WilsonRegin Regina Wilson Regina Wilson 1948 Master weaver, renowned painter and respected elder Regina Wilson plays a leading role in the small, peaceful community of Peppimenarti and its flourishing art centre, Durrmu Arts. With her late husband, Harold Wilson, she was pivotal in the founding of this community after successful land rights campaigns in 1973. Peppimenarti is situated deep in the Daly River wetlands 300 kilometres south-west of Darwin. The large rocks and deep pools are a significant Dreaming site of her Ngan’gikurrungurr language group. The name Peppimenarti means large rock. A long established tradition of weaving took Regina and fellow weavers to the Pacific Arts Festival in Noumea in 2000. This was the impetus that set the women to experimenting with paint. Also important, as Regina says, was the recognition of the need to record the material culture of her people in a more durable form. Using the same forms, colours and subjects of their fibre work, their large canvasses quickly emerged onto the contemporary art stage. Regina’s exquisitely executed paintings soon appeared in major exhibitions and in 2003 she won the National Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Art Award for her Syaw (fishnet) painting. In 2009 she was one of several artists chosen to represent Australia at the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. Her innovative approach to translating an ancient cultural practice into a highly accomplished contemporary art form speaks of the infinite variability of the Dreaming Spirit and its ability to renew and sustain its people. Regina adapts the warp and weft of weaving to paint. Fine linear strands are magnified and inscribed on a bright background, intersecting and overlapping as they coalesce into forms that reflect traditional objects in their shape or structure. The looped string and spiral configurations of traditional woven mats, dilly bags, coiled baskets and fishing nets provide simple visual motifs that Regina builds upon to create precise structures, underscored by the delicacy and flexibility of woven fabric. Fluidity and tension are both at play in this abstracted rendition of the rhythmic process of twining and accretion. A powerful shimmering effect results, “evoking the dapple of light on water” (Hetti Perkins). Regina uses the subtle colours of bush dyes in her painting, sometimes including lightened areas of natural fade that would come with time during an object’s traditional use. In applying her ‘up close’ technique to another of her chosen subjects, message sticks, (the traditional method of communication between distant tribes) Regina shows her genius in threading the old and the new into a singular vision. Their elaborate, textured quality is transposed onto canvas in the typical large-scale format. Our usual frames of reference are dislodged as her subject is so inextricably contiguous within its context: immanence and transcendence momentarily become one. Now a grandmother herself, Regina teaches the young girls of Peppimenarti to weave just as she was taught from the age of ten. Once a week the young people gather for ‘culture day’. “Its not just for fun’” Regina impresses, “we’ve got to keep our culture going.” The act of weaving not only fosters relationship and sharing, it metaphorically implies the connectedness of the kinship system, the foundation of Aboriginal social relations. Her own success has been inspirational to others and contributed significantly to the strong sense of confidence and initiative within the community. Art making for Regina is just a natural part of her day but the funds it brings in further reinforces its possibilities as an avenue for the young who follow in her footsteps. As Regina says, maintaining these practices affirms and strengthens the spirit. It is Dadirri, the spring within, an inner calm and pervasive awareness that is derived from ancient Dreamtime beliefs. Author: Sophie Pierce Collections: Museum of Victoria, Melbourne. Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. Individual Exhibitions: 2014 - Regina Pilawuk Wilson, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne 2005 - Pilawuk Regina Wilson - New Works, 20 May to 18 June 2005, Agathon Gallery, Parramatta. Group Exhibitions: 2015 - Indigenous Art: Moving Backwards into the Future, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. 2013 - 30th Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, NT 2008 - Paintings from remote communities: Indigenous Australian art from the Laverty collection, Newcastle Regional Gallery, Newcastle, NSW. 2006-2007 - Gifted: Contemporary Aboriginal Art: The Mollie Gowing Acquisition Fund, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. 2006 - The second Shalom Gamarada Aboriginal Art Exhibition, Shalom College, University of New South Wales, Sydney; Dreaming Their Way: Australian Aboriginal Women Painters, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, USA. 2005 - 22nd Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin; Peppimenarti, Span Galleries, presented by Artabout, Melbourne. 2004 - 21st Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin; North by North-West: Contemporary Indigenous Art from the Queensland Art Gallery Collection, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. 2003 - 20th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin. Awards: 2003 - TELSTRA General Painting Award, 20th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. Bibliography: Hodgson, R., 1988, Peppimenarti Basket Makers, R.R. Hodgson, Nakara, Northern Territory. (C) Since Regina Wilson's work first appeared in Australian auctions in 2006 their performance has been spectacular. Though the single work on offer that year failed to sell, every single one of the eight paintings offered between 2008 and 2010 found buyers, and by the end of 2010 her average price was a formidable $21,605. With four works entering her top 10 results in 2012 at an average price of $28,401 she ended the year as the 12th most successful artist and shot up the AIAM100 chart to secure 58th place on the most successful artists of all time list. The sale of Message Sticks (2005) at Lawson Menzies in June 2008 (Lot 218) for $45,600 eclipsed her previous records. Later that same year Mossgreen sold Syaw (Fish Net) 2007 for $40,000. Her success rate in 2012 was low, with only seven of fifteen works selling. However 15 works was a lot for the market to absorb in any one year and the vast majority of these appeared in the one sale. Ross and Rona Clarke were avid supporters of Regina's career. When they decided to offer their entire collection in a single vendor sale through Mossgreen, most industry observers thought it would depress Regina's prices and reduce demand. That it did not do so speaks highly of the artist's standing in the market and the likelihood of her growing success. By 2015 Regina's average price at auction had slipped to $20,480 and her success rate to 63%. This significant drop does not at this stage represent a trend however. Regina continues to be a practicing artist and with works still gracing the primary market it is understandable, given ther quality, that only 27 works have been offered for sale at auction to date. It is perhaps understandable that there has been a drop in her average porice given her early notoriety during the market boom (2004-2007). Her works are still relatively new to the market, however her results are extremely encouraging and her average price is still comparably high. She has been one of Australia's top ten living female Aboriginal artists and among the top 20 female artists of the entire movement. Her works should continue to do well at auction when they occasionally appear and ensure that her reputation grows over the coming decades. 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

NapaljarriTjunk Tjunkiya Napaljarri Tjunkiya Napaljarri 1927 - 2009 Tjunkiya Napaljarri, daughter of famous artist Mitjili Naparrula, was born in 1927 in the Kintore. She transitioned from making traditional batiks to painting canvases in the early 1990s. Before her death in 2009, at the age of 92, she became a renowned and celebrated artist as well as a senior Pintupi woman in Papunya Tula. Collections National Gallery of Australia Araluen Collection (Alice Springs) Art Gallery of New South Wales Campbelltown City Art Gallery Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory National Gallery of Victoria Supreme Court of the Northern Territory Artbank Selected Exhibitions 'Minyma Tjukurrpa`, 1995. `Twenty-five Years and Beyond`, 1999. `PAPUNYA TULA Genesis and Genius`, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2000. See market performance. 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

YunupinguGulum Gulumbu Yunupingu Gulumbu Yunupingu 1943 - 2012 Gulumbu Yunupingu had already lived a full and busy life before becoming an artist of international standing. Parent, teacher, health worker, translator and compassionate friend to many in her community, she attributed the beginning of her painting career (at the age of 56), to a dream/vision she had while camping out under the stars. The voice was strong, she recalls: “Do this!” The stories she paints, on bark and on larrakitj (ceremonial poles), hark back to her childhood years when her parents told her the traditional Ancestral stories of her Yolgnu heritage. She inherited the right to paint them from her father, the clan leader and artist, Munggurraway Yunupingu (one of the original presenters of the bark petition). Gulumbu Yunupingu states that her art is about the entire universe, stars that can be seen by the naked eye as well as everything beyond and before. She believes that the night sky can bring people of all places and times together, in harmony: “There is healing for people,” she said, “when they see beauty.” Yunupingu builds her night sky with sweeping series of infinitesimal lines and dots, patterns inspired and developed from Arnhem Land’s traditional rarrk designs. Her shimmering surface, created through the complexity of crossed and overlapping shapes, reflects the Ancestral presences that Yolgnu artists have always sought to achieve through their characteristic fine patterning. Conversely, the layers of stars, their tonal gradations and differing areas of density also draw the eye beyond, capturing a sense of atmospheric depth. The magic and majesty of the endless universe appears to the viewer as something familiar but also something we can never fully comprehend. Particular constellations relate to figures from the Dreamtime, such as the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades travelling across the sky in their canoe or the brothers of the Orion constellation. The stories relate to the seasons and changes in the hunting and gathering of bush foods. Sometimes Yunupingu’s stars can be seen to have an eye at their centre. Yunupingu tells the story of being a little girl and her mother telling her that the moisture she felt settling on her at night, even when no clouds were visible, was possibly tears from the stars. After winning the NATSIAA art award (2004), Yunupingu was chosen to create the re-opening exhibit for the Quai Branly Museum in Paris (2006). The thousand of stars painted on the museum ceiling, in white, black, red and yellow ochres, are illuminated at night so passers by can view them through the large front windows of the museum. As a young girl, Yunupingu attended the community mission school before marrying and having children. She married Yirrkala artist, Mutitjpuy Munuggurr, also a NATSIAA winner (1990). The Yunupingu clan are highly esteemed and have been influential in promoting Yolgnu culture, (her brother is the singer in Yothu Yindi) but the family is no stranger to tragedy, with three of Yunupingu’s four children suffering accident and injury. It was this perhaps that tapped Yunupingu into the universality of human feeling which has always managed to touch a chord when she was asked to give a speech at an art event. She gently stressed the importance of understanding and compassion and often brought the audience to tears. Yunupingu had great faith in her fellow artists. She felt there was no danger of the wisdom of her tradition being lost as the elders pass away. The young ones will always pick up the threads and make it their own, building on the knowledge, designs and techniques from the past and weaving in their own interpretations and perspectives, much as she herself had always done. She died in 2012, serenaded with sacred songs and surrounded by her family and community. Her short but intense art career saw her work exhibited around the world and collected by Australia’s state and national galleries. A detailed market analysis will be available shortly 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

Warrane | Konstantina Art Leven - 17 Thurlow St, Redern, NSW 2016 Viewing Room Warrane | Konstantina Art Leven - 17 Thurlow St, Redern, NSW 2016 Warrane | Konstantina A study of Gadigal salt water places 7 - 28 February 2026 REGISTER YOUR INTEREST ExKate26

NapaljarriMilli Milliga Napaljarri Milliga Napaljarri 1921 - 1994 Milyika, Millie Milliga was born near Kiwirrkura in 1922, long before contact with others beyond the reaches of her Great Sandy Desert homeland. She moved with her family in to the old Balgo Mission some time after it was established in 1942 and later moved to the new community after it relocated further north where permanent water could be found in the 1960’s. She took up painting shortly after the establishment of the Warlayirti art centre in the community in 1987, although there is little evidence of paintings completed prior to 1990. Unfortunately, her painting career was brief as she passed away in 1994, having completed no more than 30 paintings. Like other Kukatja women, Milliga’s works were concerned with depicting food and wood sources in the country of her birth. Her depictions of country included sites where mangarta and warlku (which are ground into a paste to make damper) and nyuwari, a blackberry, are rife. Milliga was matchstick thin and frail during the final years of her long life. One of a last group of desert nomads in the Balgo Hills community that had grown to adulthood prior to contact with Europeans. Her home was a shelter comprising cyclone wire suspended above four star pickets on which her bedding and all of her possessions, meager though they were, lay piled during the day providing her with enough shade to sit comfortably and watch passers by. Here she painted impasto-like clusters of coloured dots, in a manner akin to finger painting, over an under-layer representing the body designs for women’s rituals. Milliga 'used to put her fingers into the paint, and then dab them on the canvas, just like people telling stories on the ground' (Watson 1999: 171). Sitting on the red earth in Balgo Hills, Milliga’s ability to be simultaneously abstract and traditional was seen, at the time, comparable to only one other artist whose work she never saw. Geographically located a world away in the reaches of the Eastern Desert, Emily Kam Kngwarraye created works with a similar layered technique of spontaneous over- dotting. As with Emily Kngwarray, Milliga’s work was informal, layered and ‘at all times free of artifice' (1994: 61). In works typified by Purrunga 1991, a lack of visible structure is supplanted by clusters of light colours over the dark underlying designs, giving distinct sections to the canvas. The shimmering fields of yellow and white dots, with hints of subtle pinks are evocative of the profuse colour in the desert landscape as the bush blooms in the spring time. This penchant for lustrous colour also paid tribute to the ancestral beings, who were thought to have radiated with shimmering fluorescence, and to the very notion of health and wellbeing amongst Kukatja people who rub their bodies with animal fat and red ochre in order to radiate health and well being. In contrast to such ancient cultural connotations in Milliga’s use of colour, the medium was a very inexpensive and poor grade of acrylic paint that was provided to the artists in Balgo Hills at that early stage of development at the art centre. While the Warlayirti Artists cooperative began in 1987 under the guidance of the first art coordinator Andrew Hughes, the dynamism in colour that followed began under Michael Rae’s administration of the cooperative. Driven by 'the empowering of women as daring innovators, willing to take risks' (Ryan 2004: 107), a new art form was forged of gestural freedom and luminous colour. Milliga joined Warlayirti Artists in 1989 at the moment this artistic evolution began. It was the environment of an arts community that encouraged the inclusion of both men and women from Walpiri, Pintupi, Ngardi and Kukatja peoples that fostered this climate of experimentation. It was as Watson describes 'one of the most successful examples of cultural bricolage in contemporary Australia' (2004). Arthur Tjapanangka, alongside Jimmy Njamme, performed a ceremony to imbue the new acrylic pigments with the power of the ancient ochres; a symbol of their embrace of what the contemporary world could offer them. In this acrylic medium profoundly important and glorious works were created. None more so than Milliga’s wondrous canvases. She painted for such a short period and left a precious and rare legacy. Her last works have found acclaim for their reach at pure abstraction. The loose, large brushwork in Walku, Wild Peach and Grasses 1994 has great aesthetic appeal, but the grandeur of her earlier compositions is largely lost due to their relatively small size, the degrading vitality of their pigmentation over time, and the lack of historical perspective in an art market constantly allured by the new. Milliga’s work rarely appears at auction, given that she started painting late in life and died shortly thereafter, leaving only a very small oeuvre. Her record price is the $35,750 paid for a 91 x 61 cm canvas titled Kulkarta 1992 which was sold in Sotheby’s July 2004 auction. While this work was one of her best, it also benefited from carrying a fortunate and highly prized provenance; that of the Sam Barry Collection, which comprised 150 of the finest Warlayirti paintings collected during the movement’s formative years, as well as having been originally purchased from Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi. Her second highest result was achieved for Pururrungu 1991, a work of similar size that sold at Sotheby’s in July 2004 for $26,350 (Lot 66). Of the 23 paintings offered on the secondary market 13 have sold for an average price of $13,128. However with such a small sample, insufficient numbers of her highest quality works have yet appeared to match the five works that have sold for more than $16,500. And of the 23 works that have been offered for sale no less than 5 of these have been offered twice , with mixed results. Of the recorded failures, one work Purrunga 1993 failed to sell twice. The first time in 2005 at Sotheby’s when as Lot 255 it carried a presale estimate of $10,000-15,000 and then again the next year as Lot 138 in their October 2006 sale, with an estimate as low as $5,000-7,000. Even her most ardent admirers would admit that this was not one of her finest works, yet carrying the lower estimate in 2006 it should have been recognised as a bargain by at least one canny collector. Her best year on the secondary market was 2004 when all three of the works offered sold for a total of $65,940. This included her two highest selling works to date. One example of a resale is very old and occurred prior to the burgeoning interest in Aboriginal art. Purrunga 1991 measuring 100 x 50 cm cleared $8,050 in Sotheby’s 1996 sale and then $10,925 as in June 1999 (Lot 93). At the time it was created Milliga was considered amongst the most important of all painters at Balgo and the equal of Wimmitji Tjapangarti and Eubena Nampitjin. Another resale occurred in 2010, Artist's Country 1992 fetching $24,000 at Deutscher and Hackett (Lot 36), making a new third place record. It had originally sold five years earlier at Sotheby's, fetching $18,000, which makes for 30% profit before associated costs. 2015 was a good year for Milliag as the two works offered both sold and entered her top 10 results at 5th and 9th place. These, in common with all works that have appeared for auction to date, were small. 2016 saw only one small work go to auction that failed to find a buyer. It was previously purchased in 1996 for $4,600. Should anything larger exist and come on to the market I would expect it to sell for a premium. Artists of Milliga’s stature were the last of that vanishing breed that grew to adulthood before contact with Europeans. She spoke no English and seemed to live the final years of her life in a reverie of memories lived, and stories learnt, as a nomadic desert dweller. Her best works are little gems and due to their scarcity, their historical importance and their contemporary art appeal, they will continue to be highly sought after and infinitely collectable. Explore our artworks See some of our featured artworks below ! SHOP NOW

SYDNEY.- Australia’s oldest Indigenous gallery Cooee Art today announces that it will relaunch as Art Leven, ushering in a new era for the gallery under the stewardship of long-term owner and Director Mirri Leven. < Back Cooee Art to relaunch as Cooee Art Leven Art Daily Jun 29, 2023 SYDNEY.- Australia’s oldest Indigenous gallery Cooee Art today announces that it will relaunch as Art Leven, ushering in a new era for the gallery under the stewardship of long-term owner and Director Mirri Leven. Although the gallery will remain focused on First Nations art, in this new chapter as Art Leven, the gallery will exhibit non-Indigenous alongside First Nations artists, through specially curated individual projects. The new gallery vision will focus on transparent dialogue, offering an opportunity beyond the ordinary commercial relationship between artist and gallery, fostering an environment of openness and direct exchanges between artists. Art Leven will work directly with First Nations curators, art centres, and represented artists. Art Leven will unveil its inaugural exhibition in line with this new programming focus on Thursday 27 July 2023 within its bespoke gallery space, located in Gadial Country, Sydney Redfern. Curated by Gadigal artist Kate Constantine (Konstantina), the exhibition features work created in the Northern Territory Warlpiri community of Lajamanu, organically exploring themes around the craft of landscape painting and ways of seeing and translating land and Country. VIEW FULL ARTICLE Previous Next Featured artworks Quick View ANGELINA PWERLE NGAL - UNTITLED ( BUSH RAISIN MAN) Price AU$3,000.00 Quick View ALISON (JOJO) PURUNTATAMERI - WINGA (TIDAL MOVEMENT/WAVES) Out of stock Quick View LILY YIRDINGALI JURRAH HARGRAVES NUNGARRAYI - KURLURRNGALINYPA JUKURRPA Price From AU$13,500.00 Quick View BRONWYN BANCROFT - UNTITLED Out of stock Quick View JOSHUA BONSON - SKIN: A CELEBRATION OF CULTURE Price AU$8,500.00 Quick View Book BOOK - KONSTANTINA - GADIGAL NGURA Price From AU$99.00 Quick View FREDDIE TIMMS - MOONLIGHT VALLEY Price AU$35,000.00 Quick View NEIL ERNEST TOMKINS - BURN THERE, DON'T BURN THERE Price AU$7,000.00

MY COUNTRY 17 Thurlow St, Redern, NSW 2016 19 January to 11 February 2023 Viewing Room MY COUNTRY Netta Loogatha Birrmuyingathi Maali (c.1942-2022) 19 January to 11 February 2023 17 Thurlow St, Redern, NSW 2016 Netta Loogatha Birrmuyingathi Maali was born on Bentinck Island at Bilmee, Dog Story Place, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Qld. Loogatha is one of the renowned seven ‘sisters’ from Bentinck Island which includes Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori. Through her vibrant portrayal of her home, Loogatha celebrates the landscape and uses her paintings to teach the next generation about Country. “I paint the story places, all different places, true story places. We learned these from the old people. We learned what’s not for touching. They tell us what it means. We do this so we can pass these stories down to our grandchildren while we’re still alive. They love to hear our stories because of the olden time Dreamtime stories and dancing. There are lots of things that I remember to tell in stories.” “I am happy to show other people My Country and Culture. It brings a smile to my face when I finish an artwork and see a part of me on it.” VIEW CATALOGUE NETTA LOOGATHA BIRRMUYINGATHI MAALI - MY COUNTRY price AU$5,100.00 NETTA LOOGATHA BIRRMUYINGATHI MAALI - MY COUNTRY price AU$4,800.00 NETTA LOOGATHA BIRRMUYINGATHI MAALI - MIJILDA price AU$2,500.00 NETTA LOOGATHA BIRRMUYINGATHI MAALI - MY COUNTRY Sold AU$0.00 NETTA LOOGATHA BIRRMUYINGATHI MAALI - MY COUNTRY price AU$4,800.00 NETTA LOOGATHA BIRRMUYINGATHI MAALI - MY COUNTRY price AU$3,850.00 NETTA LOOGATHA BIRRMUYINGATHI MAALI - MIJILDA price AU$2,500.00 NETTA LOOGATHA BIRRMUYINGATHI MAALI - MY COUNTRY Sold AU$0.00 NETTA LOOGATHA BIRRMUYINGATHI MAALI - MY COUNTRY price AU$4,800.00 NETTA LOOGATHA BIRRMUYINGATHI MAALI - STONE FISH TRAPS price AU$3,850.00 NETTA LOOGATHA BIRRMUYINGATHI MAALI - MY COUNTRY Sold AU$0.00 EX 246

On a red hot day, in the summer of 2008, I sat down in my rainforest retreat near Byron Bay, on the east coast of Australia, and began writing about my experiences during 40 years in the commercial art market. < Back COLLECTING AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL ART — FOREWORD Mar 21, 2021 On a red hot day, in the summer of 2008, I sat down in my rainforest retreat near Byron Bay, on the east coast of Australia, and began writing about my experiences during 40 years in the commercial art market. I had opened my first art gallery in 1977, had been the Managing Director of Australia’s largest fine art auction house for a number of years, and was by then an independent art consultant and the owner of Australia’s oldest Aboriginal art gallery. During the following year, the global financial crisis hit and the great international art bubble burst. Collectors watched in dismay as the value of their art and antiques dropped by up to 40%. It seemed like a catastrophe, but it was really just a hiccup. It has happened many times before, but those who were closely affected naturally couldn’t see it that way. In the long term, the market for collectables continues to go from strength to strength. Over the next six years I wrote one million words about how the art market works and three separate projects emerged. The first was a website, devoted to the art of the 200 most important artists of the Australian Aboriginal art movement. It examines, in depth, the lives of these artists and the most important works that they created, along with an analysis of the performance of their artworks at auction. The market statistics provided are dynamic, updated instantly from auction results as listed by the influential Australian Art Sales Digest. The second project was a book relating my own experiences and the story of the modern Aboriginal art movement, the most exciting and transcendent chapter in the recent Australian art history. It tells how, within the space of just 40 years, indigenous artists transformed the perception of their culture from something of strictly ethnographic interest into one of the great internationally acclaimed contemporary art movements of all time. The book is called The Dealer is the Devil and you can read more about that here. The blog that follows is the third and final project. It will be posted fortnightly here in this section entitled ‘How to Collect Aboriginal Art’. You can sign up to the marketplace mailing list to receive the latest instalment into your inbox. It provides a detailed account of how the art market works. How to buy and sell art, and how to be a winner. Although the specific examples used throughout the text relate to Australian Aboriginal Art, the vital information imparted is universally true of the market for every asset class and style of art, antiques and collectables in every country of the world. If you are interested in collecting absolutely anything, from souvenir spoons to vintage cars, from rare books to OpArt, you will find the information in this book invaluable. In fact, it could well be the most important publication to guide and accompany you on your path as a collector. I wish you happy and successful collecting. ADRIAN NEWSTEAD Previous Next Featured artworks Quick View ANGELINA PWERLE NGAL - UNTITLED ( BUSH RAISIN MAN) Price AU$3,000.00 Quick View ALISON (JOJO) PURUNTATAMERI - WINGA (TIDAL MOVEMENT/WAVES) Out of stock Quick View LILY YIRDINGALI JURRAH HARGRAVES NUNGARRAYI - KURLURRNGALINYPA JUKURRPA Price From AU$13,500.00 Quick View BRONWYN BANCROFT - UNTITLED Out of stock Quick View JOSHUA BONSON - SKIN: A CELEBRATION OF CULTURE Price AU$8,500.00 Quick View Book BOOK - KONSTANTINA - GADIGAL NGURA Price From AU$99.00 Quick View FREDDIE TIMMS - MOONLIGHT VALLEY Price AU$35,000.00 Quick View NEIL ERNEST TOMKINS - BURN THERE, DON'T BURN THERE Price AU$7,000.00

Bonhams sold the Laverty collection for $5.05 million in March; on June 21 it is selling the Reg Grundy collection, estimated at $21 million. < Back AUCTION HOUSES EMERGING FROM DOLDRUMS Mar 21, 2021 Bonhams sold the Laverty collection for $5.05 million in March; on June 21 it is selling the Reg Grundy collection, estimated at $21 million. Bonhams sold the Laverty collection for $5.05 million in March; on June 21 it is selling the Reg Grundy collection, estimated at $21 million. ”The pedigree that comes with single-owner sales means they outperform normal art auctions,” Mr Fraser says. ”Buyers know they’re getting the best of the best.” Sotheby’s inaugural sale at its new Collins Street premises last week has buoyed talk that the market is clawing its way out of the doldrums. The $7.4 million turnover included Brett Whiteley’s early abstract painting Woman in a Bath 1, 1963, which sold for $976,000, treble the estimate set. Criticism last year that Sotheby’s was putting overly high estimates on works was quashed at the auction, with other standouts including Peter Russell’s beautiful impressionist work In the Afternoon, 1891, recently rediscovered in France through Sotheby’s in Paris, trebling its pre-sale estimate at $707,600. A rare 19th-century painting by Aby Altson, Children’s Children, 1889, on loan to the National Gallery of Victoria from 2002 to 2013, sold for a record $341,600. Fred Williams’ 1981 painting Pool at Agnes Falls, which fetched $1.3 million, was also conservatively priced at $800,000. Arthur Boyd’s The Goat Girl, 1953, which art dealer Stuart Purves described as ”the most important social comment made in this country so far on the human condition of Aborigines”, had a presale estimate of $800,000-plus. It was passed in but sold two days later. Deutscher and Hackett’s April 24 sale, which fetched $4.5 million, also had some rare and sought-after works. Among the 78 per cent of pieces sold were two early paintings by Ian Fairweather – Boats at Soochow Creek, 1938, and Temple Yard, Peking, 1936, fetching $630,000 and $384,000 respectively. Menzies Art Brands, which began the year’s auctions, fetched $4.5 million – $2 million shy of its predicted turnover – and its worst March result on record, amid growing concern that it is offering too many of the same works for sale too frequently. Previous Next Featured artworks Quick View ANGELINA PWERLE NGAL - UNTITLED ( BUSH RAISIN MAN) Price AU$3,000.00 Quick View ALISON (JOJO) PURUNTATAMERI - WINGA (TIDAL MOVEMENT/WAVES) Out of stock Quick View LILY YIRDINGALI JURRAH HARGRAVES NUNGARRAYI - KURLURRNGALINYPA JUKURRPA Price From AU$13,500.00 Quick View BRONWYN BANCROFT - UNTITLED Out of stock Quick View JOSHUA BONSON - SKIN: A CELEBRATION OF CULTURE Price AU$8,500.00 Quick View Book BOOK - KONSTANTINA - GADIGAL NGURA Price From AU$99.00 Quick View FREDDIE TIMMS - MOONLIGHT VALLEY Price AU$35,000.00 Quick View NEIL ERNEST TOMKINS - BURN THERE, DON'T BURN THERE Price AU$7,000.00

A COOEE CHRISTMAS | NEXT GEN 21 From 27 November to 31 December 2021 A COOEE CHRISTMAS | NEXT GEN 21 From 27 November to 31 December 2021 A COOEE CHRISTMAS | NEXT GEN 21 From 27 November to 31 December 2021 Our selected artists from 2021 will deck the walls with Christmas jolly, their artworks spanning sizes small and large within any price range. Discover the bold colours and powerful gestural brushstrokes by some of Australia’s most interesting contemporary Aboriginal artists.

REDFERN WINDOW 2022 17 Thurlow St, Redern, NSW 2016 From 16 November to 31 December 2022 REDFERN WINDOW 2022 From 16 November to 31 December 2022 REDFERN WINDOW 2022 From 16 November to 31 December 2022 17 Thurlow St, Redern, NSW 2016

DowlingJulie Julie Dowling Julie Dowling 1969 Throughout her celebrated career, Badimaya artist Julie Dowling has drawn on a wide range of cultural and historical influences. However, portraiture, a genre that has not generally been embraced by contemporary Aboriginal artists, has been the central hallmark of her work. Raised by a single mother on a meagre income, she attended a catholic convent school where she was exposed to images of saints at an early age. Her earliest icon-like images were strongly influenced by renaissance religious paintings. Later, while studying at Curtin University in Western Australia, her research led her to examine the events and consequences of Christianity’s early colonising role on her own, and other, Indigenous people. This led her on a deeply personal artistic journey due, in particular, to the cultural implications and impact of her grandmother’s removal from her family as a member of the stolen generation, and her anger at the church and its sanctimonious attitude toward Badimaya people and their culture. Dowling’s grandmother had been forced to leave Coorow as the government dispossessed her of her land, and welfare officers tried take her children even though her white husband was still living with her. She moved to the south-west to become anonymous within the Noongar community in which her older brother Frank lived. This forced removal and dislocation is the bedrock of Dowling’s oeuvre and motivation to paint. Her depiction of Aboriginal faces began as a way to help her family locate other likely family members as they encountered strangers on the street or on public transport. Many were part of the stolen generation - ‘lost’ due to their forced removal according to government policy at the time. She observed the features of each Noongar & Badimaya family and the way in which they differed from each other. This early focus is a ‘decolonising’ tool she continues to apply in her art to this day. Dowling, importantly, spends much of her time within her Badimaya community, amongst living relatives and family friends. She returns over and over to the life stories of her mother, grandmother and aunts. ‘I never start a painting without talking at some length to members of my family‘ Dowling says. ‘I talk to my family because this is the first step in my connection to my community and my culture and my way of tapping into the inter-generational trauma due to dispossession & colonisation from which we are all healing to various degrees. ‘If I didn’t talk to them first then I couldn’t claim to call myself Badimaya at all.’ Dowling carries these influences towards a stark, often confrontational neo-realism but also partakes of the post-modern penchant for pastiche. Her surfaces are often a complex web of strong colours, contrasting textures and materials such as plastic beading, cloth and glitter. Fragments of the past make their presence felt in photo-like inserts or lines of text that reflect raw echoes of the spoken word. Traditional Aboriginal art motifs such as dot and circle patterning, or stylised allusions to rock or bark painting, contribute a traditional inflection to this complex overlay of meaning. Dowling’s deft command of the principles of portraiture however, always elevates her subjects within this provocative visual synthesis. The halo, a common feature in her portraits, is used to impart the idea of the hero (as in Western art tradition). Dowling re-interprets this idea of heroism within Romantic & Renaissance portraiture as a way of reflecting back to the viewer the propaganda of colonial empire and entrenched colonial racism today. It is also a device she uses to focus in on ‘the self’ inherent in her portraits. Her intention is to concentrate on her subject’s inner lives rather than their surroundings. In her cycle of seventy-five paintings titled Icon to a Stolen Child 1999, the viewer is transfixed before each haunting face, sensing the unfathomable depths of pathos, perhaps stopping to analyse the detailed background with its suggestions of causality, or silently acknowledging the reality of soul that makes each individual irreplaceable. These ‘Black Madonnas’ are not forlorn victims of white ignorance but resilient heroines who ultimately triumph. They become role models for future generations, icons to a spiritual connectedness that remains untrammelled. Addressing the many issues First Nation sovereignty, autonomy & self-determination, Dowling seeks to pay tribute to the thousands of Aboriginal workers who have played vital, yet unacknowledged roles in rural communities. Love and empathy for her grandmother is apparent in works such as Mollie at Coorow Hotel 2001. In this powerful work referencing religious images of mother and child, we are shown the moment when the struggling laundress makes the difficult decision to leave her traditional country and find a better life for her family in the city. Mimi-like spirits in the background reflect her ancestors, silently wishing her to stay but the child peeping out from under her skirts suggests the tug of a more immediate reality and an insistent future. In focusing so intently on the healing of past injustice, Dowling draws heavily on the ambivalent relationship between Aboriginality and Christianity. Catholicism in particular is seen to provide spiritual sustenance, as evoked in the sense of grace that imbues her characters, yet the memory of alienation and abuse eddy upon the painted surface, alerting us to a history that demands healing. Julie Dowing has been an extraordinarily influential artist since she first exhibited her work in Perth in 1993. In 2000 she won the prestigious Mandorla Prize for Religious Art, and the following year was a finalist in the Archibald Prize, and won the People’s Choice in the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Award. Though her artistic output is limited, she has participated in international art fairs, important curated shows and, prior to 2011, had more than eight solo exhibitions, with Brigita Braun of Artplace Gallery in Perth and Sullivan and Strumpf in Sydney. She severed her connection with Braun in 2011 and since that time has shown with Harvison Gallery in Perth, Bruce Heiser in Brisbane and Niagara Galleries in Melbourne. Dowling’s masterful and edifying paintings are held in major collections in Australia and around the world. Julie Dowling’s paintings appeared for the first time at auction in 2002 when Molly Went to the Zoo 1995-96 was offered with an estimate of $5,000-7,000 at Deutscher Menzies in March and sold for $9,987 (Lot 9). The following year another single work was offered at McKenzies auctioneers in Perth. Since then over 80 paintings have appeared at auction and they have met with mixed fortune. Only one work has ever been offered for sale by Sotheby’s and this failed to sell, while Christie's are yet to have a single offering. This artist has been championed in the secondary market by the Menzies group and, as would be expected, the West Australian auction house Gregson Flanagan which always does well promoting the work of W.A. artists such as William Boissevaine, Robert Juniper and Dowling. Her greatest success at auction has been achieved when her works have been shown outside of an Aboriginal context, as was the case with her seven highest results to date. Her $26,450 record was set as recently as 2008 when The Dance almost doubled its high estimate at Gregson Flanagan in May (Lot 18). It eclipsed the previous record paid for Warru (Fire) 1999 which sold at Duetscher~Menzies in June 2004 for $24,000 against a presale estimate of $9,000-12,000 (Lot 200). Arguably the most important painting offered to date has been the 143 x 270 cm major 1995 work, The Promise which was offered at Lawson~Menzies in May 2007 for $35,000-45,000. This major piece with a strong reconciliation theme included a list of characters including former Prime Minister Paul Keating and Eddy Mabo sitting around a campfire with members of the stolen generation, while the faintly dotted ghostly figures of past descendents peered toward them out of the gloomy night. Regardless of its importance and museum quality, it failed to sell in the context of an Aboriginal stand-alone auction and would doubtless have been better offered in a contemporary art sale. Dowling’s third highest result at auction was for the Runaway 2001, a work depicting the true story of a child who ran away from her family who had adopted her. When offered at Deutscher Menzies in June 2004 at $12,000-15,000 it sold for a very encouraging $20,400 (Lot 2). One work, Sunday Best 2001 has experienced an extremely checkered history as the owner simply wouldn’t give up in their desire to move it on. It was first offered at Sotheby’s in July 2004 (Lot 144) for $10,000-15,000 and, having failed to sell, it found its way in December of the same year into Deutscher~Menzies with an estimate of $9,000-12,000. After failing once more and, having been laid away for a while to recover from the stigma, reappearing in November 2006 at Lawson~Menzies with an estimate of $6,000-8,000 (Lot 277) it failed yet again. Finally, when the auction house was persuaded to include it in their March 2007 Contemporary to Colonial sale it finally sold for $5,280 against a presale estimate of $4,200-5,600. This particular work, however, should not be seen as indicative of the level of interest in Dowling’s work overall. It was an image of a rather unassuming man in a Sydney suit, hardly what most people would want on their walls and not on par with her most interesting works. At their best, Julie Dowlings paintings combine an icon-like religious quality with a post modern feel through the use of an array of alluring materials. She is an important Aboriginal artist whose secondary market career is only just beginning. Her success rate is respectable and although her current Art Market Rating is low, this is primarily due to the small number of works that have appeared to date. As works of higher quality find their way in to the market these should perform strongly. Dowling is extremely well represented and highly appreciated by museum curators and arts professionals. She is definitely an artist that collectors should follow with great interest as her career develops over the next decade. 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