Artist Profile for Djirrirra Wunungmurra < Back Djirrirra Wunungmurra Djirrirra Wunungmurra ARTIST PROFILE ARTIST CV MARKET ANALYSIS READ FULL ARTIST PROFILE DJIRRIRRA WUNUNGMURRA - YUKUWA (HOLLOW LOG) SOLD AU$9,000.00 DJIRRIRRA WUNUNGMURRA - BUYKU Sold AU$3,200.00 DJIRRIRRA WUNUNGMURRA - YUKUWA Sold AU$0.00 DJIRRIRRA WUNUNGMURRA - YUKUWA (HOLLOW LOG) Sold AU$0.00 DJIRRIRRA WUNUNGMURRA - YUKUWA (HOLLOW LOG) Sold AU$0.00 DJIRRIRRA WUNUNGMURRA - YUKUWA Sold AU$0.00 DJIRRIRRA WUNUNGMURRA - YUKUWA Sold AU$0.00 DJIRRIRRA WUNUNGMURRA - YUKUWA SOLD AU$3,500.00 DJIRRIRRA WUNUNGMURRA - YUKUWA (BUSH YAM) Sold AU$0.00 DJIRRIRRA WUNUNGMURRA - YUKUWA Sold AU$0.00 DJIRRIRRA WUNUNGMURRA - YUKUWA Sold AU$0.00 DJIRRIRRA WUNUNGMURRA - YUKUWA Sold AU$0.00 DJIRRIRRA WUNUNGMURRA - YUKUWA Sold AU$0.00 DJIRRIRRA WUNUNGMURRA - YUKUWA Sold AU$0.00 top Anchor 1 PROFILE Djirrirra Wunungmurra ARTIST CV Market Analysis MARKET ANALYSIS Disclaimer: At Cooee Art Leven, we strive to maintain accurate and respectful artist profiles. Despite our efforts, there may be occasional inaccuracies. We welcome any corrections or suggested amendments. Please contact us with your feedback .

Artist Profile for Otto Pareroultja Also know as: Parachultja, Parawiltja < Back Otto Pareroultja Also know as: Parachultja, Parawiltja Otto Pareroultja 1914 - 1993 Also know as: Parachultja, Parawiltja ARTIST PROFILE ARTIST CV MARKET ANALYSIS READ FULL ARTIST PROFILE OTTO PAREROULTJA - MONOLITHS OF PALM PADDOCK Sold AU$0.00 top Anchor 1 PROFILE Otto Pareroultja 1914 - 1993 Otto Pareroultja was the oldest of three brothers that Rex Battarbee referred to as the ‘breakaway group’. They were amongst the new generation to follow Albert Namatjira as the watercolour landscape artists at the Lutheran mission of Hermannsburg. Pareroultja was twelve years younger than Namatjira, and despite Battarbee’s initial preference for works by Otto’s younger brother Edwin, it is the elder brother’s work that has been consistently compared with that of Namatjira. Even in 1947, when he first began painting, there were those who inferred that Otto’s works resonated with that of European modernists such as Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gaugin in that his landscapes were distinguished by brilliant colour, dense patterning and ‘rhythmic pulsation’. While Albert Namatjira’s life has often been characterised by art historians as being ‘lived in two worlds’ - torn between the need for acceptance by his own Aranda people with the pressure of kinship obligations; and compelled by the imperative to act as if he were a white European citizen, Pareroultja’s life was not so marked by conflict. His art, however, does dwell in that space between Indigenous Australian, and European styles. Though Pareroultja never departed from the use of watercolour over the course of his artistic career, his style and subject matter became markedly ‘more Aboriginal’, and, with this gradual transition, much stronger. The sense of movement inherent in his paintings is reminiscent of Dreaming narratives. Anthropologist T.G.H. Stehlow and Battarbee both pointed out the connections between the swirling parallel lines and concentric circles of Otto’s paintings and the designs found on the sacred ‘tjuringa’ stones associated with men’s ceremonial life. It is this ‘traditional resonance’ in his painting that distinguishes Pareroultja from other artists of the Hermannsburg school. Landscape painting as taught at the Lutheran mission, and practiced by the majority of community painters, was rather a matter of ‘freeze-frame’; the landscape rendered static against the page. By comparison Pareroultja’s desert landscapes exhibit a distinct dynamic originality. The best of his works were painted late in a career which spanned twenty years. His paintings predominantly depict sacred sites - although at the time of Pareroultja’s painting they may not have been recognised as such outside of their community context. Dark areas are set against regions of prolific colour. The effect is that of concentrated working in defined regions of the canvas such as the ridges of a mountain, or the trunk of a tree. Pareroultja was not overly concerned with correct perspective in his landscape. Shade and scale resulted in paintings that can appear all detail and no depth, almost as if they were intended as the backdrop to a play. His forte was not artistic realism. While we have no indication that he aimed for this, the merit of a painting by Otto Pareroultja lies in the visual articulation of certain Indigenous elements, rendered through European technique. While Otto painted from 1947 onwards his work was largely overshadowed by that of Albert Namatjira until the early 1980’s when several of his works were included in important exhibitions. This led to his inclusion in the Great Australian Art Exhibition 1788-1988 at the Art Gallery of South Australia and marked the point at which a reassessment of his artistic legacy began. Over the years there has been some debate as to whether Pareroultja’s depiction of sacred ancestral knowledge was deliberate or unconscious. A more pertinent question might be whether the artist aimed to be political. The answer is probably no. Rex Battarbee, encouraged Pareroultja, like Namatjira and others, to paint things ‘as he saw them’, advice that seems to have been, in Pareroultja’s case, the catalyst for a break with tradition. The native Indigenous forms in the landscape seem simply an intrinsic part of the artist’s vision of his environment. As is often the case, painting truthfully generally makes for good art. ARTIST CV Market Analysis MARKET ANALYSIS The comparison between the paintings of Albert Namatjira and Otto Pareroultja in recent art criticism has raised Pareroultja’s profile as a key figure in ‘transitional’ Aboriginal art (that is art presenting both Indigenous Australian and European influences). The surge of interest since the late 1980s is imbued with certain politics. Both Pareroultja and Namatjira have been the subject of a ‘re-Aboriginalisation’. In 1986 Daniel Thomas, director of the Art Gallery of South Australia, initiated a project to posit Namatjira as an intermediary on the road to the emergence of the Papunya movement rather than the producer of anomalous kitsch, as he had been treated during the previous decade. Interest in this new perception of Namatjira also reflected on Pareroultja, who, in comparison would, more overtly, incorporate Aboriginal elements in his watercolours. The study rekindled an appreciation of the artistic merit in Namatjira’s work and this was reflected in rising market values for his, and concurrently, although not as dramatically, the works of Pareroultja. The average sale price of Otto's work has steadily increased at auction since the mid 1970s and his success rate at auction is now a very respectable 74%. This should considered high for an artist that has had over 517 works offered for sale over a very long period. Prices in the early eighties were generally under $100 but increased gradually to around $300 by the late 80s, and $750 in the late nineties. By 2002 the artist’s career average price was $1,500 and reached $2,800 in 2005 even when omitting the spectacular result achieved for a work in July 2003, which would have skewed the average significantly. In that year Sotheby’s sold Central Australian Landscape c. 1956 for $24,000, against an estimate of $7,000-10,000 at its July Sydney auction. Prior to this no work by Pareroultja had commanded more than $10,000 in the secondary market. However three years later, Central Australian Landscape 1950’s attracted $84,000, well above market estimates of $30,000-50,000 at Sotheby’s July sale in Melbourne (Lot 29). ‘A very similar looking painting’, was the wry remark in The Australian Art Market Report (2006/7:19). The two works are indeed similar. Like so many paintings in Pareroultja’s oeuvre, both of these works depict the white ghost gum. In fact, in the entire body of Pareroultja’s work, very few paintings vary from this theme; a uniformity that might appear obsessive, even farcical, to a non-Indigenous eye, until we realise that what is being painted are not actually trees, but rather spirits; or, should I say, the representational motif of a spirit. It is only in this light that the repetition begins to make more sense. Tim Strehlow observed that the ‘tiger like rings’ looping the trunks of the ghost gums were referential to the practice of painting black and white rings on the trunks of totem poles, an Aranda ritual. Although his top two prices have been for works painted in the 1950s, across his entire oeuvre there is little difference in price according to when the painting was created. Many works are undated and his style varied according to whim, as brightly coloured expressionistic works were painted in the same years as more subdued realistic versions. In general, the market has favoured the former with the subtler pale and the less complex imagery fetching lower prices. In 2007 no less than four of his top ten records were displaced by new results. These included the $48,000 paid for a 1960s Aranda landscape sold by Sotheby’s in July (Lot 68), which carried a presale estimate of $40,000-60,000. An estimate of this magnitude would have been unthinkable just two years earlier, such has been the growth of interest in the artist’s work. Another Central Australian Landscape sold at Joel Fine Art in June for $18,750 (Lot 61) and a lovely rendition of Haast’s Bluff snuck into the artist’s top results at number 11 when sold for $6000 against an estimate of just $1,500-1,800. The overall result of this highly successful year for the artist was that his average price rose from $1,836 to $2,187 per work, surely remarkable for an artist who has had so many works presented over more than three decades. In 2008 however his works were far less successful. Only nine of 17 works offered found a new home and his highest price was a poor $5,400. This lowered his career clearance rate from 81% to 79%. The upward trajectory seen previous to 2008 was regained in 2009 with all but one of the 16 works on offer finding a buyer, whilst setting new third, fifth, ninth and tenth records. The third and fifth record sales eclipsed expectations by a significant amount as exemplified by an image simply entitled Ghost Gums , which fetched $32,400 against a presale estimate of just $15,000-20,000. This gain was consolidated in 2010, amidst intense interest in the Hermannsburg water-colourists. Otto was the 12th most successful artist in 2011, hot on the heals of Albert Namatjira. This saw him become the 28th most successful artist of the movement, a status he continued to hold at the end of 2019. The one notable sale of 2017 was an uncharacteristic watercolour on wood panel, which more than tripled its high presale estimate of 3,000, ultimately selling for $9,660. But sales have flatlined since that time. 2019, for instance, was a disapointingyear. While 21 works sold of 26 offered the highest price achieved was just $3,480 incl BP at Eder Fine Art in Adelaide and his average price was just $1,122. Otto Pareroultja’s works have a strong appeal and his finest works should continue their steady growth in value over the next decade. We are, however, unlikely to see any but the very best achieve the dizzying heights of his two highest results. While his works are expected to steadily grow in value, recent sales are of concern. With records for sales going back to the mid 1970s it is remarkable that his success at auction has been as high as it is. Still, Otto Pareroultja was a most important Australian landscape painter who imbued his works with inherent spiritual presence. Amongst the artist's of the Hermannsburg school, his oeuvre is likely to remain second only to that of Albert Namatjira for a very long time into the future. Disclaimer: At Cooee Art Leven, we strive to maintain accurate and respectful artist profiles. Despite our efforts, there may be occasional inaccuracies. We welcome any corrections or suggested amendments. Please contact us with your feedback .

Artist Profile for Margaret Napangardi Brown < Back Margaret Napangardi Brown Margaret Napangardi Brown ARTIST PROFILE ARTIST CV MARKET ANALYSIS READ FULL ARTIST PROFILE top Anchor 1 PROFILE Margaret Napangardi Brown SELECTED EXHIBITIONS: 2016 Solo Exhibition, A Utopian Vision, Cooee Art Gallery, NSW 20th Oct - 19th Nov 2016 2016 Finalist, Alice Prize, Alice Springs Art Foundation, Alice Springs, N.T. 2014 Narrativa Herióca - Pintura Aborígine do Deserto Australiano Renaissance Hotel, São Paulo, Brazil & Arca Urbana, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 2014 Finalist, 38th Alice Prize, Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs 2013 Finalist, Fleurieu Art Prize, 2013, Maclaren Vale, South Australia 2013 Finalist, The Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize, Museum of South Australia 2012-13 Blake Prize Director’s Cut on-line exhibition, The Blake Society 2012 finalist Paddington Art Prize, Sydney 2012 finalist, Hawkesbury Art Prize, Purple Noon Gallery, Freemans Reach (Blue Mountains region) NSW 2012 Tattersalls Club Art Prize Award, Tattersalls Club, Brisbane 2012 finalist, Metro Art Award, Metro Art Gallery, Melbourne 2012 The Churchie, National Emerging Art Exhibition, Griffith University Art Gallery, Queensland College of Art (Judge’s Award winner) 2011 Tattersall’s Club Art Prize Award, Tattersall’s Club, Brisbane, 2010 (Commended) 2011 Kinross House, Uniting Arts Toorak, Vic; 25 May - 3 July 2011, Grafton Regional Gallery, NSW' 30 July - 8 September 2011, The Schoolhouse Gallery, Tasmania 2010 Fisher’s Ghost Art Award, Campbelltown Art Centre, 2010, Sydney 2010 59th Blake Prize, National Art School Gallery, Sydney, 3 September - 2 October 2010 23 Oct - 28 Nov 2010, Adelaide Festival Centre, SA; 28 Jan - 3 March 2011, Delmar Trinity Gallery, NSW; 18 March - 21 April 2010 Metro Gallery Art Award, Metro Gallery, Melbourne 2009 Blake Prize, The Blake Society, National Art School Gallery, Sydney City of Albany Art Prize, 4 – 27 April 2009, Vancouver Arts Centre, Albany, W.A. Awarded Highly Commended Making their Mark: Elizabeth Kunoth Kngwarray and Genevieve Kemarr Loy, 20 March - 25 April 2009, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne An Individual Perspective: From the Indigenous Collection of Lauraine Diggins, Deakin University Gallery, Burwood, and touring to Geelong Gallery, 2010 2008 Impulse to Paint: The Artists of Iylenty, Utopia, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne Moscow World Fine Art Fair, Manege, Moscow, Russia The Churchie National Emerging Art, Morris Hall at Churchie (Anglican Church Grammar School), East Brisbane Annual Collectors’ Exhibition, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne Australian Antiques & Art Dealers Fair 2008, Sydney Fisher’s Ghost Art Award, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney 2007 Visions of Utopia, Cooee Aboriginal Art, Sydney Memory As Landscape, Masterpiece @ IXL, Hobart Utopia Today, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne COLLECTIONS: Anglican Church Grammar School, Brisbane Lauraine Diggins, Melbourne LITERATURE: Impulse to Paint: The Artists of Iylenty, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art Melbourne, 2008 (exhibition catalogue) Annual Collectors’ Exhibition, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne, 2008 (exhibition catalogue). ARTIST CV Market Analysis MARKET ANALYSIS Disclaimer: At Cooee Art Leven, we strive to maintain accurate and respectful artist profiles. Despite our efforts, there may be occasional inaccuracies. We welcome any corrections or suggested amendments. Please contact us with your feedback .

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ColeRober Robert Ambrose Cole Robert Ambrose Cole 1959 - 1994 Robert Ambrose Cole is best known for having created of a distinct personal niche between traditional and contemporary Indigenous art styles through his experimentation with ‘dotting’ techniques. While growing up in urban Mparntwe (Alice Springs), he encountered a variety of influences. The tradition-based art movements emerging from the Central and Western Deserts inspired him, as did the European-influenced landscapes of the Hermannsburg watercolourists. Due in part to his own ancestral heritage, both provided fertile areas of artistic exploration, but it was in their eventual synthesis that Cole’s art reached its ultimate aesthetic realization. Cole himself was an unassuming man who approached his art with great caring and sincerity and was reluctant to explain his imagery. Yet despite the decidedly spiritual or contemplative feel across his entire oeuvre, art patrons, curators and critics often made profound statements when commenting on his works. Though his style varied, many of his more recongisable works were inhabited by a particular kind of meticulous and evenly laid white dotting. This is the one constant in a body of work spanning the six years prior to 1994, the year of the artist’s death. He began painting in 1988, at the age of twenty-nine and worked at the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association. CAAMA brought him into contact with artists from the Utopia region, a people with whom he shared an ancestral heritage through paternal ties. Cole’s personal interpretation of the Utopia method led him to fuse this style with a European figurative influence. Although his work remained predominantly conceptual, the tension between the figurative and the abstract was a continuing theme throughout his work. The technique of wash and overlay, prompted Cole to experiment with delicate and sensitive blends of colour and tonal relationships, often generating a glowing otherworldly patina across the surface. In other works however, he built a stronger surface texture. Areas of dots emphasized the substantiality of simple forms within an expansive and highly charged field. The ambiguity between distinct structure and dissolving boundaries found its fullest expression in the works painted just prior to his untimely death through illness at the age of thirty five. Coles earliest works took up the imagery of sites and symbols attached to the country and people of his parents; the Warramunga people of Banka Banka, north of Tennant Creek on his mother’s side and Aputula, Finke, the sandstone hills on the edge of the Simpson Desert, on his fathers side. Yet Cole was removed from conventional narratives of Aboriginal art, partly by his conscious abstraction and also by his reluctance to explain his imagery. Perhaps he wanted to avoid being fetishized as a painter of spiritualised forms. For instance, the sense of an aerial view, a perspective that occurred throughout his work, was not explained as a land narrative. And, though it was grounded in traditional Aboriginal culture, Cole appears to have been most concerned with his own personal painterly exploration of colour and form. His dots were always carefully measured, spaced, and applied with attention to varying sizes and areas. While the creation of a surface vibration by varying dot size and spacing is part of a continuing aspect of Aboriginal painting, Cole strove for a precision that differentiated his work from other artists working in the same vein. Figures and shapes below the surface were contained and defined by the overlaid dots to give the effect of a shimmering, mirage –like illusion (not dissimilar to that of op art). The ebb and flow of indistinct shapes were accompanied by the constant assertion of their presence. Cole’s work was best defined within this schema. In Two Spirits 1991, we can make out the form of two figures, defined by two distinct fields of dots. A third layer of paint is drizzled (Pollock-like), across the canvas, adding an element of chaos to the meticulously laid background. In describing his work, Margo Neale wrote ‘…the spiritual fervour or contemplative state that accompanies the act of creating is an act of homage which also makes them religious icons' (1994: 95). Robert Ambrose Cole painted for only a brief period and was principally promoted through Christopher Hodges’ Utopia Art Gallery in Sydney and galleries that he worked with including Mary Reid Brunstrom’s Austral Gallery in St. Louis, U.S.A. Cole only lived long enough to have two exhibitions yet within the brief span of his career his work was included in a number of important art awards; was issued on a stamp by Australia Post, and most importantly, included in Australian Perspecta at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1993. His paintings were generally small and created on either paper or canvas as was the case with his highest priced work, which measured just 69.6 x 50 cm and sold for $11,162 when estimated at $6,000-8,000 by Christie's in August 2000 (Lot 8). This was one of five works by Cole sold through Christie's which have generated $31,134 since his work first appeared in salerooms in 2000. Only two other auction houses have presented his paintings. Sotheby’s have sold just one for $575 the year his work first appeared at auction in 1999. Since that time Christies and Lawson~Menzies have championed Cole’s work. The latter have sold seven pieces for a total of $29,040 including six of his ten highest results on the secondary market to date. Another work sold by Christies in 2000 had been included in the landmark exhibition Spirit and Place: Art in Australia 1861-1996, held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in 1996-1997. Measuring just 79 x 59.5 cm and painted in 1992, this untitled work sold for $7,475 against a presale estimate of $4,000-6,000. It was no finer in quality two excellent works on paper that both failed to sell in 2008 at Leonard Joel, despite extremely reasonable estimates. A missed opportunity had a discriminating collector picked them up and re-offered them through an auction house more familiar with the artist’s work. Despite the failures above, that resulted in his success rate dropping from 81% to 72% Cole’s clearance is still impressive. Most of those works that have failed to sell have been screenprints carrying overly high estimates. While his best year at auction was 2000 when both his highest and fourth priced paintings sold at Christies, his most prolific years in the salesrooms have been 2005-2006 during which five of six paintings offered sold for a total of $30,200. His works are highly desirable and eminently affordable at an average price of just $4,673. Collectors would be wise to keep an eye out for any that come up for sale. With estimates running in the $8,000-10,000 range these works certainly seem to represent very good value given their rarity. Explore our artworks See some of our featured artworks below ANGELINA PWERLE NGAL - UNTITLED ( BUSH RAISIN MAN) Price AU$3,000.00 ALISON (JOJO) PURUNTATAMERI - WINGA (TIDAL MOVEMENT/WAVES) Out of stock LILY YIRDINGALI JURRAH HARGRAVES NUNGARRAYI - KURLURRNGALINYPA JUKURRPA Price From AU$13,500.00 BRONWYN BANCROFT - UNTITLED Out of stock JOSHUA BONSON - SKIN: A CELEBRATION OF CULTURE Price AU$8,500.00 BOOK - KONSTANTINA - GADIGAL NGURA Price From AU$99.00 FREDDIE TIMMS - MOONLIGHT VALLEY Price AU$35,000.00 NEIL ERNEST TOMKINS - BURN THERE, DON'T BURN THERE Price AU$7,000.00 SHOP NOW

Artist Profile for Richard Bell < Back Richard Bell Richard Bell ARTIST PROFILE ARTIST CV MARKET ANALYSIS READ FULL ARTIST PROFILE RICHARD BELL - A WHITE HERO FOR BLACK AUSTRALIA Sold AU$0.00 top Anchor 1 PROFILE Richard Bell ARTIST CV Market Analysis MARKET ANALYSIS Disclaimer: At Cooee Art Leven, we strive to maintain accurate and respectful artist profiles. Despite our efforts, there may be occasional inaccuracies. We welcome any corrections or suggested amendments. Please contact us with your feedback .

MungGeorg George Mung Mung George Mung Mung 1921 - 1991 Lilmayading, Lirrmayirriny George Mung Mung spent his life in the East Kimberley cattle industry until he finally settled, in his fifties, where he was originally born and spent his earliest years. His father, Charlie Mungmung, had worked as a police tracker stationed at Turkey Creek at the time of his birth and George began work in the stock camps while still a boy. He was employed by the manager of the Tickelera Cattle Station, Authur Muggleton, and became a drover. As a youth he travelled across the country as far as Queensland with up to 1,200 head of cattle. Later, when the new owner of Tickelara, Bill Scurthrope, sold up and moved to Spring Creek, George, now married to Betty Carrington, joined him and had a family. More than a decade later they returned to the East Kimberley to work with Jimmy Kline, the manager of Texas Downs Station where George became head stockman, and when Kline moved to Turkey Creek, George followed. He later spent four years breaking horses for Tom Davis at Lissadell Station before relocating his family to Wyndham, where his children could attend school. However, with the establishment of the Warmun Community in the mid seventies George once again returned to live at Warmun with his family. The Pastoral Award of 1969, which gave equal pay to Indigenous workers, had all but ended the lifestyle of the Aboriginal stockmen. They found themselves thrown off stations, homeless and unemployed. In its wake, Warmun provided both a shelter and, coincidentally, a site for cultural and artistic revival. This was given extra impetus when George and a number of his contemporaries, including Rover Thomas and Paddy Jaminji, were convinced that the devastation Cyclone Tracy wreaked on Darwin in 1974, was the manifestation of the Rainbow Serpent’s anger at the abandonment of traditional culture in the face of white influence. In a dream Rover Thomas was visited by the spirit of a female relative who had recently died in a car crash, and over the following year this dream became the basis of a song cycle during which the singers revisited all of the most important East Kimberley Dreaming sites. By 1978 this had developed into the Krill Krill Ceremony during which the woman’s spirit travels from the moment of her death in a medical airplane hovering over a whirlpool, to her conception site near Turkey Creek and on throughout the Kimberley to eventually end near Cape Levique as she overlooks the destruction of Darwin. From the outset, George Mung Mung aided the central figures of this invention, Rover Thomas and Paddy Jaminji, in creating the ceremonial boards for the dancers to carry in this reenactment. His own artistic development was significantly influenced by these early origins in both manner and concept. Unlike the large ephemeral ground paintings of the Western Desert with their omnipotent viewpoint, these paintings on plywood boards invited a range of different perspectives. George’s art comprised works that incorporated both aerial and lateral depictions of country simultaneously, as well as figurative profiles of ancestral animals and occasional descriptive annotation. In George Mung Mung’s works, and specifically his earliest paintings on board, naturalistic figurative representations are far more prolific than in Western Desert works, no doubt derived from the Warmun painters tendency to depict the features of the environment created by the ancestors, rather than mapping the journey of ancestral travels, as in desert painting. Initially George’s paintings differed greatly from those of his contemporaries. While Rover’s sparse canvases demonstrated a ‘simplicity that suggested there was far more to each work than met the eye' (McDonald 2004: 21), George Mung Mung’s works were characterized by more complex composition combined with greater figuration. Later he tended toward works that were far bolder and geometric, executed in a far darker palette. In these works he always portrayed the country, which in his final years he would go and visit with his wife, children and grandchildren. A favorite camping spot was Cattle Creek, where they would sit under the tree that stood just ten meters from where Betty was born and where they had married. With his family around them they would relate stories around the camp fire that would connect them all to their country. George suddenly died in 1991, just as Rover’s work was being presented at the Venice Biennale and Kimberley paintings were beginning to make a major impact on the Aboriginal art market. George Mung Mung was amongst the initial instigators of the art movement at Warmun in the East Kimberley and as a result his works have been included in major art collections around Australia including the Holmes a Court Collection and the Berndt Museum of Anthropology. His inclusion in the latter gives insight into the anthropological value of many of his works and also explains the stellar result of $29,900 that was achieved for one of his finest works as early as 1999. The painting, Texas Country 1985, sold for almost three times its estimated $8,000-12,000. It was a remarkable work combining diverse elements such as a beautifully rendered crocodile and bird, and perspectives of distant hills, with spectacular coherency. The record price was undoubtedly deserved, both for its historical significance and its aesthetic beauty. However it was a precedent that seemed difficult to match, and the record stood until 2007, a year in which three paintings entered the artist’s top ten results. His new record-breaking work had all of the qualities of the former record holder and sold for $34,000, a tad below the high estimate placed on it in Sotheby’s July sale (Lot 120). Along with this result, Frog Hollow near Turkey Creek, an undated painting with Waringarri Aboriginal Art provenance, sold for $24,000 at Sotheby’s in November (Lot 44). It was a typically animated rendition of the landscape in which Mung Mung depicted elements in both lateral and aerial perspective. The arabesques of flowing water at the top of the painting graphically imitated the undulating hills and limestone ridges in the lower section. It incorporated an image of the Rainbow Serpent, indicating the presence of the ancestral forces that vivify the land. The final work of the three 2007 entries was a nice 1989 board featuring a statuesque image of a Kangaroo which appeared as if it were the embodiment of a particular site amongst the surrounding hills. It sold for $18,000 at Lawson~Menzies in November (Lot 117). While the best of his figurative works have done well, a large number of George’s works are executed in a very dark palette and lack the allure of works by several of his contemporaries. There has been difficulty in selling both his large, highly estimated works such as Berlanyji Country 1990, which passed in at auction both in 1999 and 2005 when offered at Philips ($20,000-25,000) and Lawson~Menzies ($25,000-35,000) respectively. Those that have failed to sell were created between 1986 and 1990 and have carried a wide variety of estimates. While two carvings of Creator Snakes both failed to sell, a lovely small carved fish created in 1988 achieved $3,120 when offered at Lawson~Menzies with an estimate of $1,500-2,000 in November 2006 (Lot 233). The best works by George Mung Mung rarely appear for sale. The majority of these were created prior to the introduction of synthetic glue binders making the quality of the surface of many works extremely delicate and alluring. The organic surfaces, figurative detail and delicacy of execution make these paintings highly desirable, and within his oeuvre there exist remarkable treasures of rare brilliance. George passed away just as Warmun began to gain wide recognition and it is amazing to recall that many of his paintings were created at a time when there really was no market for East Kimberly art at all. Mary Macha who played an influential role in promoting the work of these artists has often been quoted as remarking how very hard it was, having been told by the Aboriginal Arts and Crafts company ‘don’t buy any more of that stuff, there’s no market‘ (Laurie 2000: 14). Although this is now far from the case, George did not see the full glory that Warmun would achieve, nor have the chance to realize his own individual potential as an artist as he might have done. He was a great teacher, who was absolutely devoted to the Warmun school in his desire to pass on cultural knowledge to future generations of Gidja children, and would have been astounded and delighted to know how productively the seeds the he and his contemporaries sowed have grown to bear fruit. He is an artist whose works are included in many important public and private collections, and should never be overlooked by those fortunate enough to be present when a work becomes available for purchase. Explore our artworks See some of our featured artworks below ANGELINA PWERLE NGAL - UNTITLED ( BUSH RAISIN MAN) Price AU$3,000.00 ALISON (JOJO) PURUNTATAMERI - WINGA (TIDAL MOVEMENT/WAVES) Out of stock LILY YIRDINGALI JURRAH HARGRAVES NUNGARRAYI - KURLURRNGALINYPA JUKURRPA Price From AU$13,500.00 BRONWYN BANCROFT - UNTITLED Out of stock JOSHUA BONSON - SKIN: A CELEBRATION OF CULTURE Price AU$8,500.00 BOOK - KONSTANTINA - GADIGAL NGURA Price From AU$99.00 FREDDIE TIMMS - MOONLIGHT VALLEY Price AU$35,000.00 NEIL ERNEST TOMKINS - BURN THERE, DON'T BURN THERE Price AU$7,000.00 SHOP NOW

Artist Profile for Lillian Kerinaiua < Back Lillian Kerinaiua Lillian Kerinaiua ARTIST PROFILE ARTIST CV MARKET ANALYSIS READ FULL ARTIST PROFILE LILLIAN KERINAIUA - PUKAMANI SOLD AU$720.00 LILLIAN KERINAIUA - PUKAMANI POLES Sold AU$0.00 LILLIAN KERINAIUA - PUKAMANI SOLD AU$660.00 top Anchor 1 PROFILE Lillian Kerinaiua ARTIST CV Market Analysis MARKET ANALYSIS Disclaimer: At Cooee Art Leven, we strive to maintain accurate and respectful artist profiles. Despite our efforts, there may be occasional inaccuracies. We welcome any corrections or suggested amendments. Please contact us with your feedback .

Artist Profile for Sarah Morton Kngwarrey < Back Sarah Morton Kngwarrey Sarah Morton Kngwarrey ARTIST PROFILE ARTIST CV MARKET ANALYSIS READ FULL ARTIST PROFILE top Anchor 1 PROFILE Sarah Morton Kngwarrey ARTIST CV Market Analysis MARKET ANALYSIS Disclaimer: At Cooee Art Leven, we strive to maintain accurate and respectful artist profiles. Despite our efforts, there may be occasional inaccuracies. We welcome any corrections or suggested amendments. Please contact us with your feedback .

WatsonTommy Tommy (Yannima) Watson Tommy (Yannima) Watson 1935 - 2017 Pitjantjatjara elder Tommy Watson gained wide domestic and international exposure in an astonishingly short amount of time. Beginning his artistic career in 2002, his paintings were greeted with instant acclaim. His first works were created at the community arts centre in Irrunytju (also named Wingellina) located 12 km south-west of the tri-state border where the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia meet. This was just 44 kilometres east of his birthplace at Anamarapiti, circa 1935. Though he recalled visiting Papunya in his youth, observing the germination of an art movement there, it was not until later that he himself felt compelled to lay down his stories in paint. Watson's debut at the 2002 Desert Mob show in Alice Springs was followed by his participation in a series of domestic group exhibitions from which his reputation gained momentum. Shortly thereafter, the sale of a major painting for $36,300, in an auction organised in 2003 to raise money for the struggling art centre, created a frenzy around his work. The catalogue for the sale was distributed widely amongst collectors. The demand for his paintings has outstripped supply ever since. On learning of the sale, Tommy Watson and his entourage travelled to Alice Springs where he painted 42 works for Red Sand Gallery. He subsequently entered into a representative relationship with art dealer, John Ioannou, the owner of Agathon Gallery. Their exclusive arrangement became the subject of much controversy, given that it was a break-away from the established avenue of representation through community art centres. However, the calibre of work that Watson had consistently produced for Ioannou was a testimony to the success of their professional relationship. Other artists working at Irrunytju were obviously impressed as, before long, the community council offered Ioannou the opportunity to exclusively manage and market all of the art centre’s art. Other painters from this geographic region, the Spinifex people, have recorded the effect of the British nuclear testing in this country during the 1950s in a somewhat similar manner to the way in which Watson expressed the history of the land in his own work. Grounded in his paintings are rockholes, mountain ranges, and creekbeds, however, we see these transmitted in waves of light. Many of his paintings are, in fact, evocative of nuclear shock waves, light waves, and explosions. They meet the dual demands of the contemporary Indigenous Australian art market in that they tend towards abstract expressionism while conforming to traditional practice through layering and ‘dotting’. Watson’s paintings seem to shift and shimmer out of description. His paintings have been described as ‘incandescent’, an interesting and revealing use of a term defined as 'shining or glowing with heat’. Particularly apt, because ‘hot’ is the term that, again and again, was used to describe the artist himself. Tommy Watson’s prominence was ultimately cemented when, in 2006, he was commissioned to create a permanent installation in the new Musee du Quai Branly, in Paris. The piece he created, Wipu Rockhole, was made using baked enamel on stainless steel and converted into a ceiling mural. It presents a radical transposition in medium as a traditional painting embedded in architecture. Notably, his transition to stardom was actually far from contrived, or even self-driven. This is perhaps why the description of 'art star' was so incongruous when applied to Watson. He preferred not to enter into art dialogue at all, a fact that was helped by his almost total reliance on his first language, Pitjantjatjara. The sense of great expectations surrounding Tommy Watson would have presented a challenge to any artist, yet he remained impervious to hype. He continued to live according to the traditional culture that he recorded in his paintings. His integrity was displayed in his opposition to painting works upon demand, ‘I paint works from my heart. I can’t do those works again … it can’t be real Dreaming if I do’ (Agathon Galleries). This transcendent philosophy is reflected in paintings that, at their best, are truly great works of art. To outline the rise of Tommy Watson chronologically would read almost as a how-to in crossing the threshold from ‘next big thing’ to ‘the hottest thing’ in the market. Since he first emerged on the art scene, his trajectory has been unparalleled in the annals of Aboriginal art. From obscurity in 2002 he rose to become the 27th most important artist of the movement by 2007, and 14th by the end of 2012, by which time his records transcended those of any other living Aboriginal artist other than Ronnie Tjampitjinpa. During August 2003, shortly after Cromwell’s achieved a massive $36,300 on the sale of the 140 x 177 cm Kukutjara 2003 at a fundraising auction in Sydney, the Aboriginal art world’s attention focused on Tommy Watson’s work with searing intensity. On hearing the news, Tommy and members of his family had travelled to Alice Springs and supplied paintings to Red Sand Gallery. Unsure of the prices they should attach to them, given the only sale they had heard of was at a charity auction, Red Sand offered one of the forty-two works they had secured from the artist through Shapiro’s March 2005 auction. Measuring 121 x 200 cm and carrying an estimate of $15,000-18,000 it sold for $30,000 on the hammer ($36,000 including buyer's premium and GST). It was a work that had barely time for the paint to dry. To say this stirred up a hornets' nest would be an understatement. The commercial ramifications were still being played out in the courts two years later and Mary Knights, the art coordinator at the Irrunytju Art Centre whose position was secured by the funds raised during the auction, ignited a cauldron of controversy hotter even than the deep reds and vibrant orange textured fields of the artist’s multi-layered palette. Disillusioned by the magnitude of these two sales and the small percentage of the money he had received in return, Tommy Watson decided to stop painting altogether and apparently did not work again until persuaded to do so by John Ioannou, who offered him, in his native Pitjantjatjarra tongue, a deal that would see him earn more than $600,000 from his art during the following 12 months. In Tommy Watson’s solo exhibition, held at Ioannou’s Agathon Gallery in October 2005, no less than ten of the 30 paintings were priced at $55,000 and all had sold prior to the official opening. During the same month, Shapiro’s included a second work by the artist from Red Sand, which sold for $33,600. This work, Kungkarrakalpa 2005 was smaller than their previous offering just six months earlier at just 120 x 150 cm, yet the estimate had doubled to $30,000-40,000. In just over two years Tommy Watson was firmly established as a ‘superstar’, able to command a higher price for his new works than any other contemporary Aboriginal artist then painting. The strength of interest in Watson’s work was confirmed by the length of the list of anxious Agathon Gallery clients waiting to purchase a work. Little wonder then that the level of interest in the major work Waltitjarra, 2006 measuring 204 x 251 cm in Lawson~Menzies May 2007 sale saw it achieve his highest price to date. Submitted by Ioannou, the painting was one of a number held in the trust fund for which the entire proceeds were to revert to the artist. After spirited bidding from six potential buyers drove the price beyond its $80,000-100,000 presale estimate, two intrepid buyers pushed the price to $200,000 forcing the successful buyer to pay a staggering $240,000 for a work created less than 12 months earlier. In 2009, Sotheby’s re-offered the painting that originally sold at the Cromwell’s fundraiser, an event attended by a great deal of expectation, especially given that it was the first Tommy Watson painting ever offered to Sotheby’s clients. Originally purchased for $36,300 the painting sold the second time around for $96,000. Watson's market performance in 2010 proved that potential consignee's were justified in holding back major works given the economic climate of the time. The collector who offered up Iyarka 2008, with an estimate of $80,000-100,000 was not rewarded for his bravery. It failed to sell in Menzies March sale (Lot 70). However, two lovely small works did sell in the $20,000-$30,000 range. Watson painted few small works and these are always eagerly snapped up at affordable prices. By 2014 Watson's relationship with John Ioannou had broken down and Alice Springs art dealer Chris Simon had become his exclusive international representative. With the prices of anything other than very small works already beyond the pocket of small investors, Tommy's large paintings continued to increase in value in the primary market. Between 2013 and his death in 2017 a staggering 55 works appeared at various auction houses of which only 25 sold, bringing his clearance rate down to only 50%. However, this belies the fact that Chris Simon's coterie of primary market galleries have been selling Tommy's works with unfailing success. Despite his mixed fortunes at auction, there is little doubt that over the next decade Tommy Watson will become one of the top 10 artists of the movement and eventually firmly establish himself just behind the market leaders. Explore our artworks See some of our featured artworks below ANGELINA PWERLE NGAL - UNTITLED ( BUSH RAISIN MAN) Price AU$3,000.00 ALISON (JOJO) PURUNTATAMERI - WINGA (TIDAL MOVEMENT/WAVES) Out of stock LILY YIRDINGALI JURRAH HARGRAVES NUNGARRAYI - KURLURRNGALINYPA JUKURRPA Price From AU$13,500.00 BRONWYN BANCROFT - UNTITLED Out of stock JOSHUA BONSON - SKIN: A CELEBRATION OF CULTURE Price AU$8,500.00 BOOK - KONSTANTINA - GADIGAL NGURA Price From AU$99.00 FREDDIE TIMMS - MOONLIGHT VALLEY Price AU$35,000.00 NEIL ERNEST TOMKINS - BURN THERE, DON'T BURN THERE Price AU$7,000.00 SHOP NOW

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Ngarukuruwala Kapi Murrukupuni (we sing to the land) Barks & paintings from the Artists of Munupi 16 November - 9 December 2023 Exhibition Opening: 16 November 6-8pm First name Last name Email GET MORE INFORMATION Thanks for registering your interest we will be in touch soon!