HOW TO COLLECT ABORIGINAL ART — STARTING A COLLECTION

A collection is a curious thing. The best can be far greater than the sum of its individual parts. If it is put together with care, love, and scholarship, it can be enlightening and provide a genuine service to those that seek to understand the subject that it covers. It need not have been put together by professionals or institutions to be of great worth. Many of the finest collections have been developed by amateurs and enthusiasts.

At its worst extreme, however, a collection can be a disparate group of objects with nothing to link them other than the person who brought them together. While it is possible that it may contain some extremely interesting individual pieces, it will be of little interest as ‘a collection' unless the collector was a person of the greatest renown.

It has been my own experience, as a dealer for the past 40 years, that the majority of collectors begin with a piece or two purchased on impulse before getting hooked on a particular art form and being confronted with the inevitable question: ‘What am I trying to achieve and where do I want to go with this?’

Many simply collect until they have no more wall space. Their own particular criteria would have been to find a piece that suits each individual nook and cranny of their home or office, matching the furniture and fittings. Others begin to seriously question their aims as their collection builds, and they realise that they will need to limit their future purchases according to certain criteria. These criteria usually vary according to price, medium, genre, and region.

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Karntakurlangu Tjukurrpa - Dorothy Robinson Napangardi
122.0 x 122.0 cm

TIP NUMBER 2: BEWARE A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING

Wild Flowers - Emily Kame Kngwarreye
180.0 x 283.0 cm

It is not just the name of the artist that counts, as the quality and provenance of the artwork can be major factors in determining value. A quality work by a prominent artist will almost always increase in value while an inferior work by the same artist will almost always be a risk. Collecting the wrong works can be avoided by consulting a gallery that you trust. It is wise to remember the adage ‘The Painting is King’. I always say that a ‘great painting is a great painting is a great painting!’ Regardless of its source provenance, a truly great painting will always rise like cream to the surface.

A good quality piece will always increase in value but a poor piece by the same artist, however prominent, will not prove to be a good investment

Roslyn Premont, Director, Gallery Gondawana, December 2004[2]

Just because the artist is known doesn’t make it a good piece of art.

Virginia Wilson, Art Consultant, March 2011 [3]

UTOPIA - THE CONTINUING TRADTION

July 2018

Cooee Art Gallery Paddington 

326 Oxford Street, Paddington, NSW

Featuring works by female artists of the Anmatjerre and Alyawere clans who paint in the contemporary abstracted style established by their famous forbears Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Gloria Petyarre and Ada Bird Petyarre. Paintings that reference Awelye (Women’s Ceremony) & feature fine intimate fields of multi-coloured dotting.

KUDDITJI KNGWARREYE (1928 - 2017)

19th July - 9th August 2018 

Cooee Art Galery Paddington

326 Oxford Street, Paddington, NSW 

A custodian for ceremonial sites located in his country at Utopia Station, many of his paintings refer to sites at Boundary Bore, where men’s initiation ceremonies are performed. This collection of Kudditji’s colour field works created in the loose gestural and highly colour charged style that he developed after 2003 reveals his maturity as a painter just prior to his death in 2017.

SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY 

13th -16th September 2018

Carriageworks

245 Wilson Street, Eveleigh, NSW 

Cooee Art Gallery will present a strong selection of primary and secondary market Aboriginal Art works at Sydney Contemporary. Artists will include Emily Name Kngwarreye, Dorothy Napangardi, Jorna Newberry, Minnie Pwerle, Kitty Napananka Simon, Djirrirra Wunungmurra.

COOEE ART MARKETPLACE AUCTION

November 2018

Cooee Art Gallery Paddington

326 Oxford Street, Paddington, NSW 

Cooee Art MarketPlace will hold its second mixed vendor auction for 2018 at its Paddington premises following the success in May when 111 works from over 50 private collections were offered for sale. These biannual sales have become a feature of Cooee Art’s yearly program.

DOROTHY NAPANGARDI

October/November 2018

Cooee Art Gallery Paddington

326 Oxford Street, Paddington, NSW

Following her retrospective held at Seattle Art Museum, Cooee Art Gallery will showcase a selection of Napangardi’s finest works. The exhibition will feature paintings, prints and drawings that take the viewer on a journey to Mina Mina and its shimmering salt pans and lakes. Dorothy’s mimetic paintings reveal the vast expanse of her country in microscopic detail.

O TEMPO DOS SONHOS -

OUT OF THE DREAMING:CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL ART

Until 30th September 2018

Various locations Brazil

CAIXA Cultural presents OUT OF THE DREAMING: Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art, an international show visiting Latin America for the very first time and bringing artworks from a remote land which still shares common characteristics with Brazil. Organized in association with 2 Levels, Ta ana Flores Produções and Cooee Art Gallery, the exhibition features an emblematic selection of contemporary Australian art produced by the Aboriginal artists from that country.

Mimih - Crusoe Guningbal
189.0 x 0.0 cm

Tali Sandhills - George Hairbrush Tjungurrayi
152.0 x 183.0 cm

Matang (Ochre) - Kurun Warun
119.0 x 200.0 cm