commitments to sales and if half of them end in sales it will have been worthwhile making the trip. We’ve had two collectors fly in from London, another is flying to New York for the preview.

MH: What collector demographic are you targeting with the sale?

SD: In Australia I’m looking to widen the market, to attract sales from non-indigenous Australian paintings to Aboriginal art. We have valued about 40 per cent of the catalogue under AUD$10k, about 7 works in the AUD$80-150k range, and only two works above estimated $150k.

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With a pre-sale total estimate between $2.5-3.5 million, Christie’s Modern Aboriginal Art sale grossed $1,615,593 (includes premium & GST). Of 168 lots offered, 89 were sold, representing 53% by lot and 56 per cent by value. A respectable if modest opening. After the sale, AAC continued our interview with Dennison via email.

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MH: Pleased with the result?

SD: Yes I was happy with the overall result of $1.75m (including buyer premium). Some individual results were very strong (such as $188,248 for Maggie Watson Napangardi’s Digging Stick, and Emily Kngwarreye Yam, lot 59 by Tommy Sheen).

MH: Was "Modern Aboriginal Art" the right way to go?

SD: I still think that defining Aboriginal art into various genres is important and I am likely to continue to do so. However, the next sale I may expand the genres offered.

MH: Were the Paris and New York previews worth the effort? How many sales were generated out of the previews? How active were international collectors at the sale?

SD: Given it was Christie's first stand-alone Aboriginal sale and obviously the first time viewed by Christie's overseas I am very happy with the participation from overseas bidders. Not only did overseas bidders underbid a number of paintings, but in terms of total sales about one third by number and 40% by value went overseas.

MH: How do you think you fared on setting estimates?

SD: I am generally happy. I believe the key is to build on Christie's client base rather than refine estimates.

MH: Any general comments on strategy, the frequency of sales, or the size of catalogue?

SD: I am still to finalise my view on the strategy for 2005, but I think that I had about the right number of lots (I wouldn't go above 200). One sale a year is to be offered, but as I said above, maybe we will expand the genre of Aboriginal art offered to, for instance, ‘Modern and Traditional’.

MH: Were any museums, local or international, buying or bidding?

SD: No, there was no institutional interest.

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Abridged version published in Australian Art Collector

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Aboriginal art in Paris: In your dreaming

A select slice of Paris’s art collecting elite gathered at elegant rooms on Avenue Matignon earlier this month for auction house Christie’s first-ever exhibition of Australian Aboriginal art. Thirty or so works on preview had been selected especially to tempt European tastes, pulled from 168 lots to be auctioned in Sydney on October 12. Last week another tranche of dots-and-dreaming lots from the sale went on view at Christie’s New York.

The sale itself represents a shake-up in the entire sector. With only sporadic competition, the Aboriginal art auction market has been virtually the personal fiefdom of Sotheby’s aboriginal art specialist Tim Klingender for almost a decade. But this year five different companies are conducting sales of Aboriginal art, with the French-owned Christie’s expected to snare the biggest slice of market share from its arch international rival.

Aboriginal art has been booming at home for more than 5 years, yet internationally the market remains underdeveloped, and even puny compared to other collecting categories. And while European collectors like Thomas Vroom or Karl-Heinz Essl still account for roughly a third of all auction sales of Aborginal art at the top of the market (above AUD $150,000), less than a score of such players operate at this level. Shaun Dennison, who joined Christie’s in March to head its new Aboriginal art department, is instead hunting growth opportunities at a lower level, in the middle band, both at home and abroad.

“We’re looking to widen the market,” said Dennison, “starting with diverting sales of non-Indigenous Australian paintings to Aboriginal art.” In a sale with a total value of $2.5m to 3.5m, about 40 per cent of the lots are estimated under $10,000, and just two above $150,000, top lot being Digging Stick Dreaming by Maggie Watson Napangardi. Dennison expects 50 per cent of sales to come from overseas buyers in Europe and North America.

Dennison has put together a sale short on numbers but high on quality, culling 168 works for sale after viewing more than 1000 works.” Dennison has also framed his sale as “modern Aboriginal art”, which he defines as from 1971 to the present day. “It’s from the time Geoffrey Bardon commissioned the Papunya boards to the present day and its restricted to works on board, paper, and canvas. We aren’t offering any barks or artefacts or watercolours pre 1970, none of the Hermannsburg artists like Albert Namatjira.”

Christie’s catalogue raises the bar in providing detailed provenance for every lot, something never seen in the sector before, from Sotheby’s or anyone else. “It worries me when an artist is painting for 10 or 20 different sources,” says Dennison. “So I’ve also tried to restrict myself to artists who have shown a commitment to selling through one or two agencies - such as Maggie Watson Napangardie and Gallery Gondwana, or Ginger Riley and Alcaston Gallery. That’s where the top quality emerges.”

So who attended the Paris preview to savour the swag of Emily Knwarreye’s, Rover Thomas’s and others? A mostly aging crew of permanent waves and intellectual beards: twinsets and pearls for Madame; basic black wrapped round gourmand waistlines for Monsieur. Canapés and champagne downed to an ambient didgeridoo soundtrack rounded out the picture. Nary a black person to be seen in cooee of this soirée - either Aboriginal or otherwise, in this, Europe’s most multi-ethnic metropolis.

In the absence of her husband and Ambassador to France, William Fisher, art-loving Kerry Fisher at least flew the flag with an egalitarian resolve: “It wouldn’t matter if it was an 'Australian-Australian’, a ‘European-Australian’ or an 'Aboriginal-Australian', we come to all the artists’ shows,” said Fisher. “We try to patronise everyone as much as we possibly can!"
Madame is not alone. Attitudes toward Aboriginal art in Europe remain confused and diffuse, undermined by the carpetbaggers selling sub-par art by the metre on the internet, and held back by poor marketing and persistent if antique notions that contemporary art by indigenous Australians is “folk art” and only of “anthropological” interest, and thus sits outside the scope of the serious modern or contemporary art collector, or the museum curator.

“It’s so very far away, your country, so it’s good that these works are shown here,” offered impeccably-tailored Eric Agote, a Parisian insurance executive and budding collector. “You always must be speaking to Europe if you want more of us to become aware of how original these works are.” Agote owns works by Balgo Hills’ Ningie Nangala and Greenie Purvis Apetyarr, artists whose works wear the bold graphic designs and direct use of line and colour so favoured among European collectors of Aboriginal art.

“Collectors here love the line, they love structure and clarity,” said art dealer, Stephane Jacob, a former student at the Louvre who has been selling Aboriginal art in Paris for more than 8 years. “What flys in Australia can flop in Europe, and vice versa,” said Jacob. “You find that artists who paint very direct, clean and colourful works - like Linda Syddick Napaljarri or Dave Pwerle Ross - sell very well here but not so well in Australia. But good luck trying to sell a Eubena (Nampitjin) here. …”

Dennison agreed, nominating a work in the sale by Balgo Hills artist Helicopter Tjungurrayi, pegged at $4000 upper estimate, as “being very cheap for Europe”. Jacob said prices are also often higher in Australia because, “understandably, Aboriginal art is traded much more heavily there.”

“In Australia you have a lot of private investors driven by individual superannuation funds: they buy, they sell. Here we think in the long term: we buy, we keep.”


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Abridged version first published in The Bulletin

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Collectables: Rover Thomas

Doubting Thomas: After the high-profile failure of a 'million-dollar' Rover Thomas painting, Sotheby's are questioning the state galleries' commitment to Aboriginal art.

It looked a cinch on paper. An exceptional painting by Australia’s most famous indigenous artist, Rover Thomas, depicting the country’s most mythical physical feature, Uluru. The perfect work on which to hang publicity for the annual blockbuster sale of Important Aboriginal Art at Sotheby’s in Melbourne late last month.

The NYSE-listed company went for broke, pegging the upper estimate at an astonishing AUD$1,000,000. Out went the press releases: “Million Dollar Painting on Display”. Dutifully, out went the newspaper previews, noting Aboriginal art’s “first million dollar painting” in headlines, body copy and captions.

Noone thought to mention that the figure was just an educated, but essentially hopeful, guess on the part of Sotheby’s Aboriginal art specialist, Tim Klingender. Nobody asked why this painting was worth more than $200k above Thomas’s current auction record, [which is also that for any Aboriginal artist]. Notwithstanding the Aboriginal sector’s astounding growth in recent years, nobody bothered to ask who had a million dollars for an indigenous work, given the current benchmark had been set not by a private collector but by a state art gallery, and that the galleries haven’t splurged on a major indigenous work at auction since.

Back in 2001, when the National Gallery of Australia went to $786,625 to secure Thomas's "All That Big Rain Coming From Top Side", saleroom watchers gasped that the top end of the market could run so far ahead of the pack. Were market forces really speaking, or where they being amplified through the megaphone of Sotheby’s slick marketing?

These observers weren’t surprised to see "Uluru" passed in for $675k, failing even to meet it’s lower estimate of $700k. “It was a good painting, but not outstanding,” said one rival auction house expert. “The price it passed in at was a fair one.” While admitting his estimate had scared off potential buyers, Klingender bemoaned the fact that Australia’s collecting institutions weren’t coming to his party.

“It’s amazing the state galleries aren’t here picking the eyes out of our catalogue," Klingender told The Bulletin. "The National Museum of Australia bought three works…, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales bought one, but none of them are buying at the top end – everything above $100k all went to private collectors.”

Sotheby’s sustained foray into the Aboriginal art market since the mid 1990s has been met with disdain and suspicion by the country’s major collecting institutions. Klingender can’t fathom the snub. “The curators of these galleries don’t even come to the previews – it’s ridiculous and small-minded.”

Ironically, the Rover flop cruelled the headlines for what was otherwise another sensational sale from Sotheby’s: $6.5 million in total sales with bullish clearance rates of around 70 per cent both by lot and by value. Among the more than 60 new artist auction records set were such eminently collectable artists as Charlie Tararu Tjungurrayi (new benchmark $215,200); Dorothy Napangardi ($131,725) and Eubena Nampitjin ($52,200).

Collectors need not fear, the indigenous art market’s perpetual boom remains intact, though Sotheby’s position as market leader is under assault as rival houses, Lawson~Menzies, Christie’s, Bonham & Goodmans and Shapiro’s have all commenced moves to grab a slice of this dynamic art market sector.

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Abridged version published in The Bulletin

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Collectables: Emily Kame Kngwarreye

The market aand experts differ on the value of early and late works by the legendary indigenous artist, Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

Undoubted highlight of last month’s bumper Sotheby’s Aboriginal art auction was the sale of the late great Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s 1991 canvas, Untitled (Spring Celebration).

Bidding on this sensual colour field of green, brown and yellow dots was the most competitive at the 560-lot sale, with four bidders on the phone and several dealers and collectors in the room vying for the prize.

The hammer eventually fell for a Swiss private collector who bid $463,000 – more than three times Kngwarreye’s previous auction benchmark, one of 17 saleroom records set for individual artists at the $7.4 million auction.

But what’s in a record? Are we to assume that this work was the pinnacle of Kngwarreye’s extraordinary achievement?

“These aren’t her best works in my opinion,” says Emily expert, Margot Neale, curator of Kngwarreye’s landmark 1998 national touring retrospective – the first ever for an Aboriginal artist.

“They’re very beautiful and there’s a quiet poetry about these early dot paintings,” says Neale. “But Emily didn’t pick up a brush until 1989, when she was in her late seventies. These works are only two years into her [eight-year] career," said Neale, now director of the First Australians Gallery at the Australian National Museum in Canberra.

“In my opinion Emily really came into her own with those looser, more gestural works of 1993-94, when she put all her verve and passion into it.

"She had enormous physical strength in her arms and hands from a lifetime of camel-driving and in the later works she really gives vent to that physicality on the canvas.”

The market begs to differ. But then the market judged at Sotheby’s corresponding sale in 1995 that a similar work to the new record breaker, Flowers of Alagura 1991, was worth only $2,300.

Meanwhile works from what Neale (and others) regard as Kngwarreye’s best period are still going for more modest prices of around $30,000 and up. Canny investors might look to what is called counter-cyclical buying and snap up these bargains while they last.

But, again, for those that buy for money there is always a downside – they will eventually have to part with a work of art whose aesthetic value is priceless.

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Abridged version first published in The Bulletin

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Collectables: Important Aboriginal Art

Aboriginal art continues to bring the bids and bouquets at Sotheby's in New York.

SCANDALS ASIDE, the Aboriginal art sector has been the most dynamic performer in last five years of Australia’s booming fine art market and Sotheby’s upcoming winter auction of Important Aboriginal Art has become the key barometer of the sector’s health. Each year the local franchise of the NYSE-listed company trumpets “the most valuable collection of Australian indigenous art ever assembled for sale”. Each year the boast is proved correct.

In 2002 Sotheby's shifted a record $5.1 million worth of precious paintings and rare artefacts. This year the 560 lots to be knocked down at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art on July 28 and 29th have been pegged at an upper estimate of $9.69 million. With more than 20 lots listed with estimates above $100k, saleroom records will likely fall for the established hit parade of indigenous artists: Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Ginger Riley Munduwalawala, Alec Mingelmanganu, Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, Dorothy Robinson Napangardi and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri.

However, this year’s indisputable highlight, the massive 5 metre by 8 metre Ngurrara Canvas 1, underlines the collaborative nature of much Aboriginal art. Painted in 1996 by 19 artists from the Great Sandy Desert to demostrate their Native Title claim to 800,000 hectares, it is valued between $300,000 and $500,000. Consigned by the artists themselves, it would look nice in a State gallery where everyone could contemplate its ongoing significance: the land claim is still in dispute.

After seeing off a brief challenge from rival auctioneer Deutscher-Menzies in the late 1990s, Sotheby’s virtually has the serious end of the market to itself. This year, with the war in Iraq casting its shadow, the firm’s Sydney-based Aboriginal art specialist, Tim Klingender, cancelled the traditional New York preview, but made up for it by scoring a front page article on the sale in The New York Times. This week (July 23) The New Yorker magazine publishes a similar glowing appraisal.

Sotheby’s prints around 4500 catalogs for the sale and despatches 500 in equal measure to collectors in Europe and North America. Klingender says there are around 100 serious private collectors who consistently bid for works worth more than $50,000, and only about 10 kindred spirits who can afford to wave their paddles at works worth more $500,000. “They are a disparate group of people,” he told The Bulletin, “mainly Swiss, French, Dutch and American. What they all usually have in common is that they’ve visited Australia at some stage and fallen in love with Aboriginal art.”

The record price for an indigenous artwork was paid not by a private collector but by the National Gallery of Australia, which went to $786,625 to secure Rover Thomas's All That Big Rain Coming From Top Side for the national estate, at - where else? - Sotheby’s 2001 sale. The firm has three more important ‘Rovers’ on offer this year with upper estimates scraping $350k. Yet, as The New York Times acknowledged: “The one group of Australian citizens rarely seen in galleries and salesrooms are Aborigines themselves, who are too poor to buy the products of their own culture.”

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First published in The Bulletin

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Interview: Ben Mendelsohn

For a professional actor on a mid-career surge, Ben Mendelsohn is uncharacteristically modest... “I’ve been doing this (acting) since pretty much the beginning of my teenage years, and I’ve been financially independent since I was fifteen but it’s not really a career, is it? It’s a series of jobs, is what it is! I mean, you will never get to be ‘Head of South East Asian acting’. You might have a great life but it’s not a career.”

It’s mid-morning and we’re talking in a café overlooking Bondi Beach. “Bondi’s got a bit hectic – I’m shifting basically. I remember seeing this great TV special when I was 12, it was about Penthouse Pets and one of ‘em lived in Bondi – and I remember all these shots on the beach and I thought what a promised land – Bondi! I love living here but it’s getting very hectic.”

Mendelsohn is dressed smart casual, freshly shaved, hair combed and still wet from his morning shower. His world weary delivery, punctuated by a steady succession of ‘Styvo Reds’, are at odds with his image, which is reminiscent of a naughty boy wagging Sunday school. How refreshing, we comment, to find an actor not obsessed with his public image; a thespian, no less, unencumbered by “vaulting ambition”. Oops, spoke too soon…

“Oh, I have very unhealthy ambitions,” he protests, “but I don’t see the point in advertising ‘em, y’know? I don’t see the point in sitting down and telling you (slipping into mock American accent) what I’m gonna do next. Coz if I do it I’ll do it and we’ll know about it then.

"I can just see that quote coming up – ‘I have a lot of unhealthy ambitions’.”

If there’s blood coursing in his veins he should. On the back of good notices for his supporting role in the Hollywood blockbuster VERTICAL LIMIT, Mendelsohn is on a roll, with last year’s SAMPLE PEOPLE garnering him favourable press and anticipation high for his new release, a comedy drama called MULLET, which reunites the actor with David Caesar, his director in the 1995 hit, IDIOT BOX. And with CHILD STAR, his third film with director Nadia Tass, set for release in a couple of months, now is a good a time as any for ambition.

“Since the whole Vertical Limit thing my face has been back in the newspapers, and I’ve had a few more scripts come my way. I mean I’ve been in this business so long that I’m not expecting that much. It’s about working, y’know? About getting a bit of money in the bank, enough to not have to work for a while. I mean I don’t give a fuck – y’know? I don’t give a fuck.

“I hang out with a couple of actors but most of my time isn’t spent with other actors. My private life is not in the business. I’m not a big networker and luckily I’m not in a position where I need to do that and I’m glad about that. You’d go fucking mad – all you talk about is how much you’re working or how much you’re not working – I think about that stuff enough, I don’t need to pump it up any more.”

Having spent half his young life in the limelight, he’s more than accustomed to the drill. A new film, a round of publicity, same old questions: “It’s all bullshit, mate,” he intimates in reassuringly hushed tones.

Mendelsohn has been in the public’s consciousness since he was 15 and the HENDERSON KIDS was a hit on our TV screens. And it’s been more than 14 years since his remarkable film debut in the director John Duigan’s groundbreaking THE YEAR MY VOICE BROKE, a film that also launched the career of his contemporary, Noah Taylor.

He remembers the film fondly. “It was slated as a telemovie, in amongst a bunch of films that Kennedy Miller were doing for TEN. They loved it so much in the first weeks that decided to go ahead and make it into a feature. I had no idea it was going to be so big.

“Duigan was fuckin’ great! He’s like a horse whisperer. He’s got the abilty to point you in a direction and just let you go. They’re the ones I like to work with, and look at the performances he got out of us – they’re pretty fucken on the money!”

Mendelsohn won the first of his AFI Awards for the role, and a string of distinguished performances ensued in some of the local industry’s best films of the late 1980’s and 1990s - THE BIG STEAL, SPOTSWOOD, MAP OF THE HUMAN HEART, SIRENS, METAL SKIN (attracting his second AFI Award), COSI, and IDIOT BOX. He’s an actor that relies on his natural gift and sheer charisma. You can drop all that method "bullshit"!

“One of the misconceptions about performance is the idea that you can get it perfect, that the more you wring your hands about it the better it’s gonna be – that’s bullshit. If a director or another actor asks me what my motivation is, well, I tell ‘em it’s got nothing to do with them.

“I wanted to be a spy when I was a kid,” he says straight-faced, which somehow figures perfectly. “I left school at 15, and I haven’t ever formally studied acting. I mean talking about acting is a bit like fucking for chastity, y’know?” He checks for a second, and is obviously keen to impress that he’s still very serious about his work: “That doesn’t mean I don’t do whatever I need to do to get the performance up there, I just think there’s a certain cult that focuses more on the preparation than on the actual result whereas I think here’s a lot to be said for just jumping in and doing it. I do like to think I’m getting better at it, but I don’t know that! I’m very critical of my own work and I see the bits that don’t work before the bits that do.”

Mendelsohn’s aim is to be ‘in the moment’ when the camera is rolling, a characteristic self-evident in his easygoing performance in MULLET, a modest but moving comedy drama set in a small south coast fishing village. Headlining a bevy of accomplished Australian actors like Susie Porter, Andrew S Gilbert and Steve L Marquand, Mendelsohn carries the film with an easy Aussie charm. He plays the lead role of a bloke in his late twenties who returns home from the Big Smoke. When Mullet upped and left after three years earlier he didn’t tell a soul, and so his friends, family and ex-girlfriend don’t exactly accept him back into the fold with open arms.

“Mullet’s a guy whose taken a turn in life and he can’t go forward without taking a counter turn… and so he has to go back home and try and reconcile what it is he’s trying to leave behind. Which is place, where he comes from, the situation with his family.”

Mendelsohn himself comes from Melbourne, but he’s been “living in Sydney close on ten years. I lived back in Melbourne in 96/97 for a year or so… I still see myself as an expatriate Melbournite more than a Sydney boy."

And after the exposure afforded by VERTICAL LIMIT, what about the ‘States? “Yeah, what about the ‘States? I dunno, I guess I’ll go over and have a look. I was there recently very briefly, saw a couple a people. I’ve got an agent there but I don’t talk to her. I got an agent in Britain too, but I don’t talk to her either.

“I’m Australian based until I’m not. More or less.”

One thing’s for sure, when he does do it, we’ll be the first to know.

MICHAEL HUTAK
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First published in Australian Style

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Diversity bound by identity

A group exhibition of Aboriginal art steers away from familiar stereotypes, writes MICHAEL HUTAK.
SINCE its emergence as a dynamic cultural force in the 1980s, Aboriginal art has become submerged in a myriad of stereotypes.
For a fresh perspective, those seeking to forge a new connection with the culture of indigenous Australians would be wise not to miss Narratives, the latest show at Boomalli Gallery, in inner-city Chippendale.
Mounted by Boomalli's resident curator, Hetti Perkins, Narratives displays the work of four generations of Aboriginal women painters, offering insights into each artist's practice, and revealing the sheer diversity to be found in contemporary Aboriginal art.
And as the title implies, the thread that binds the generations is not just race but the will to tell of their lives. Beginning with the 24-year-old Kgamilaroi artist Peta Lonsdale, whose work has graphically portrayed her early experiences avoiding the mission system, Narratives offers not just a snapshot of contemporary Aboriginal painting but a stark image of a people who have suffered yet survived to tell the tale.
But, importantly, Perkins praises Lonsdale for "deliberately avoiding the'victim' mentality".
"Peta finds faith in the strength of Aboriginal society and culture to reinterpret our circumstances and find a positive resolution," says Perkins.
The South Australian artist Kerry Giles, in her early 30s, left her white mother at 16 to rejoin her "mob", the Ngarrindjeri people. Since then she has found a voice in her painting, prints and photographs and has few qualms about imbuing her work with striking political messages.
"This is documentary," she says. "It's graffiti." The massive canvases she is showing in Narratives depict before-and-after aerial views of the Murray River: before and after white settlement.
The first she calls her "pretty boy" painting: "It shows how the river Murray used to be before colonial people. You've got the whole ecosystem, full of bush tucker: musta, brolga, wombat, goanna, catfish, yabbie, freshwater turtle, periwinkles, mussels, stumpy-tail lizard and all the bush berries." A self-sustaining environment.
The next two paintings depict the gradual destruction of the river system culminating in Ugly Painting, Ugly Subject, a harrowing, almost nihilistic vision of the river. It is a conglomeration of quotes and newspaper clippings depicting the graphic degradation of the environment.
"It's past crisis point," says Giles. "People take pretty photos of dead trees that were killed by salt. It's a graveyard of dead trees.
"For instance, today the Ngarrindjeri people have to ask at farmyard doors to get the rushes to weave the baskets that they've been weaving for thousands and thousands of years because there are no rushes left.
"Paintings are not just pretty pictures on the wall - they are identity."
Elaine Russell, in her early 50s, is only just beginning her career in the visual arts and Narratives is her first major exhibition. "I always knew I could draw, but I've only been painting for 12 months," she told the Herald.
For Russell, painting is an expressive medium which gives her an outlet to tell of her past: "There are so many more stories I have to paint. I love it. It's so new to me. When I get a brush in my hand I just can't stop.
"And everything I've painted I've sold, so I must be doing something right|"
Russell's disarmingly straightforward paintings depict her childhood experiences on the Murrin Bridge Mission, during the era when fair-skinned children were forcibly removed from their parents' care.
"We did what we were told - if we didn't we wouldn't get our rations. It all left me very resentful of the whites in my teens, but it's OK now, I'm married to a white."
The paintings are supported by short texts, an extension of oral history traditions and reminiscent of the work of fellow Aboriginal artists Ian Abdulla and Harry Wedge. Her work reflects the "regimental and policed nature of mission life", according to Perkins.
The last of the foursome is Pantjiti Mary McLean who has been encouraged by a fellow Kalgoorlie artist, Nalda Searles, to introduce figurative elements to her practice of dot paintings. It has unleashed in Pantjiti a seemingly unending creative source.
"Mary's work is about everyday things. What you see is what you get," says Searles. "There's no dreaming here; it's all a huge story about everyday life
"She lives in a small settlement on the outskirts of Kalgoorlie where she's the only artist, so in a sense, she is working alone.
"Her work has become so popular because it's so colourful and joyful. There's never any violence in her work - there's abundance and the bush is alive and flourishing and so are the people.
"Because Mary doesn't read, her work is not linear and goes in all directions. She just turns the paper around and around."
Searles described an "enormous" painting Pantjiti has produced for the Tandanya Aboriginal Arts Centre in Adelaide. "It's four metres long by one-and-a-half metres wide and there are literally hundreds of figures on it, all coming together in a big celebration," she says.
"She's found her calling and now paints everyday. She's a wonderful inspiration to the children in the community."
Pantjiti Mary McLean also has a solo exhibition of works on paper called Homelands at the Aboriginal and South Pacific Gallery in Surry Hills, until July 16.
What drives Pantjiti, now in her 60s, to paint?
"It comes from the happiness in my heart," she says.

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First published in The Sydney Morning Herald

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Americans now the largest collectors of aboriginal art

INSIDE SYDNEY: Gallery director Helen Hansen has returned from this year's prestigious Chicago International Art Exposition reporting a surge of interest in Aboriginal art in North America.
"Aboriginal art is starting to break seriously into the United States, which is why we've made two trips there in the past six months," the co-director of Paddington's Hogarth Galleries told Inside Sydney yesterday.
Hansen returned on Tuesday from Chicago, where Hogarth became the first gallery ever invited to show Australian Aboriginal art.
"There's enormous interest," Hansen said. "They were fascinated by the connection between the land and the sand and dot paintings. On the other hand, a high percentage of people knew something about Aboriginal art because they had seen the Dreamings Exhibition at the Smart Museum in Chicago in 1989."
Hogarth's showing in Chicago was boosted by the enormous interest generated by Aratjara: Art of the First Australians, a major survey of Australian Aboriginal art showing in Dusseldorf, Germany, until July.
Hansen noted: "By our reckoning, the largest collectors of Aboriginal art in the world are in America."
She added that works of Emily Kame Kngwarreye - paintings of the desert country for which she's responsible as a tribal elder - attracted great interest.
"People were just bowled over by the energy of this woman," Hansen said.
"They'd ask if she'd seen the work of certain contemporary European artists and we'd say not only has she not seen it, she's an 82-year-old Aboriginal woman who lives in the Australian desert and speaks very little English. They'd be amazed at the artistic overlaps and similarities."
John Mawandjul's bark paintings were also a hit with the Americans, with one major work selling for $6,000.
Hansen said the surge in international interest in Aboriginal art was not merely a romantic return to the West's obsession with exotic, so-called"primitive" art.
"The American market has gone beyond that," she said. "It's more sophisticated, and Australian Aboriginal art these days is part of mainstream contemporary art. That's the way we show it - certainly not as primitive art -and people judge it on its own merit. And on that basis, it does extremely well."
Caption: Illus: Helan Hansen, co-director of the Hogarth Galleries in Paddington... found enormous interest in Aboriginal art in the United States. Picture by STEVE CHRISTO
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Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Publication date: 3-6-1993
Edition: Late
Page no: 2
Section: News and Features
Length: 504
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First published in The Sydney Morning Herald

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