Indigenous Fine Art Auction 8th June 2020 by Art Leven [formerly Cooee Art]

COOE E ART INDIGENOUS FINE consultancy ART AUCTION | SYDNEYgalleries | 8 JUNE 2021 auctions

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

FRONT COVER IMAGE LOT #58 MICK NAMARARI TJAPALTJARRI (1926 - 1998) Untitled - Yam Story, 1972 65 x 44 cm | synthetic polymer paint on board BACK COVER IMAGE LOT #35 DR DAVID DAYMIRRINGU MALANGI (1927 - 1999) The Funeral of Gurramuringu, Mighty Hunter of The Dreamtime, 1980 136 x 62 cm | natural earth pigments on bark

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AUCTION | Australian Indigenous Fine Art Auction Live and Online Tuesday 8th June 2021 | 7pm AEST start

17 Thurlow Street Redfern NSW 2016

Auction Viewing 1st - 7th June 2021 | 10-5pm Tuesday 8th June 2021 | 10-2pm

Telephone /Absentee Bids email bids to auctions@cooeeart.com.au phone: +61 (0)2 9300 9533 bidding forms pages 109-110 Live Online Bidding auction.cooeeart.com.au

auctions@cooeeart.com.au

www.cooeeart.com.au AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

ADRIAN NEWSTEAD OAM | Founding Director - Senior Specialist adrian@cooeeart.com.au | +61 412 126 645 Adrian Newstead OAM established Cooee Art in 1981 and has organised and curated more than 400 exhibitions of Indigenous art since that time. A former President of the Indigenous Art Trade Association and Director of Aboriginal Tourism Australia he became the Head of Aboriginal Art for Lawson~Menzies in 2003, and Managing Director of Menzies Art Brands until 2008. Adrian is an Aboriginal art consultant, dealer, author and art commentator, based in Bondi, NSW. He has more than 35 years experience working with Aboriginal and Australian Contemporary art.

MIRRI LEVEN | Executive Director mirri@cooeeart.com.au | +61 416 379 691 Having gained degrees in International Development and Fine Arts, and a Masters in Art Administration from the University of NSW College of Fine Art, Mirri undertook fieldwork in the Solomon Islands and India whilst acting as the international photo editor for a London based travel magazine. She joined Cooee Art in 2007 and was appointed the Gallery Manager in 2010. In 2013, she left Australia to take up a role as director of a contemporary art gallery in London. Mirri has been a director of Cooee Art since 2015. She plans its exhibition program and project development, and is a founder of its auction arm, the Cooee Art MarketPlace.

EMMA LENYSZYN | Indigenous Art Auction Specialist emma@cooeeart.com.au | +61 400 822 546 Educated in Fine Art at RMIT, Emma joined Cooee Art in 2016 as Gallery Manager Paddington and is now the Auction Specialist for the bi-annual Cooee Art MarketPlace auctions. She has a long history of employment in the arts including working at international institutions, commercial galleries and private collections.

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SAM RAMSDEN | Art Handler Sam Ramsden, in his second stint with Cooee, brings on board twelve years of art-world experience. The son of an artist and a critic, Sam has worked in galleries across Berlin and Sydney, including his first job at the legendary Galerie Eigen + Art in Berlin from the age of 13, The Ray Hughes Gallery in Sydney, which he managed in its final years before opening his own, The New Standard Gallery, which ran from 2016 to 2018. Sam now returns to Cooee as our Art Handler.

RENATA BRAK | Digital Curator Over the past decade, Renata has helped facilitate over 100 exhibtions nationally and internationally and has worked for a variety of commerial galleries, artist run initiatives, arts festivals, and major art institutions, most notably the Museum of Contemporary Art. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Tasmania, with a major in Graphic Design, and a Masters in Art Curatorship from the University of Sydney. Renata first joined Cooee Art in 2011, returning in 2018 as their Digital Content Curator.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

COOEE ART AUCTIONS | 8 JUNE 2021

Welcome to the first Cooee Art Indigenous Fine Art offering for 2021. Our specialists have collected 100 lots with a total value of $1.8-2.4 million for this multi-vendor auction which will be held in our newly appointed auction showrooms in Redfern on June 8th starting at 7pm. The sale features 16 lots from the estate of Lorna Mellor AM who acquired most of her lovely collection from her close family friend Dorothy Bennett. Lorna Mellor was a stylish, larger than life character, who played a leading role in children’s health care as the International President of the Diabetes Foundation. Her collection included rare Tiwi artefacts that Dorothy Bennett personally collected during the 1950s and 1960s, as well as Arnhem Land barks and sculptures, two lovely works by Albert Namatjira (Lots 33 and 36), and other exquisite desert paintings. Amongst them is Clifford Possum’s refined 1982 work Yabbierangu, Honey Ant Dreaming. It is a delight, and carries a very conservative pre-sale estimate of $40,000-60,000 (Lot 37). The sale also includes a number of works from the private collection of Melbourne art dealer Hank Ebes, among them several works by Emily Kngwarreye, as well as key pieces from the international touring exhibition Nangara, which visited several venues in Belgium, Denmark, and Japan between 1996 and 2006. Amongst these are 4 early works on composition board created by some of the first Western Desert masters. They include Old Tutuma Tjapangati’s Hunting for Mingi (Lot 7), Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri’s Star Dreaming (Lot 8), Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri’s Yam Story (Lot 58), and Johnny Warrangkula’s Water Dreaming at Tjikari(Lot 56), all created between 1971 and 1973 at Papunya. Other sale highlights include several works by East Kimberley art movement founder Rover Thomas. While there are some lovely early works among them, his by far largest and most striking work in this sale was created during Rover’s visit to Melbourne in 1995. Lightning, measuring 212 x 275.5 cm, first exhibited at Niagara Galleries in Melbourne, is dramatic and brooding in its deceptive simplicity and estimated at $90,000-110,000 (Lot 67). Though far from the most expensive work in this sale, Lot 28 has a famous, storied past. A woven rug depicting an artwork by George Milpurrurru created a storm when it was first offered for sale, sparking a landmark case in Australian legal history. In 1994, Federal Court Judge John Von Doussa awarded record damages ($188,640) to 3 living and 5 deceased Indigenous artists, whose works had been reproduced on carpets without knowledge or permission from the artists or their representatives. The ‘Carpet Case’, as it became known, came in the wake of the Federal 6

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Government’s review of intellectual property laws as they apply to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts and cultures. Foremost amongst the litigants was George Milpurrurru, the first Indigenous artist to have a solo exhibition at the Australian National Gallery [sic], and whose original bark painting had previously been adopted as a design for the Australian 85 cent stamp, issued in 1993 to celebrate the International Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. The Carpet Case set a precedent and became a landmark in the protection of individual property rights for Australia’s Indigenous people. The rug, Hunting Magpie Geese Eggs, is accompanied by a beautiful bark depicting the same story, painted by Milpurrurru’s brother, Jimmy Djelminy. The pair of items is estimated at just $6,000-8,000 (Lot 65). In March, more than 350 clients, curators, and artists attended the opening and the proceeding week of our new gracious 480m2 museum-style exhibiting gallery, project space, and auction rooms in Redfern, Sydney. This Indigenous Fine Art auction will be the first in Cooee Art’s beautiful new home. We look forward to welcoming you at the preview (Tuesday 1st – Monday 7th June) and at the sale at 7pm on Tuesday 8th June.

Adrian Newstead OAM

INDEX

ARTIST

LOT #

ARTIST

LOT #

Albert Namatjira Alma Webou Artist Once Known Bill Tjapaltjarri Whiskey Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri Boxer Milner Carol Maayatja Golding Charlie Numbulmoore Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri Cyril and Elaine Thomas Darby Jampitjinpa Ross Derek Jungarrayi Thompson Dr David Daymirringu Malangi Elizabeth Nyumi Nungurrayi Emily Kame Kngwarreye Eubena Nampitjin Fred Ward Tjungurrayi Freddie Timms Gabriel Tungutalum George Milpurrurru & Jimmy Djelminy Gurruwiwi Mithinari Jack Britten Jack Wherra Jimmy Donegan John Mawurndjul Johnny Mosquito Tjapangarti Johnny Warnangkula Tjupurrula Judy Napangardi Watson Karen Casey Kuntjil Cooper Lily Napangardi Kelly Lily Karadada Lin Onus Louis Karadada Maggie Watson Napangardi May Chapman Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri

33, 36 14 40, 41, 45, 48 73 8 16 82 4 37, 59, 60 93 67 39 35 22 10, 17, 18, 19, 25, 26, 32, 38, 52, 74 87 54 63 47 28 34 72 42 91 65 89 56 12 27 80 95, 96 70 85 69 11 9 58

Milatjari Pumani Millie Skeen Minnie Pwerle Mitjili Napanangka Gibson Naata Nungurrayi Ningura Napurrula Noŋgirrŋa Marawili Nora Wompi Nungurrayi Nyurapayia (Mrs Bennett) Nampitjinpa Old Tutuma Tjapangati Paddy Bedford Paddy Jampin Jaminji Paddy Nelson Jupurrurla Paji Wajina Yankarr Honeychild Patsy Anguburra Lulpunda Peter Marralwanga Queenie McKenzie Nakara Richard Dhaymutha Robyn Nganjmirra Ronnie Djanbardi Ronnie Tjampitjinpa Rosie Nanyuma Rover Joolama Thomas Sally (Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda) Gabori Stanislaus Puruntatameri Susie Napaltjarri Bootja Bootja Thomas Tjapaltjarri Tiger Palpatja Tjayanka Woods Tommy May Ngarralji Walangkura Napanangka Wattie Karruwara Weaver Jack Wentja Morgan Napaltjarri Willy Tjungurrayi Witijiti George Yannima Tommy Watson

92 86 51, 75, 76, 90, 97 98 55, 78 49 3 100 77 7 5 29 68 1 62 64 61, 71 44 66 43 57 88 6, 20, 30 13 46 81 31 79 83 84 99 2 15 50, 94 53 21 23, 24

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #1

PAJI WAJINA YANKARR HONEYCHILD (c.1912 - 2004) Rockhole - My Country, 2004 139 x 101 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas PROVENANCE Mangkaja Arts, Fitzroy Crossing, WA Cat No. PC412/04 Private collection, Tas EST $6,000 - 9,000

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Born at Kuntumarrajarra in the Great Sandy Desert Paji Honeychild began painting at the Karrayili Adult Education Centre and took part in its first exhibition at the Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute in Adelaide in 1991. The recurring theme in her works were Jila (waterholes) at various sites in the Great Sandy Desert. This superb and beautifully resolved painting, depicting her beloved sandhill country and precious living water at Yirtil, was created during the last year of her life when she was over 90 old. In this evocative painting, the powerful life-forces of her familial rockhole define and energise the surrounding country, while the gleaming bands of a rainbow cast over its sky signifies the passing of an important rainfall event and the renewal of life.

LOT #2

WATTIE KARRUWARA (1910 - 1993) Untitled, 1965 76 x 95 cm watercolour on paper PROVENANCE The Collection of Andrew Crocker, NT Private Collection, WA LITERATURE Cf. for images of 27 works by the artist see The John McCaffrey Collection of Kimberley Art, Sotheby’s catalogue, Sydney July 28, 2003 EST $ 10,000 - 15,000

Wattie Karruwara was born in the Hunter River basin in the far Northwest of Western Australia c1910. The earliest record of one of his paintings is a work collected by anthropologist Norman Tindale in 1953. Wattie’s works on paper were the result of a friendship developed with American anthropologist John McCaffrey, who in the early 1960s provided him with small flat painting surfaces. Initially, these took the form of portable barks, which McCaffrey had flown from Arnhem Land, however the difficulty in obtaining the bark led the anthropologist to purchase the best quality paper and Windsor and Newton watercolour paints on a visit to Perth. The results were astounding and McCaffrey noted that Wattie painted ‘sometimes up to eight hours straight, in a trance-like state with eyes open’. Karruwara completed the series at the Derby Leprosarium after being diagnosed with leprosy. In all, only 38 watercolours resulted from their exchange, the beauty of which resides in the naive charm of the colourful semi-naturalistic depictions of the flora and fauna of his country. This work was a wedding gift to the current owner by Andrew Crocker. Crocker was from the UK and involved with Survival International. During the early 1980s he was the art advisor at Papunya Tula Artists. He heavily promoted Australian Aboriginal art and was also an advocate for Aboriginal land rights. He died from a bomb blast in Namibia while working with the Indigenous people of South Africa.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #3

NOŋGIRRŋA MARAWILI (1938 - ) Baratjala, 2018 130 x 85 cm natural earth pigments on bark PROVENANCE Buku-Larrngay Mulka, NT Cat No. 4203-18 Private Collection, Vic accompanied by a certificate from Buku-Larrngay Mulka EST $10,000 - 15,000

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Baratjala is a Madarrpa clan estate adjacent to Cape Shield where the artist camped with her father and his many wives as a young girl. She lived nomadically as part of a clan group that travelled from season to season in a flotilla of canoes between Groote Eylandt and the mainland. Her father’s name was Mundukul (Lightning Snake) and this is also the name of the Water Python which lives deep beneath the sea here. These are cyclonic, crocodile infested waters with huge tides and ripping currents. Some of her designs show the rock set in deep water. Also depicted are duŋgurŋaniny, barnacles that grow on the rock. Yurr’yunna is the word used to describe the rough waves that break over the rock and the spray that flies into the sky. It is said that the serpent ‘spits’ lightning. This bark is a beautiful example of a departure from the artist’s earlier works, both in the reduced use of heavily crosshatched sections, and in the bold use of negative space with a confident and instinctive focus on composition.

LOT #4

CHARLIE NUMBULMOORE (1907 - 1971) Wandjina, 1970 36.5 x 26.5 cm natural earth pigments on board PROVENANCE Created at Gibb River Station, WA Private Collection, NSW Lawson Menzies, Aboriginal Fine Art, May 2007, Lot 1 Private Collection, NSW EST $15,000 - 18,000

Charlie Numbulmoore lived for many years on Gibb River Station in the Central Kimberley, where anthropologist Ian Crawford first recorded him repainting Wandjina figures in a Mamadai cave in the 1960s. The few biographical details of Numbulmoore’s life that exist are traced solely through his encounters with those anthropologists who collected his work. Numbulmoore’s paintings show a unique conception of the Wandjina, characterised by large round black eyes fringed with short delicate lashes. The centre of the chest features a solid black or occasionally red oval, said to depict the sternum, heart, or a pearl shell pendant representing its spiritual essence. The almost circular head is surrounded by a very regular, tripartite halo or headdress, representing hair, clouds, and lightning. Unusual in these works is the inclusion of a mouth and a long narrow parallel-sided nose, flared at the very tip with nostrils. This very rare example of his work was created on the lid of a wooden box.The great strength of Charlie Numbulmoore’s artistic legacy is that he was able to convey the aesthetic and spiritual power of the Wandjina undiminished through a range of portable media that survive to this day.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #5

PADDY BEDFORD (1922 - 2007) Jirljin (Red Pocket), 2000 135 x 122 cm natural earth pigments on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Jirrawun Arts, WA, Cat No. PB 3 2000-77 Chapman Gallery, ACT Deutscher and Hackett, Important Australian and International Art, August 2018, Lot 102 Private Collection, NSW Signed with initials verso: PB accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Jirrawun Arts ILLUSTRATED Storer, R., Paddy Bedford, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2006, p. 148 EST $25,000 - 35,000

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Paddy Bedford stood out as a uniquely talented artist and began painting at the age of 77. During his lifetime, he was honoured with the unprecedented recognition of a retrospective exhibition and a major catalogue by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in 2007, which toured nationally. Red Pocket is near the Springvale-Landsdown Road, between Ida Mere Yard and Janterrji, Southeast of Bedford Downs Station. Here, a pocket of ‘red’ earth is surrounded by hills in an area that is typically characterised by black soil plains running all the way to the base of the Durack Ranges at the edge of the East Kimberley plateau.There are a lot of small caves in the area that were traditional Gija camping places. In this painting two big hills are separated by a narrow gap through which people passed, either on foot when walking though country or on horses when mustering cattle. The sharp contrast between the field of red-brown ochre and the white negative space can be seen as a stylistic bridge between works by earlier east Kimberley painters such as Rover Thomas and Paddy Jaminji, and Bedford’s works that were created with a singular original vision later in his career.

LOT #6

ROVER JOOLAMA THOMAS (1926 - 1998) Daytime Nightime, 1983-84 81 x 60 cm natural earth pigments and resin on composition board PROVENANCE Field Collected Mowanjum Community, 1984 Private Collection, Vic accompanied by a certificate from Kimberley Art, Vic EST $30,000 - 40,000

For much of his adult life, Rover Thomas worked on cattle stations situated on the fringes of the Gibson and Great Sandy Deserts, including Bow River station where he was married for the first time. Later he worked at Texas Downs, Old Lissadel and Mabel Downs, adjacent to the Warmun community at Turkey Creek, where he settled in his later years. Rover began painting in the late 1970s encouraged by his uncle Paddy Jaminji, who was born at Bedford Downs Station. This early work on plywood depicts day and night. Rover spent a lifetime looking up at the night sky after working cattle each day.The painting can also be read as the infinite landscape through which he travelled throughout his life. The work was collected on an early field trip, where it was found in a demountable building in the Mowanjum community. It is believed that this and other boards that accompanied it were brought to Mowanjum to be used in a dance ceremony in the early 1980s. A collection of them were purchased from David Mowaljarlai and other community members at the time.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #7

OLD TUTUMA TJAPANGATI (c.1915 - 1987) Hunting for Mingi (Marsupial Mouse), 1973 57 x 43 cm synthetic polymer powder paint on composition board PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. Tutuma 735811 Private Collection, Vic Sotheby’s, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, June 1998, Lot No. 247 Hank Ebes Collection, Vic This painting is sold with an accompanying Papunya Tula certificate and a photograph of the painting with identifying annotations EST 30,000 - 40,000

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Eager to begin translating his Dreamings onto board right from the inception of the community at Papunya, Old Tutuma Tjapangati became one of the original Papunya Tula artists to work with Geoff Bardon in the early 1970s. Dick Kimber recalled him as a remarkable, hard-as-nails senior man, still known as Tutuma rather than Old Tutuma when he first met him in 1974. He was an important ceremonial elder and was one of the first Pintupi to own a camel, which he used to travel his homelands near Lake McDonald.Tutuma’s traditional country included key sites in the vicinity of Docker River, in the far Southwest of the Northern Territory and North in the NT-WA border country. This painting depicts a site called Wira-Wira, which lies north of Jupiter Well. Three camp sites linked by a travelling line run through the centre of the work. On either side, the artist has painted the footprints made by a man and his child. On the right, a creek runs between three waterholes. On the left, four linked women’s campsites are shown. The tracks of other men are seen wandering throughout the surrounding country. This work was originally purchased by a journalist with the Melbourne Herald in 1973 at Papunya, while accompanying the Federal Education Minister Kim Beazley Sr. on a tour of remote settlements and schools throughout the Northern Territory.

LOT #8

BILLY STOCKMAN TJAPALTJARRI (1925 - 2015) Star Story, 1972-1973 57 x 43 cm synthetic polymer paint on particle board PROVENANCE Created in Papunya Community, 1972-1973 Private Collection, NT thence by descent Hank Ebes Collection, Vic EST. $30,000 - 40,000

Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri was one of the main protagonists in the creation of the Honey Ant Mural that initiated the Western Desert Art Movement. He had a way of focusing on simple, self-contained vignettes rendered with a symmetry and decorative quality. He was one of the first to leave the Papunya settlement and move west to live on his tribal lands at a Illili, where he continued painting the Budgerigar, Water, Snake, and Wild Potato Dreamings of his country. In this early board created in Papunya between 1972 and 1973, the symbol representing a star has four bullroarers nestling in its arms.The roundels running top to bottom are three corroborree sites. Emanating from the upper and lower margins of the work are body paint designs for the associated ceremony. The inscription verso indicates the painting was originally gifted as a Christmas present from the artist to a Nungurrayi woman; his daughter by kinship. The recipient was most likely a local teacher or community worker whom he had befriended.

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LOT #9

MAY CHAPMAN (1940 - ) Plenty Yinta (waterholes), 2011 125 x 294 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Martumili Artist, WA Cat No. 6753 Private collection, Tas accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Martumili Artists EST $10,000 - 18,000

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Martumili Arts Centre is based in Newman, WA and services artists living in the remote Gibson Desert community (a 10 hour drive away). May Chapman created this work over a 10 week period in 2011. The striking longitudinal line work represents the massive sand dunes, swales, endemic vegetation and myriad habitat and bush foods of her country. These dune systems are a defining feature of much of the Great Sandy, Gibson, Victoria, and Simpson Deserts. This strikingly beautiful, but harsh, arid landscape is unique to Australia. Depicted are eight different yinta (waterholes) in the artist’s country, where she travelled as a little girl in the pujiman (bushman) days. From left to right are Mukurtu, Wunkarri, Jurtulpa, Warrl, Juntu Juntu, Taarl, Wirtil Wili, and Pintil Pita. Paintings of this scale and quality by the senior Martu ladies are very special and rare. Few of the artists are still alive and, unfortunately, due to their age, none remain able to paint on this scale with such quality.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

Artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye | credit Tara Ebes 18

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LOT #10

EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE (1910 - 1996) Summer Abundance V, 1994 90 x 120.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Delmore Gallery, NT Cat No. 93LO50 The Thomas Vroom Collection, The Netherlands The Ebes Collection, Vic accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Delmore Gallery

Reflected in this work is the Anooralya Yam, the most important plant in Emily’s custodianship. This hardy and fertile plant provides both a tuber vegetable and a seed bearing flower called Kame (Emily’s tribal name). Emily’s use of yellow indicates in a very dramatic way the presence of these daisy-like flowers.Her rapid double-dipping brushwork celebrates the presence of food underground. Ceremony has ensured that good seasons have returned due to the role Emily and her clanswomen have played in ‘growing up’ the food and human sources through their ceremonial activities. This exciting work can also be interpreted as depicting a water catchment area. The rain falls and water slowly flows along the broad shallow watercourse and replenishes the soakage at Alalgura. The flourish of growth that follows is exceptional and rapid. Ceremony reinforces through the verses of the song cycle, the significance of this knowledge. In particular, it teaches survival, basic social codes and obligations.

EST $40,000 - 60,000

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #11

MAGGIE WATSON NAPANGARDI (1921 - 2004) Mina Mina, 1997 153 x 77 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Ngintaka Arts, NT Kimberley Art, Vic Lawson~Menzies, Aboriginal Art, Sydney, Nov 2006, Lot No. 72 Private Collection, USA EST $18,000 - 25,000

Maggie Watson began painting at 60 years of age and was a leader amongst a group of women artists who began to challenge the dominance of men’s acrylic painting in the late 1980s. The emergence of these women in Yuendumu and simultaneously in Utopia (amongst Anmatjerre and Alyawarre peoples) challenged the notion that men were the sole guardians of the visual life of these communities. Foremost amongst the major themes depicted by Maggie Watson was the important Warlpiri women’s Dreaming of the Karntakurlangu. In this epic tale a large group of ancestral women, make string belts from their hair and snake vine to carry their babies and possessions. As the women danced their way across the desert in joyous exultation they clutched the digging sticks in their outstretched hands. Dancing in a long line, they created important sites and encountered other Dreamings. These powerful ancestral women were involved in initiation ceremonies and used human hair-string spun and rubbed with special red ochre and fat as part of their magic. Maggie Watson’s paintings are characterised by the linear precision created by dots applied in alternating bands of colour. When viewed in varying arrays across the canvas, these meticulously applied textured striations impart a rhythmic trancelike quality, thereby evoking the movement of lines of women as they dance and chant during ceremony.

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LOT #12

JUDY NAPANGARDI WATSON (c.1925 - 2016) Mina Mina Jukurrpa - Janyinki, 2015 152 x 75.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Warlurkulangu Arts, Yuendumu NT Cat No. 4451/15 Private Collection, Vic LITERATURE Cf. for a similar work see Christine Nicholls, ‘The Three Napangardi’s, ‘To the Memory of Maggie Napangardi Watson’ in Ryan,J; (ed.) Colour Power-Aboriginal Art Post 1984 in the Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, 2004, pp123-125 and p.33 illus. EST $6,000 - 8,000

Born on Mt. Doreen Station, north-west of Alice Springs c.1925, Judy Watson grew up in the vast Warlpiri country that lies between the Tanami and Gibson deserts. Her traditional nomadic lifestyle came to an end, however, when the Warlpiri, like other desert tribes, were forced to live in the new government settlement at Yuendumu. Like her sister, Maggie, Judy’s principle focus was the women’s Dreaming of the Karntakurlangu, who danced across the land, creating important sites, discovering plants, foods, and medicines, and establishing the ceremonies that would perpetuate their generative powers. At Mina Mina, these ancestral women danced and performed ceremonies before travelling to Janyinki and other sites as they moved east toward Alcoota. During their ritual dancing, digging sticks rose up out of the ground and the women carried these implements with them on their long journey East, singing and dancing all the way without rest. The painting depicts Mina Mina and the hairspring which is anointed with red ochre. It is a secret and sacred connection between the women’s ceremony and their country, which enables them to connect with the spirit of the Dreaming. The potent life force with which they imbued the country is evoked in Judy’s love of colour and richly textured rippling surface. Painted in the artist’s distinct ‘dragged’ dotting style, Judy mimics the dance of her ancestors across the country during its creation.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #13

SALLY (MIRDIDINGKINGATHI JUWARNDA) GABORI (1924 - 2015)

Dibirdibi Country, 2009 100 x 197 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Mornington Island Art Centre, Qld Cat No. 4584-L-SG-0809 Private collection, NSW accompanied with a certificate of authenticity from Mornington Island Art Centre ILLUSTRATED The Corrigan Collection of Paintings by Sally Gabori, Djon Mundine and Candida Baker, pg 136-137 EST $18,000 - 22,000

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Sally Gabori first picked up a paintbrush in 2005, at 81 years of age. The Lardil people in the Kaiadilt community had little exposure to painting or any comparable form of mark-making prior to that time. Traditional tools, objects, or figures were scarcely painted, and the only recorded art that relates these stories was a group of drawings made at the request of ethnologist Norman B Tindale during his expedition to Bentinck Island in 1960, now housed in the South Australian Museum. Gabori’s paintings are essentially concerned with meaningful sites, known through the artist’s intimate association during a lifetime spent on Bentinck Island. These sites are associated with tidal movement, seasonal change, major climatic events such as drought and flood, and the presence of plants, sea birds, animals, and aquatic life. Gabori was mindful of the ebb and flow of life over all the seasons that made up her long life. As Djon Mundine eloquently put it. ‘Her works can be thought of as a memory walk, and a mapping of her physical and social memory of Bentinck Island’.* * Djon Mundine, The Road to Bentinck Island: Sally Gabori, in The Corrigan Collection of Paintings by Sally Gabori, Macmillan Art Publishing, Melbourne, 2015

image of bentick island

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #14

ALMA WEBOU (c.1920 - 2009) Pinkalarta, 2007 122 x 122 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Short Street Gallery, WA Cat No.23262 Private Collection, WA Cooee Art Gallery, NSW Cat No.14368 Private Collection, NSW accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Short St Gallery EXHIBITED Cooee Art at Australian Galleries, April 2006, Australian Galleries, NSW EST $12,000 - 15,000

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Alma belonged to the Yulparija people, who left their desert home when the water dried up during the 1960s and moved to the old La Grange mission on the West Australian coast at Bidyadanga. As a result, when they began painting after 2000, their desert imagery was expressed with the vibrant colours of their new saltwater environment. In this striking work, Alma painted Pinkalarta, the home where both she and her mother grew up. It is located in the Great Sandy Desert near Joanna Springs on Anna Plains station. This is where both her mother and her sister died. Her work is an aerial view of the landscape, showing the mayi (bush food) and the jila (living water).

LOT #15

WEAVER JACK (1928 - 2010) Lungarung, 2006 112 x 168 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas PROVENANCE Short St Gallery, WA Cat. No. 20264 Private Collection, NSW

Weaver Jack was born south of Well 33 on the Canning Stock Route in the Great Sandy Desert, Western Australia. Like Alma Webou and other’s of her generation, she was forced to migrate from there in the late 1960s with her husband and children in search of food and water. Weaver Jack constructed her paintings by laying down the outlines of her country like a skeleton, then slowly reclaiming her birthright by dotting over it. Each turn of her brush captures the intimacy with which she knew her country and her place in it. In this work, the desert country at Lungurang, her birthplace, is depicted in reds and oranges and intertwined with the rich blues and greens of her adopted coastal home at Bidyadanga. For Weaver, she and her land are inseparable: they are one and the same.

accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Short St Gallery EST $8,000 - 10,000

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #16

BOXER MILNER (c.1934 - 2008) Sturt Creek, 1993 134 x 82.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas PROVENANCE Mindibungu Community, Billiluna Station, WA Stamped and dated verso ‘93 Tandanya Aboriginal Cultural Institute, SA Private Collection, SA EST $7,000 - 10,000

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Born at Milnga-Milnga, south-west of Billiluna near Sturt Creek, Boxer was one of a small number of artists who came from the transition zone between the desert and the river country in Tjaru land. Here, the country and vegetation move from flat and featureless rolling Spinifex plains to flood plains with enormous river channels and permanent waterholes. The yearly cycles of flood and dry create swamps with abundant bird life, through which runs Purkitji, or Sturt Creek. It is the intimate knowledge of all the facets of the river system as a traditional owner of Purkitji, which informed the majority of Boxer’s paintings and his unique aesthetic. In Boxer’s paintings, floodwaters are coloured by the white silt of the surrounding clay country. This is the ‘milk water’, which provides a geometric grid against which the rest of the landscape is represented. His motifs refer to the miraculous transformations in the land and sky as new life seeps into the flat lands; of the passage of water and the changing coloured tides; and the mythological drama associated with the sight and sound of thunder, lightning, rain, and brilliant rainbows. Colour changes represent the trees and vegetation, the red and white stones, the black soil, the myriad channels and tributaries, the hills and the contours that define the artist’s home.

LOT #17

EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE (1910 - 1996) My Country, 1995 122 x 183 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, Vic Cat No. AGOD 5334 Private Collection, Vic EXHIBITED Nangara: The Australian Aboriginal Art Exhibition from the Ebes Collection, Stichting Sint-jan, Brugge, Belgium, 1996 The Australian Aboriginal Art Exhibition, Hokkaido Asahikawa Museum of Art, Asahikawa, Japan; Tochigi Prefectual Museum of Fine Arts, Utsunomiya, Japan; Iwaki City Art Museum, Iwaki, Japan, 2001; Shimonoseki Prefectural Art Museum, Japan, 2001 Dreamtime - Aboriginal Art from the Ebes Collection, Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishoj, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2006. (10th Anniversary Exhibition)

Emily Kame Kngwarreye was born at Anilitye (Boundary Bore) and began paintings on canvas in 1989 at he age of 79. This most unusual and atypical painting was created during a short period that began in late 1994 during which she began to experiment with more gestural line work. Beginning with a small number of paintings covered in arc shapes such as this, she went on to develop elegant, fluid lines and brush marks evoking Awelye - body designs derived from women’s ceremonies. By mid 1995, she had gone on to produce paintings composed entirely of black or white intertwining lines of which the most important is Big Yam Dreaming, in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. The subject of this work is Arlatyeye, the Pencil Yam or Bush Potato. Emily had been awarded the Australian Creative Fellowship in 1992, three years before she created this work. She continued to paint prolifically until her death in 1996.

ILLUSTRATED Hank Ebes (ed.), Nangara: The Australian Aboriginal Art Exhibition from the Ebes Collection, Melbourne: The Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, 1996, Cat. No.107 Hank Ebes (ed.), The Australian Aboriginal Art Exhibition, Japan: The Yomiuri Shimbun, 2001, page 315. EST $90,000 - 120,000

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #18

EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE (1910 - 1996) Bush Tucker, 1985 220 x 111 cm batik on silk PROVENANCE Chapman Gallery, ACT Private Collection, ACT EST $10,000 - 15,000

COOEE ART

In 1979, the Utopia pastoral lease was returned to the traditional owners, the Anmatyerre and Alyawarre Aboriginal custodians. They developed camps in various parts of the homeland and were introduced first to batik and later painting and wood carving. Emily was one of a number of women who were introduced to fabric dyeing techniques at that time.Their works were featured in the exhibition Utopia: A Picture Story, for the Robert Holmes à Court collection and the catalogue that accompanied it. Her early batiks, like those of other female artists, introduced motifs drawn from plant, animal, and natural forms that were important to them, as well as motifs used in body painting. This batik was among the last that she made before concentrating on painting, and anticipated the bold linear brush strokes (sometimes overlaid with dots) that she employed in her paintings. Emily stopped making batik in 1988.

LOT #19

EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE (1910 - 1996) Untitled, 1994 121.5 x 91 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Delmore Gallery, NT Cat No. 93L048 The Thomas Vroom Collection, The Netherlands The Ebes Collection, Vic

Reflected in this work is the Anooralya Yam, the most important plant in Emily’s custodianship. This hardy and fertile plant provides both a tuber vegetable and a seed bearing flower. The application of red, yellow and green colours highlights the varied and changing hues in the life cycle of the yam and other food plants found near Alalgura on Utopia Station, west of Delmore Downs. From an aerial perspective we see sporadic clustered growth after summer rain. The rain falls and water slowly flows along the broad shallow watercourse and replenishes the soakage at Alalgura. The flourish of growth that follows is exceptional and rapid. Ceremony reinforces through the verses of the song cycle, the significance of this knowledge. In particular, it teaches survival, basic social codes, and obligations.

EST $40,000 - 60,000

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

COOEE ART

LOT #20

ROVER JOOLAMA THOMAS (1926 - 1998) Lightning, 1995 212 x 275.5 cm natural earth pigments on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Studio painted Melbourne, 1995 Niagara Galleries, Vic Deutscher~Menzies, Aboriginal Fine Art, Melbourne, June 1999, Lot 124 Private collection, Vic thence by descent signed ‘Rover’ verso and accompanied by a photograph of Rover creating the work

Rover Thomas began to paint in the mid 1970s after working for more than thirty years as a stockman and labourer in his home country of the Great Sandy and Gibson Deserts. His paintings were deeply rooted in his knowledge of East Kimberley rock art and the more ephemeral body painting traditions. He often deployed broad areas of natural pigment and gum resin, using white dots to delineate various elements of an image. His landscapes relate to tracts of country, with specific sites of traditional or historic importance. A recurring theme in his work was the climatic manifestation of water, as in his record setting major works All that Big Rain Coming Down Topside and Cyclone Tracy, both created in 1991, and both in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia The blackness of Rover Thomas’s paintings was described by playwright Louis Nowra as ‘the black hole of violent nature, sucking up everything around it [...] brooding simplicity’* * L.Nowra, ‘Blackness in the art of Rover Thomas’ in Art and Australia, Vol 35, no.1, Sydney, 1997, pp 94,99

EXHIBITED Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, Vic, 1995 EST $90,000 - 110,000

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #21

WITIJITI GEORGE (c.1938 - ) Piltati - Wanampi Tjukurpa, 2016 200 x 182 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Kaltjiti Artists, SA Cat No. WGE10580 Private Collection, Vic EST $12,000 - 15,000

COOEE ART

Witjiti George is a senior traditional elder from Mulga Bore, near Kaltjiti (Fregon), South Australia on the APY Lands. As a young man, he went to school at Oodnadatta, before his family travelled east towards Ernabella due to drought and a shortage of bush food. Witjiti began cattle work and settled at Fregon after its establishment in 1961. Witjiti began painting in 2007 and is now a director of the APY Art Centre Collective and a senior custodian.This major work depicts his mother’s Country, Piltati, where the Wanampi Tjukurpa is located. In this Dreaming, two water snakes live in the Piltati Rockhole with their two wives. Wititji was a finalist in the Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2019 and 2020 and the Telstra NATSIA Awards in 2016 and 2019.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #22

ELIZABETH NYUMI NUNGURRAYI (1947 - 2019) Parwalla, 2003 100 x 150 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Warlayirti Artists, Balgo Hills WA Cat No. 366/03 Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Vic Private Collection, Qld accompanied by certificate of authenticity from Warlayirti Artists EXHIBITED Elizabeth Nyumi, Recent Paintings, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, 2003 EST $10,000 - 15,000

COOEE ART

Elizabeth Nyumi’s early years were spent some three hundred kilometres south of Balgo near Jupiter Well, where she lived a nomadic life until she walked up the Canning Stock Route and into the old Balgo Mission in her late teens. She began painting in acrylics for the Warlayirti Art Centre in 1988. This painting depicts the country known as Parwalla, which is Nyumi’s father’s country far to the south of Balgo in the Great Sandy Desert, west of Kiwirrkurra. Parwalla is a large swampy area that fills with water after the wet season rain and consequently produces an abundance of bush foods. The majority of Nyumi’s paintings show the different bush foods, including kantjilyi (bush raisin), pura (bush tomato), and minyili (seed). The whitish colours represent the spinifex that grows strong and seeds after the wet season rains. These seeds are white in colour and grow so thickly they obscure the ground and other plants below. In this work, Nyumi’s melting textures create an exquisite play with light. A blanket of cream dots rest almost weightlessly over subtly submerged layers. Through this ‘powdered blanket’ emerge various organic and iconographic forms in an almost haphazard, yet aesthetically harmonious, arrangement.

LOT #23

YANNIMA TOMMY WATSON (c.1935 - 2017) Pirupa Alka, 2011 85 x 129.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Agathon Galleries, NSW Private Collection, NSW accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Agathon Galleries EST $25,000 - 35,000

Pitjantjatjara elder Tommy Watson gained wide acclaim in an astonishingly short amount of time. His debut at the 2002 Desert Mob show in Alice Springs was followed by his participation in a series of domestic group exhibitions in which his reputation gained momentum. Tommy Watson’s prominence was ultimately cemented when, in 2006, he was commissioned to create a permanent installation in the Musee du Quai Branly, in Paris. Depicted in this work is a major rockhole site at his birthplace, Pirupa Alka, not far from Kata Juta and Uluru. During the major battle between the White Cockatoo and the Eagle, the landscape became indented by the entangled protagonists crashing to the ground several times. Subterranean streams filled these impressions with water and a circular amphitheatre was created by the sweep of wings. Today, a large, central rock signifies the fallen cockatoo, still sipping the life-giving water from the sacred pools. In keeping with the depiction of Dreaming stories throughout the Western Desert, the mythic and numinous is inherent within the sacred geography.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #24

YANNIMA TOMMY WATSON (c.1935 - 2017) Irrunytju Hills, 2010 118 x 200 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Agathon Galleries, NSW Cat No. AGTW0710090218 Private Collection, NSW Private Collection, Denmark EST $45,000 - 65,000

COOEE ART

Pitjantjatjara elder Tommy Watson recalled visiting Papunya in his youth, and observing the germination of the art movement there, however it was not untilalmost 30 years later, when in his late 60s, that he himself felt compelled to lay down his stories in paint. His work appeared for the first time at the 2002 Desert Mob show in Alice Springs after which he participated in a series of domestic group exhibitions. From these humble beginnings, his reputation gained momentum with wide domestic and international exposure in an astonishingly short amount of time. While his landscapes tend towards abstract expressionism they conform to traditional practice through layering and ‘dotting’. Grounded in these paintings are rockholes, mountain ranges, and creekbeds and the story of their creation.

LOT #25

EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE (1910 - 1996) Awelye, 1994 91 x 152 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Delmore Gallery, NT Cat No. 94K42 The Thomas Vroom Collection, The Netherlands The Ebes Collection, Vic accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Delmore Gallery Signed Verso EXHIBITED Schittering/Brilliance, AAMU - Museum for Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 12 October 2007 - 23 March 2008

In this highly dramatic work, the application of red, white, and grey colours highlight the varied and changing hues in the life cycle of the Anooralya Yam and the seasonal change that comes when storms build and bring rain to the the dry desert landscape near Alalgura on Utopia Station, west of Delmore Downs. The thick textured fusion of deep red and pink hues gives a concentrated view of the desert’s food sources after rain. Often hidden from view, these seed, fruit, and root vegetables are enormously bountiful. The requirement to understand the life cycles of all bush foods is necessary to the survival of Alyawerre and Anmatjerre people.. This work evokes the build up of an approaching storm. The rain falls and water slowly flows along the broad shallow watercourse and replenishes the soakage at Alalgura. The flourish of growth that follows is exceptional and rapid. The dramatic transformation of the desert from bare to abundant is a display of the desert’s power. Linked into this is women’s ceremonial life called ‘awelye’ that is based on the belief that they help nurture the desert food sources by assuring future fertile generations.

EST $50,000 - 70,000

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #26

EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE (1910 - 1996) My Country, 1995 102 x 178 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas PROVENANCE Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, Vic Cat No. 4548 Private collection, Vic accompanied by a certificate booklet from Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings and a photo of the artist with the work EST $60,000 - 80,000

COOEE ART

During the year prior to her death, Emily began using larger brushes to create lines of dots running across vibrantly coloured, haptic surfaces. These works became progressively visually abstracted and ethereal. In this particular work, the linear tracings demonstrate the various colours Emily associated with the mature phase of the Yam’s life cycle - when the ripe fruit and seeds start the process of drying. Intermingling with the fruit and seeds are the falling leaves and flowers of summer that scatter and settle into thickly carpeted sweeping swathes on the desert floor, drawing the emus to feed on her country and to raise their young. Here, Emily was at one with her world. She moved with full confidence and resolve after the excitement and satisfaction of an abundant season, allowing us to witness the transformation of the desert as the country dries out.

LOT #27

KAREN CASEY (1956 - ) Temporal Tracing, 2000 130 x 180 cm Mixed media, aged Linolium, synthetic polymer and mica on board PROVENANCE Artist’s Private Collection, Vic EXHIBITED Sacred Ground: Spirituality and Land in Australia Australian Centre for Christianity & Culture, Canberra 2004 ILLUSTRATED Cover catalogue, Sacred Ground: Spirituality and Land in Australia EST $15,000 - 18,000

Karen Casey was born in Hobart Tasmania of Aboriginal and Anglo-Celtic heritage. She began her arts practice in painting and printmaking after relocating to Melbourne in 1986, soon becoming one of a vanguard group of ‘Urban Aboriginal’ artists, exhibiting widely in Australia and overseas throughout the late 1980s and 1990s. Following her earlier figurative works, Casey took a more contemplative, philosophical approach, resulting in images that are deeply rooted in spiritual and environmental connection. A pivotal point in her career came with Transformation, an immersive multi-sensory work exhibited in 5th Australian Sculpture Triennial at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1993. This ultimately saw her move away from painting by the late 1990s to focus exclusively on installation and digital media, culminating in her major work Dreaming Chamber, developed for the 3rd Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Queensland Art Gallery in 1999. Over the years Casey has pushed boundaries, employing various digital and analogue effects to create multi-faceted works that are visually elegant. Her signature light works with glowing rear lit fabric screens, incorporate programmed lighting, soundscapes, water and other sensory elements. She is more widely recognised today as an interdisciplinary, experimental artist known for her art/science collaborations and social engagement projects. Temporal Tracing is a rare example of painting produced during this later period of her career.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #28

JIMMY DJELMINY & GEORGE MILPURRURRU JIMMY DJELMINY

GEORGE MILPURRURRU

Gurrumatji - Magie Geese, c.1985

Goose Egg Hunt, 1994

126.5 x 51.5 cm natural earth pigment on bark

202 x 300 cm hand woven carpet

PROVENANCE Bula Bula, Ramingining, NT Cat No. BP0419 Private Collection, NSW

PROVENANCE Woven in Vietnam for Beechrow Pty Ltd Aboriginal Arts Management Association, (NIAAA) NSW Private Collection, NSW

EST $6,000 - 8,000

COOEE ART

EXHIBITED What is Aboriginal Art?, Festival of the Dreaming, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, College of Fine Arts, UNSW, 1997

In 1994, Federal Court Judge John Von Doussa awarded record damages ($188,640) to 3 living and 5 deceased Indigenous artists whose works were reproduced on carpets without their knowledge or permission. The ‘Carpet Case’, as it became known, came in the wake of the Federal Government’s review of intellectual property laws as they apply to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts and cultures. The action was brought against a Perth-based company, known as Beechrow Pty Ltd. Beechrow imported the carpets from Vietnam, a country without copyright laws at the time, and sold them in Australia for up to $4000 each. The artists whose works were reproduced without permission were all very prominent Aboriginal artists, including George Milpurrurru, the first Aboriginal artist to have a solo exhibition at the Australian National Gallery [sic]. Milpurrurru’s original bark painting which was reproduced on this carpet is in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia. It had

already been adopted as a design for the Australian 85 cent stamp, issued in 1993 to celebrate the International Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. The other works reproduced were also in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia or important private collections. They were by the artists Banduk Marika, Tim Payunka Tjapangarti, George Garrawun, Paddy Dhatangu, Uta Uta Tjangala, Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri, and Fred Nanganaralil. Though a that time Aboriginal designs were considered to be the communal property of their clans, the court determined that it was not appropriate for their artwork to have been reproduced without authorisation from them or their representatives. The case set a precedent and became a landmark in the protection of Indigenous cultural copyright in Australia. This rug was subsequently sold with the artist’s permission, with payment made through the Aboriginal Art Management Association that acted for the artists in the case.The rug is accompanied by a bark with the same story made by Milpurrurru’s brother, Jimmy Djelminy. AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #29

PADDY JAMPIN JAMINJI (c.1912 - 1996) Mount House Station, 1984 157.5 x 91.5 cm natural earth pigments on board PROVENANCE Painted on Bedford Station, 1984 Deutscher Menzies Fine Aboriginal Art, June 2000, Lot 37 Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, Cat No. 12668 Private Collection, Vic EST $25,000 - 35,000

COOEE ART

Paddy Jaminji was born on Bedford Downs station in the North East Kimberley. He spent most of his working life as a stockman on both Bedford Downs and Old Lissadell Stations. He was the first painter in Turkey Creek after a strike by Kimberley station workers in the mid 1970s signalled a mass exodus from cattle properties. Uncle to Rover Thomas, he was the inspiration behind Rover’s decision to paint, and went on to inspire many others including Lena Nyadbi. In this early painting, Paddy Jaminji, has depicted the big swamp (marshlands) near Mount House. The swamp is called Jilili and is one of the sites that is visited by the spirit of the old woman during the ceremony (Gurrir Gurrir) devised by Paddy and Rover Thomas during the late 1970s and the subject of a number of verses in the song cycle. Mount House is located west of the tablelands in the western Kimberley region.

LOT #30

ROVER JOOLAMA THOMAS (1926 - 1998) Texas Downs, Turkey Creek, 1984 60.5 x 122 cm natural earth pigments on board PROVENANCE Field Collected by Michael Aspinall, Turkey Creek, 1985 Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, Vic Private Collection, Vic The Code No. N107 is recorded verso along with the artist’s name, title, the year of creation EXHIBITED Nangara: The Australian Aboriginal Art Exhibition from the Ebes Collection, Stichting Sint-jan, Brugge, Belgium, 1996 The Australian Aboriginal Art Exhibition, Hokkaido Asahikawa Museum of Art, Asahikawa, Japan; Tochigi Prefectual Museum of Fine Arts, Utsunomiya, Japan; Iwaki City Art Museum, Iwaki, Japan, 2001; Shimonoseki Prefectural Art Museum, Japan, 2001 Dreamtime - Aboriginal Art from the Ebes Collection, Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishoj, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2006. (10th Anniversary Exhibition)

Rover Thomas was born in Walmatjarri-Kukaja country near Well 33 on the Canning Stock Route. He lived a traditional bush life until he was taken to Billiluna Station at 11 years of age, where he was initiated after his mother’s death. Rover subsequently spent a lifetime travelling the stock routes of Australia’s far North. After working for a period as a jackeroo on the Canning Stock Route, he became a fencing contractor in Wyndham and later worked as a stockman in the Northern Territory and the fringes of the Gibson and Great Sandy Deserts. He worked on Bow River Station and later Texas Downs, where he lived for nine years and met his second wife Rita. He finally settled at nearby Turkey Creek, where he became an artist in the late 1970s at 50 years of age. In time, he was acclaimed as a cultural leader and the seminal figure in establishing the East Kimberley painting movement. This work was painted in 1985, relatively early in Rover Thomas’ painting career. That year, he created a number of planar, map-like paintings, referring to sites and pathways of ancestral or historical significance and his own travels during his days as a drover on cattle stations in the region. The painting is an aerial view of Texas Downs, located north east of Warmun (Turkey Creek).

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #31

THOMAS TJAPALTJARRI (c.1964 - ) Tingari, 2004 183 x 152.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Yanda Art, NT Cat No. 200405 Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, Vic Cat No. 9989 The Ebes Collection, Vic This painting is accompanied by 25 working photos taken during its creation EST $8,000 - 12,000

COOEE ART

Thomas Tjapaltjarri first encountered the world outside of his small remnant clan group when he walked out of the desert into Kiwirrkurra as a young man in 1984. A decade later he began painting topographical aerial impressions of his ancestral lands. In this work waves of sand ridges and dunes are depicted by constructing a matrix of parallel meandering zigzag lines. These are the same as those incised into traditional ceremonial objects, including hair pins, boomerangs, and shields made by senior male artisans amongst Pintupi, Aranda and Pitjantjatjarra peoples. The Tingari beings arrived at this site west of Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) from the west, travelling beneath the earth’s surface to create the ridges and windswept sandhills that unfold pulsating and radiating across the canvas.

LOT #32

EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE (1910 - 1996) Yam, 1994 121.5 x 182 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Delmore Gallery, NT Cat No. 94CO38 The Thomas Vroom Collection, The Netherlands The Ebes Collection, Vic accompanied with a certificate of authenticity from Delmore Gallery EST $80,000 - 120,000

Emily Kame Kngwarreye is widely regarded as Aboriginal Australia’s most successful Aboriginal artist. Her remarkable career lasted just 7 years prior to her death at 86 years of age in 1996. The painterly quality and originality of her works extended her influence beyond the reach of Aboriginal art and attracted an international audience ready to acclaim her new and innovative contemporary style. This thick textured fusion of deep-ochred yellow and pink and tan hues gives a concentrated view of the desert’s food sources after rain. They highlight the changes in the plant at various stages in the life cycle of the Anooralya Yam and other food plants found near Alalgura on Utopia Station, west of Delmore Downs. This hardy and fertile plant provides both a tuber vegetable and a seed bearing flower called Kame (Emily’s tribal name). As the plant dies off above the ground, the yam tuber can be found where cracks in the earth’s surface indicates its presence underground. As rain falls and water slowly flows along the broad shallow watercourse and replenishes the soakage at Alalgura, the flourish of growth that follows is exceptional and rapid. The dramatic transformation of the desert from bare to abundant is a display of the desert’s power. Linked into this is women’s ceremonial life called ‘awelye’ which helps nurture the desert food sources by assuring future fertile generations.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

COOEE ART

FROM THE ESTATE OF LORNA MELLOR AM

FROM THE ESTATE OF LORNA MELLOR AM | LOTS 33 - 48

After my father bought the block of bushland that was to become our home, he promptly proposed to our Mum on site. The sweeping harbour views sealed the deal and so began a 60-year marriage that grew and evolved within the house and home they were to create. A very stylish woman, our mother then set about building an impressive and heartfelt art collection – inspired by my father’s wedding gift of an early painting of the McDonald Ranges by Albert Namatjira and tales of travelling through early Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory throughout the 1950s. As her high school friend Di Bennett went to work at Maningrida, her mother Dot (Dorothy) sent a steady stream of early bark paintings and woven baskets supporting the early art collective and our Mum’s passion. It was with great pride that she displayed her diverse collection of early artefacts and art to a steady stream of overseas

visitors, with Dr David Daymirringu Malangi’s bark painting on prominent display with his $1 note alongside. In 1975, after Cyclone Tracy devastated their home in Darwin, Di and her children came to live with us at Castle Cove and Dot flew down to be with her grandchildren. We all became very close. Lorna evolved her ongoing commitment to Aboriginal artists by supporting modern artists with the acquisition of works by Clifford Possum and Emily Kngwarreye and followed her evolving love of ceramics into pieces by Aboriginal artists that interpreted enduring themes. These works formed the backdrop to our lives. Growing up as kids we were always shocked that other people didn’t have Aboriginal art in their homes. It is with great pleasure that we offer some of Lorna’s collected works for this important sale. Sonia, Bruce and Christine Mellor AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #33

ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902 - 1959) MacDonnell Ranges, 1950 24.5x 35 cm watercolour on paper PROVENANCE Artamon Galleries, NSW Lorna Mellor Collection, NSW signed lower right EST $25,000 - 35,000

COOEE ART

Albert Namatjira began painting in the early 1930s. By the time of his death almost thirty years later, his romantic depictions of the Western MacDonnell Ranges, Mount Sonder, and the surrounding desert had become synonymous with our collective vision of the Australian outback. Namatjira’s watercolours typically capture the high colouring of the desert landscape, the gorges and valleys of the country of his birth, and his Dreaming. He was able to capture the subtleties of colour as the desert changes from the soft tones of summer heat to the rich hues of the early morning and late evening light. As in the majority of his depictions of his country, Namatjira painted this work from an elevated point of view, as if looking down ever so slightly on the landscape. Here, the composition is balanced as the eye is drawn to the centre by the artist’s visual emphasis on the edges. Following his early success, Namatjira took a number of other Aranda artists, including his sons Enos and Oscar and the three Peroultja brothers, on his painting expeditions with him. They spawned a movement of naturalistic watercolours in the European tradition of classical landscape painting. The movement, termed the Hermannsburg school – the name of the Lutheran church mission station where Albert was born, was the first significant transitional art movement to emerge from Indigenous Australia.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #34

GURRUWIWI MITHINARI (c.1929 - 1972) Yurlungurr - Giant Rainbow Serpant, 1970 141 x 56 cm natural earth pigments on bark PROVENANCE Buku-Larrngay Mulka, Yirrkala, NT Dorothy Bennett, NT Lorna Mellor collection, NSW accompanied by a letter and certificate of authenticity from Dorothy Bennett LITERATURE Cf. for detailed discussions of Mithinari’s paintings depicting the Djan’kawu in Galpu country, see Groger-Wurm, 1973, p. 22-23. For further discussion relating to a larger painting with a more complete depiction of the mythology, see Neale M, Yiribana, 1994, p. 96-97 EST $5,000 - 6,000

COOEE ART

Galpu clan elder and ceremonial leader Mithinari was born at Ngaypinyu, near Blue Mud Bay. He was taught to paint by the master Dhuwa-moiety bark painters Mawalan Marika and Wandjuk Marika at Beach Camp in Yirrkala. Mithinari’s works concentrate on the Wagilag religious mythology. He painted with great speed and surety of hand, employing brushes made of frayed stringy bark before filling in the detail with brushes made of human hair or from the midrib of a palm frond. They were different to those created by many of his contemporaries amongst Northeast Arnhem Land artists of the period. His figures were generally painted with exaggerated body length. His rarrk (crosshatching) was fine but often interposed with large areas of single bold colour. Mithinari was one of the painters of the famous Yirrkala Church panels, alongside other renowned artists including Mathaman Marika and Mawalan Marika. The panels are now housed in the Buku-Larrnggay Museum. His work was collected by all major institutions and a number of seminal private collectors during the 1960s and 1970s.

LOT #35

DR DAVID DAYMIRRINGU MALANGI (1927 - 1999) The Funeral of Gurramuringu, Mighty Hunter of The Dreamtime, 1980 136 x 62 cm natural earth pigments on bark PROVENANCE Dorothy Bennett, NT Cat No. D4275 Lorna Mellor Collection, NSW accompanied by a letter from Dorothy Bennett LITERATURE Cf. for images of works exploring the same theme see Ed. Susan Jenkins, No Ordinary Place: the art of David Malangim National Gallery of Australia, 2004, pp 74-77

David Malangi, began painting in the early 1960s, and played a vital role in the development of the contemporary Aboriginal art movement. While for many older Australians, he is best known for the image that featured on the now defunct one-dollar note, he was also a travelling ambassador for his country and his people, achieving world wide recognition for his innovative yet deeply tradition-based bark paintings. In this work, Malangi has depicted the funeral of the first man, the hunter Gurrmirringu, who lies in state surrounded by seated song men with clapsticks ensuring that the ancestral spirit arrives safely at its final destination. Surrounding the group are remnants of the funeral feast.The white berry tree, with its ordered rows of berries and leaves, structures and frames the picture while nearby lurks Dharpa, the King Brown Snake, the evil spirit whose bite killed Gurrmirringu. This image depicts the occasion of the first death and how Gurrmirringu’s spirit came to watch over Malangi’s Manyarrngu people.

EST $5,000 - 6,000

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #36

ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902 - 1959) Desert Landscape Western MacDonnell Ranges, 1950 25 x 36 cm watercolour on paper PROVENANCE Artamon Galleries, NSW Private Collection, NSW thence by decent Lorna Mellor Collection, NSW signed lower right EST $18,000 - 25,000

COOEE ART

LOT #37

CLIFFORD POSSUM TJAPALTJARRI (1932 - 2002) Yabbierangu, Honey Ant Dreaming, 1982 89 x 159 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Gallerie Australis, SA Lorna Mellor Collection, NSW LITERATURE Cf. For a stylistically similar work with the same story see Johnson V. The Art of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Gordon and Breach International, Sydney, 1994 , Plate 32 p 93 with explanation p164 EST $40,000 - 60,000

This painting shows the Irranpa or Honey Ant Dreaming, associated with a place called Yabbierangu near Mount Allan. The life of the Honey Ant is complex and brief. Worker ants collect the nectar from flowering Mulga trees and carry it underground where the abdomens of storehouse ants are filled with it. These can be dug up and are a highly prized food. In this delicately rendered painting, Clifford Possum demonstrates several of the stylistic innovative techniques that made him the most important Indigenous desert artist of the period. Here, the U-shapes show the women sitting down digging for Honey Ants. The ovals are the coolamon, wooden bowls full of storehouse ants. The short bars represent the digging sticks. The groups of lozenge shapes are the queen ants. According to mythology, the ancestors of the Honey Ant people lived in large colonies deep underground in Mulga country. Many of the rocky outcrops on Mount Allan are thought to mark the sites of huge underground chambers inhabited by the Irranpa.These chambers are linked by underground tunnels, the travelling routes of the Irranpa ancestors. The image represents the Honey Ant Queen and a tjurunga thief, who tries to steal the honey ant queen larvae from their underground nest. He uses what Clifford called a ‘little whip stick’ to fish them out. The women who guard this site sing up a sandstorm to obscure the entrance and confuse the thief. It’s told as a literal story but has far deeper implications.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #38

EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE (1910 - 1996) Alalgura - Soakage Bore, 1994 90 x 122 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Delmore Gallery, NT Cat No. 94L12 Gallerie Australis, SA Lorna Mellor Collection, NSW signed verso EXHIBITED Dreampower: art of contemporary Aboriginal Australia, Museum Puri Lukisan, Ubud, Bali, June 1-26, 1997 ; Galeri Ardiyanto,Yogyakarta, July 5-20 1997 ; Gedung Pameran Seni Rupa, Jakarta, Aug. 4-16, 1997 ILLUSTRATED Cossey D, Dreampower: art of contemporary Aboriginal Australia, Museum Art International, SA 1997 EST $40,000 - 60,000

COOEE ART

Alalgura (Alhalkere) is situated near Soakage Bore on Utopia Station, the Aboriginal owned property 350 km Northeast of Alice Springs. Between 1992 and 1994, a number of paintings with this title were commissioned at Delmore Downs (the adjacent cattle property). In these works, Emily conjured the fertile energy of the pencil yam (atnulare) and wild potato (anaroolya) in her country. Emily was a senior custodian and ritual law woman for Alalgura, and she shared custodial responsibilities for many of the other bush tucker species in the area. Janet Holt, who commissioned this work, noted at the time that yellow is representative of the yam’s “daisy” flower, while the tracings of different coloured dot work may indicate seasonal rains, as well as various levels of plant maturity. In this work, tracks of the yam are layered with degrees of nuance through sumptuous layered fields of dotted colour. Kngwarreye’s painting is both a celebration of her fertile country and a work of reverence. The land is rendered numinous as the life cycle of the yam is celebrated in awelye (women’s ceremony).

LOT #39

DEREK JUNGARRAYI THOMPSON (1976 - ) Wanapi Tjukurrpa, Water Snake Story, 2015 80 x 30 cm stoneware with sgraffito PROVENANCE Ernabella Arts, SA Saabia Gallery, NSW Private Collection, NSW

Derek Jungarrayi Thompson is the maternal grandson of Papunya Tula Artist Makinti Napanangka. He began working at Ernabella Arts in 2011, during the first men-only ceramic workshop. Derek’s drawing and sgraffito work on clay is powerful, distinctive, and singular. Derek was a finalist in the Gold Coast International Ceramic art Award in 2012. He also undertook a residency at the Ceramic Workshop of the Australian National University, where he did pottery and printmaking. Awarded a New Work grant by the Australia Council for the Arts in 2013, he undertook a big pot workshop in Jingdezhen, China. This work was exhibited in 2014 at Sydney’s prestigious Sabbia Gallery. In 2015, the artist participated in the 14th Australian Ceramics Triennial in Canberra.

EXHIBITED Saabia Gallery, NSW EST $6,000 - 8,000

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #40

ARTIST ONCE KNOWN Assortment of Rare Tiwi Island Artefactes, 1950 51 x 5 x 4 cm (clubs, each) 40 x 12 x 5 cm (Turtle) 32 x 24 x 13 cm (Tunga) 27 x 9.5 x 7 cm (Armlet) natural earth pigments on carved wood, feathers, bark PROVENANCE Field collected - Dorothy Bennett c.1963 Tiwi Islands, NT Lorna Mellor Collection, NSW EST $3,000 - 5,000 Tiwi people live on Bathurst and Melville Islands which lie about 48 kilometres north of Darwin. Art and music form an intrinsic part of their societal and spiritual rituals. This lovely collection of early Tiwi artefacts includes a bark Pukumani basket (Tunga) used to symbolise the final act of the Pukumani ceremony, a ceremonial Pamajini (armlet), a carving of a long neck turtle and two traditional takamuli clubs.

COOEE ART

LOT #41

ARTIST ONCE KNOWN Three Tiwi Ceremonial Weapons, 1950 58 x 7.5 x 3.5 cm (a) 45 x 8 x 1.5 cm (b) 44 x 6 x 6 cm (c) natural earth pigments on carved wood PROVENANCE Field collected - Dorothy Bennett c.1960 Tiwi Islands, NT Lorna Mellor Collection, NSW EST $4,000 - 6,000 An extensive range of highly effective clubs (jampurraringa) were used in combat on the Tiwi islands. They could be single, double, and multi-pronged with lethal sharp points used to hit and blind an opponent. The flat tankuwu, on the far left is not a lethal weapon but is held aloft by a widow during Pukumani mortuary ceremonies.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #42

LOT #43

JACK WHERRA (1924 - 1979)

RONNIE DJANBARDI (1925 - 1994)

Wandjinas, 1960

Lorrkon - Hollow Log Coffin, 1975

160 x 34 cm natural earth pigments on bark

155 x 20 cm natural earth pigments on Eucalyptus wood

PROVENANCE Gallerie Australis, SA Lorna Mellor Collection, NSW

PROVENANCE Maningrida Arts and Culture, NT Lorna Mellor Collection, NSW

EST $3,000 - 5,000

EST $3,500 - 4,500

COOEE ART

LOT #44

RICHARD DHAYMUTHA (1938 - ) Morning Star Pole, 2011 187 cm natural earth pigments, feathers, bush string on carved wood PROVENANCE Elcho Island Arts, NT Cat No. 11-2338 The Lorna Mellor Collection, NSW accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Elcho Island Arts EST $2,000 - 3,000

Dancer performing with Morning Star Pole | credit Mirri Leven AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #45

LOT #46

ARTIST ONCE KNOWN

STANISLAUS PURUNTATAMERI (1906 - 1987)

Purrukapali’s Wife Bima, 1960

Sacred Dreamtime bird (Tokampini) of the Pukumani Ceremony, 1963

49 x 15 x 15 cm (irregular) natural earth pigments, feathers, spinifex resin on carved wood

65 x 13 x 12 cm (irregular) natural earth pigments on carved wood

PROVENANCE Field collected - Dorothy Bennett c.1963 Tiwi Islands, NT Lorna Mellor Collection, NSW

PROVENANCE Field collected - Dorothy Bennett c.1963, Tiwi Islands, NT Ochre conservation at The Art Gallery of NSW Lorna Mellor Collection, NSW

EST $2,000 - 2,500

accompanied by a letter of inspection from The Art Gallery of NSW and a valuation letter from Dorothy Bennett EST $3,000 - 4,000

COOEE ART

LOT #47

LOT #48

GABRIEL TUNGUTALUM (1952 - )

ARTIST ONCE KNOWN

Pukamani Pole, 1986

Tiwi Ceremonial Spear and Spearhead, 1950

215 x 20 x 20 cm natural earth pigments on carved wood

262 x 7.5 x 2 cm (a) 72 x 15 x 2 cm (b) natural earth pigments on carved wood

This work is accompanied by a letter from Dorothy Bennett EST $4,000 - 6,000

PROVENANCE Field collected - Dorothy Bennett c.1960 Tiwi Islands, NT Lorna Mellor Collection, NSW EST $2,000 - 3,000

END OF MELLOR ESTATE

PROVENANCE Field Collected Dorothy Bennett, Tiwi Islands Lorna Mellor Collection, NSW

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #49

NINGURA NAPURRULA (c.1938 - 2013) Wirrulnga, East of Kiwirrkura, 1999 121 x 122 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. NN9910100 Flinders Lane Gallery, Vic Cat No. FG022015 Private Collection, Vic accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Papunya Tula Artists EST $6,000 - 8,000

COOEE ART

Ningura Naparrula was born south of Kiwirrkurra. In her early 20s, she travelled with her husband Yala Yala Gibbs to Papunya. After Yala Yala became a founding member of the Papunya Tula artists group, she assisted him on his precise and detailed Tingari Paintings. She began painting in her own right in the second year of the Haasts Bluff/Kintore women’s painting camp. Her dynamic compositions are characterised by strong linear designs, which are slowly built up through intricate patterning and appear boldly defined upon a background of dense, monochromatic in-filling. Her focus centres upon her female ancestors, who travelled the vast country creating sacred sites and establishing customs and ceremonies. This painting reflects one of Ningura’s popular Dreamings, Ngaminya. It represents the sacred sites used in women’s ceremonies in the artist’s country. Ningura was one of the eight Australian artists whose works are translated into the built form of the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris.

LOT #50

WENTJA MORGAN NAPALTJARRI (1945 - ) Rockhole west of Kintore, 2007 122 x 152 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Watiyawanu Artists, NT Cat No. 77-07524 Private Collection, NSW EXHIBITED Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri and Wentja Napaltjarri, Masterpieces from the Western Desert, COSA, London, 5-10 May 2008

This work depicts a Women’s site near an important Rockhole, at Tjukurla in the Western Desert. The lines throughout the painting represent sandhills. This was an important site for Wentja’s father, Shorty Lungkata, who was a very prominent Papunya senior artist. Wentja Napaltjarri was born at Malparinga, and grew up west of Kintore in the Gibson Desert. She began her own career painting for Watiyawanu Artists at Mount Liebig. Wentja mostly paints Blue Tongue Lizard and Water Dreaming stories, and the sandhills, rockholes, and other landmarks associated with water and Desert Oak trees. In contrast to her father’s work, Wentja’s paintings are less geometric, with an emphasis on the iconography with help of delicate interlacing and intricate finely dotted patterning. This soft dotting technique is characteristic of many of the Mount Liebig female artists.

ILLUSTRATED Cataogue, Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri and Wentja Napaltjarri, Masterpieces from the Western Desert COSA, London 5-10 May 2008, p36 (illus.) EST $18,000 - 22,000

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #51

MINNIE PWERLE (1910 - 2006) Bush Melon Seed, 2001 122 x 183 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, Vic The Ebes Collection, Vic accompanied by a certificate booklet from Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings and a photo of the artist and the work EST $12,000 - 14,000

COOEE ART

The manner in which Minnie Pwerle created her works was the result of an urgency to reconnect to the past and keep the Dreaming a living reality. In painting after painting, she depicted the body designs applied to women’s breasts and limbs for the regular ceremonial revivification of her country. The bold linear patterns of stripes and curves throughout this particular painting depict the women’s ceremonial body paint design. They evoke the movement of the women as they dance during ceremony. After smearing their bodies with animal fat, they trace these designs onto their breasts, arms and thighs, singing as each woman takes her turn being ‘painted up’. Then, often by firelight, they dance in formation to ritual singing. The songs relate to the Dreamtime stories of ancestral travel, as well as plants, animals, and natural forces.

LOT #52

EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE (1910 - 1996) Merne Atherrke, 1993 121 x 91 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas PROVENANCE Delmore Gallery, NT Cat No. 93B139 The Thomas Vroom Collection, The Netherlands The Ebes Collection, Vic accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Delmore Gallery

The colour in this painting reflects the hot outback summers, where little rain has fallen. The painting indicates the growth pattern of the Anooralya finger yam at its peak, ready to fall into decline and brought to maturity by the intense and unforgiving summer sun. In Emily’s layered approach, we also see the sporadic clustering of plants in later stages of maturity. Understanding the life cycle of these plants is vital to survival in the bush. This is affirmed within the narrative of the song cycle sung during the ceremony, which reinforces the significance of this knowledge and teaches social codes and obligations to the next generation. Emily Kame Kngwarreye is widely regarded as Australia’s most important and successful Aboriginal artist. Her remarkable career lasted just seven years prior to her death at 86 years of age in 1996. The painterly quality and originality of her works extended her influence beyond the reach of Aboriginal art and attracted an international audience ready to acclaim her new and innovative contemporary style.

EXHIBITED Schittering/Brilliance, AAMU - Museum for Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 12 October 2007 - 23 March 2008 EST $45,000 - 65,000

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #53

WILLY TJUNGURRAYI (c.1932 - 2018) Tingari, 1981 89 x 154 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. WT810835 Private Collection, USA Sotheby’s, Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, July 2001, Lot No. 84 Private Collection, USA EST $8,000 - 12,000

COOEE ART

Willy Tjungurrayi grew up in the bush living a traditional life. As a young man in the late 1950s, he was brought with his family to Haasts Bluff. He moved to Papunya, where he started painting for Papunya Tula Artists in 1976. In the 1980s he emerged as one of the senior Pintupi painters, along with his younger brother Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungarrayi, and older brother George Tjungurrayi. The Tingari Cycle is a secret song cycle sacred to initiated men. The Tingari are Dreamtime beings who travelled across the landscape performing ceremonies to create and shape the country associated with Dreaming sites. The Tingari ancestors gathered at these sites for Maliera (initiation) ceremonies. The sites take the form of, and are located at, significant rockholes, sand hills, sacred mountains, and water soakages in the Western Desert. Tingari may be poetically interpreted as song-line paintings relating to the songs (of the people) and creation stories (of places) in Pintupi mythology.

LOT #54

FRED WARD TJUNGURRAYI (c.1955 - ) Design Elements which relate to the Tingari Cycle, 1990 121 x 152 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. FW900925 Dreamtime Heritage, NT Sotheby’s Contemporary and Aboriginal Art June 1995 Lot 305 Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, Vic Cat No. 5101 The Ebes Collection, Vic EST $12,000 - 15,000

Pintupi artist Fred Ward Tjungurrayi was born pre-contact at Purkitjarra (east of Kiwirrkurra) and came with his family into the Warburton community in remote Western Australia in the 1960s. He returned to the newly settled Pintupi community of Kiwirrkurra in 1984 and began painting for Papunya Tula Artists in August 1987. From the outset, he tackled large scale canvases, his work being distinctive for its powerful designs and traditional austerity. His first solo exhibition was held late in 1987, around the same time as this painting was exhibited and sold in New York. In 1989 he won the Northern Territory Art Award. Fred Ward Tjungurrayi’s masterwork, Tingari Travels at Kiwirrkurra 1990, is featured on the cover of the catalogue produced for the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ landmark exhibition Papunya Tula - Genesis and Genius, widely regarded as the most important exhibition ever mounted focussing on the paintings of the Papunya Tula Artists. After spending some time in the communities of Patjarr and Karilwara between 1992 and 1994, Tjungurrayi returned to Warburton, where he now lives with his wife and family.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #55

NAATA NUNGURRAYI (1932 - ) Marrapinti, West of Kiwirrkura, 2012 92 x 121.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Yanda Art, NT Cat No. NA29-1212KM Private Collection, NSW EST $15,000 - 20,000

COOEE ART

This painting depicts the creation events at the rockhole site of Marrapinti, west of Kiwirrkura. A group of senior women camped at this site and gathered kampurarrpa - bush raisin, from the Solanum centrale plant species common to Central Australia. The fruit is eaten directly from the plant and can also be ground into a flour and baked in the hot coals. Naata depicts her homeland from an aerial perspective and includes such features as the sandhills, rocky outcrops and vegetation. The painting design traces the topography in the landscape near Naata’s homeland. During ceremony, women act out the activities of ancestral beings and the songlines, which are hundreds of verses long, are chanted in a repetitive manner. Rockhole sites such as Marrapinti have been a reliable source of drinking water through the generations and, as such, continue to be important ceremony sites to this day.

LOT #56

JOHNNY WARNANGKULA TJUPURRULA (1925 - 2001) Water Dreaming at Tjikari, 1971 38 x 50.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on board PROVENANCE Painted in Papunya, 1971 Bears Stuart Art Centre Consignment No. 19331 verso Purchased from Pat Hogan, 1971 Private Collection, NT Sotheby’s, Fine Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 28 November 1995, lot 617 Bonham’s, Important Australian Art, Nov 2012, Lot A28 Hank Ebes Collection, Vic EXHIBITED Nangara:The Australian Aboriginal Art Exhibition from the Ebes Collection, Stichting Sint-jan, Brugge, Belgium, 1996 The Australian Aboriginal Art Exhibition, Hokkaido Asahikawa Museum of Art, Asahikawa, Japan; Tochigi Prefectual Museum of Fine Arts, Utsunomiya, Japan; Iwaki City Art Museum, Iwaki, Japan, 2001; Shimonoseki Prefectural Art Museum, Japan, 2001 Dreamtime - Aboriginal Art from the Ebes Collection, Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishoj, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2006. (10th Anniversary Exhibition)

Johnny Warangkula was born at Mintjilpirri, Northwest of the Kangaroo Dreaming site of Ilpili soakage. He first encountered ‘whitefellas’ at just 12 years of age, and moved to Papunya with his first wife in the early 1960s, shortly after the community’s establishment. By the time Geoff Bardon arrived in 1971, he was a member of the Papunya Council alongside Mick Namarari. Warangkula was amongst the most inventive of the early Papunya artists. His works at the time, according to Bardon, were distinguished by his ’calligraphic line and smearing brushwork’ that traced the movements of a journey, and picked up on the rhythmic recall of a mythic narrative. This early experimental work was created using enamel paint and bears a number of features that are attributable to other early paintings by Warangkula. The loose meandering lines in the upper portion of the work and roundels obscured by white dotting were a precursor to Warangkula’s later mastery of the technique of masking graphic symbols beneath layers of dots and striping. The motif of roughly parallel meanders joined by verticals is characteristic of Warangkula’s paintings. Choosing to keep within the hues of traditional earth-based ochres, Warangkula achieved a startlingly powerful statement of the earth, his country, and the life within it in his early paintings. During his first 15 years as a painter, he was foremost amongst those who fundamentally shaped the Papunya art movement.

EST $40,000 - 60,000

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #57

RONNIE TJAMPITJINPA (c.1943 - ) Tingari Cycle, 1998 183 x 152.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. RT960446 Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, Vic Cat No.7264 The Ebes Collection, Vic accompanied by a certificate from Papunya Tula Artists EST $35,000 - 55,000

COOEE ART

Ronnie Tjampitjinpa walked with his family out of the West Australian desert and settled into life at the tumultuous and crowded settlement of Papunya at 13 years of age. He was in his late 20s at the dawn of the Desert painting movement. He became one of the youngest painters for Papunya Tula and, during the early years, was tutored by Old Mick Tjakamarra. As senior custodian of the Honey Ant Dreaming, Tjakamarra had played an instrumental role in initiating the Papunya art movement. His works first appeared in Papunya Tula exhibitions during the 1970s, and later in commercial art galleries in Sydney and Melbourne throughout the 1980s, when he won the Alice Springs Art Prize. Ronnie was foremost amongst those who transformed Pintupi men’s painting style during the early to mid 1990s. His work was subsequently included in a number of major survey exhibitions in Australia and overseas, culminating in a solo retrospective in 2015 at the Art Gallery of NSW. The Tingari song and dance cycles are the most secret and sacred of the deeply religious rituals of the Western Desert Tribes of Central Australia. The rituals associated with them consist of hundreds of song and dance cycles telling of the travels and adventures of the Tingari and their creation of sacred sites and fertility rites.

LOT #58

MICK NAMARARI TJAPALTJARRI (1926 - 1998) Untitled - Yam Story, 1972 65 x 44 cm synthetic polymer paint on board PROVENANCE Painted in Papunya, October 1972, Bears Stuart Art Centre Consignment No. 19092 verso Private Collection, Vic Sotheby’s, Aboriginal Art, Sydney, 29/07/2003, Lot No. 170 Hank Ebes collection, Vic EST. 40,000 - 60,000

During a career that spanned almost three decades, Mick Namarari was at the forefront of the Western Desert Art Movement. Driven to paint regardless of the materials at hand, his early works were closely tied to narrative. Symbolic designs were painted, often on a rich, earthy background with a sharpness of line that imbued them with a remarkable clarity. This work was painted in the first years of the Papunya movement, during a time of great artistic exploration and innovation. The subject was one that Namarari painted regularly between 1971 and 1973. In paintings such as this, Namarari borrowed from conventional desert iconography as formerly seen in ceremonial ground constructions to create innovative abstracted designs representing country. Mick Namarari was the first recipient of Aboriginal Australia’s highest cultural accolade, the Australia Council’s Red Ochre Award, presented to him in 1994, four years prior to his death.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #59

CLIFFORD POSSUM TJAPALTJARRI (1932 - 2002) Tjapaltjarri Tjungurrayi Men at Jeremiah, 1996 105 x 188 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, Vic Cat No. 5729 The Ebes Collection, Vic Signed and dated Verso This work has an accompanying photo of the artist with the work and a video of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri singing the story EST $40,000 - 60,000

COOEE ART

Clifford Possum began his artistic career at Glen Helen, producing carvings for the developing tourist market. His skill as a wood carver is, in fact, thought to be the reason that he was able to rapidly develop an artistic style characterised by innovative spatial configuration and a remarkable sense of atmosphere. As he developed his art practice, Clifford introduced Western iconography and figurative imagery to convey certain elements in his narratives.This played a dual role in both making them more intelligible to Western audiences, and allowing him to create imaginative compositions within the parameters of the ‘law’. This painting depicts the deaths of two sons who had angered their father, the old Blue Tongue Lizard man, Lungkata, by killing a kangaroo which was sacred to him and then eating it in secret without sharing it with him. Enraged by his sons’ actions, Lungkata started a great bush fire at Warlugulong, in which the two brothers perished. This rendition of the story is reminiscent of the style of Clifford Possum’s earliest works created for Papunya Tula at the outset of his painting career with its strong figurative image and graphic simplicity. Skeletons were the only images in Clifford Possum’s repertoire of the 1990s for which he did not draft out the image in chalk beforehand. He had studied the structure of the human skeleton and, as time went on, these figures became more stylised and startling in their realism.

LOT #60

CLIFFORD POSSUM TJAPALTJARRI (1932 - 2002) Worm and Crow Dreaming, 1994 126.5 x 180.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, Vic Cat No. 3510 Signed and dated verso accompanied by a series of images of the artist with the painting and signing the back of the artwork and a folio of news clippings about the artist’s career. EST $90,000 - 120,000

Clifford Possum was the first recognised star of Western Desert art and one of Australia’s most distinguished painters of the late twentieth century. His unique artistic style was characterised by its innovative use of spatial configuration in paintings that conveyed a remarkable sense of atmosphere. His earliest works created for Papunya Tula at the outset of the painting movement featured strong figurative imagery and graphic simplicity. By 1990, however, Clifford had returned to his Anmatjerre homeland at Napperby near Mount Allen in the Tanami Desert, and he had travelled extensively since first began painting at Papunya. Napperby Lake or Larumba, near the border of the Tanami and Simpson Deserts, is a saltwater lake which flows along a series of claypans, occasionally disappearing beneath the surface. The Worm and Crow Dreaming belongs to Narripi, near Gidyea Creek, 100 km east of Mount Allen. The central concentric circle is a secret/sacred corroboree site for the Worm Dreaming. The wiggly lines depict the trails of the Ancestral Worm Men as they travelled underground. The tracks of the crows and the Spinifex grasses that grow at this site are also shown in this dramatic work.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #61

LOT #62

QUEENIE MCKENZIE NAKARA (1930 - 1998)

PATSY ANGUBURRA LULPUNDA (1898 - 2000)

Country around Ruby Plains, 1995

Dunbi - Owl, 1998

60 x 75 cm natural earth pigment on canvas

85.5 x 58.5 cm natural earth pigments on canvas

PROVENANCE Created for Neil McLeod at the Turkey Creek Pensuoner Unit, 1995 Private Collection, Vic

PROVENANCE Neil McLeod Fine Art, NT Flinders Lane Gallery, Vic Cat No. FG006239 Private Collection, Vic

accompanied by a certificate from Kimberly Art EST $10,000 - 15,000

EXHIBITED Patsy Lulpunda, First Solo Exhibition, October - November 2000, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne, Vic EST $3,000 - 4,000

COOEE ART

LOT #63

FREDDIE TIMMS (1946 - 2017) Four Mile Plain, 1997 91.5 x 122 cm natural earth pigments on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Narrangunny Art Traders, WA Cat No. N-0121-FT Private Collection, WA

In a career that spanned more than 20 years, Freddy Timms became known for aerial map-like visions of country that are less concerned with ancestral associations than with tracing the responses and refuges of the Gija people as they encountered the ruthlessness and brutality of colonisation. Foremost amongst those Gija artists of the second generation his works are a unique Gija perspective on the history of white interaction with his people. It is hard to think of another who expressed more poignantly through their art the sense of longing and the abiding loss that comes from the forced separation from land that embodies one’s spiritual home.

EXHIBITED Passing on Tradition - New and Old Kimberley, 2010, Cooee Art, NSW Caring for Country, Nancy Sever Gallery, ACT, 2014 EST $6,000 - 8,000

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #64

PETER MARRALWANGA (1916 - 1987) Untitled, 1950 81 x 44 cm natural earth pigments on bark PROVENANCE Dorothy Bennett, NT Private Collection, NSW EST $4,000 - 6,000 Peter Marralwanga resided for most of his life at the remote outstation of Marrkolidjban in Western Arnhem Land, forging a close friendship with the great bark painter David Yirawala, whose influence, clearly extended to Marralwanga’s innovative use of cross-hatching or rarrk in-fill derived from the designs of the Mardayin ceremony. Marralwanga empowered many of the next generation of artists, such as John Mawurndjul and his own sons Ivan Namirrkki and Samuel Namunjdja to continue experimentation and invention in their works.

COOEE ART

LOT #65

JOHN MAWURNDJUL (1951 - ) Mimi Spirits, 2003 185 x 3 x 4 cm and 187 x 4 x 4 cm natural earth pigments on wood PROVENANCE Maningrida Art and Culture, NT Flinders Lane Gallery Vic Cat No. 244-5 Private Collection, Vic accompanied with a certificate of authenticity from Maningrida Art and Culture EST $8,000 - 10,000

LOT #66

ROBYN NGANJMIRRA (1951 - 1991) Kolobbarr and Karurrken - Kangaroos of the Ubar Ceremony, 1983 186 x 88 cm natural earth pigments on bark PROVENANCE Commissioned directly by Dorothy Bennett, NT Private Collection, Vic EST $9,000 - 12,000 Born in Western Arnhem Land in 1951, Robyn was the most talented painter among the sons of the great bark painter Bobby Barrdjaray Nganjmirra. In this finely wrought work, the artist depicted Karurrken, the female kangaroo who is the lead caller and dancer of the sacred Ubar ceremony. Also depicted is Karrurken’s husband Kolobbarr, who is in charge of a camp far away from the main ceremonial ground. Kolobbarr was told to hunt for food for all the performers, and that he and his helpers were to cook and look after the young initiates waiting for their call to join in the latter part of the ceremony. Though his paintings were collected by major institutions, including nine works in the National Gallery of Australia’s collection, Robin Nganjmirra died at a young age, just before being able to fully profit from the burgeoning Indigenous art market. AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #67

DARBY JAMPITJINPA ROSS (1910 - 2005) Wattle Seed Dreaming, 1994 151 x 75 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Warlurkulangu Arts, Yuendumu NT Cat No. 245/94 Hogarth Gallery, NSW Private Collection, Vic EXHIBITED Dell Gallery, Queensland College of Art, 23 Aug - 28 Sept 2008 Araluen Centre for the Arts, Alice Springs, 22 Nov - 28 Jan 2009 Curator Simon P Wright in conjunction with Griffith University and Warlurkulangu Artists EST $4,000 - 6,000

COOEE ART

Darby Jampijinpa Ross was born in the bush at Ngarliyikirlangu about 1910, before European colonisers were prevalent in central Australia. He grew up a traditional nomad, hunting with his family. He survived the Conniston massacre and travelled widely as a stockman. Darby Ross was a much respected Warlpiri elder, a founding member of Warlukurlangu artists and, before his death in 2005, he was thought to be the oldest Warlpiri man alive. His country lay to the north of Yuendumu and his totems were the emu and bandicoot, yet he also painted Ngapa (water), Pamapardu (flying ant), and Wardilyka (bush turkey). In 1993 he also managed a huge Jardiwanpa canvas, commissioned for the inclusion in the travelling exhibition Aratjara: Art of the First Australians, mounted by the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany. Darby began to paint with Warlukurlangu Artists in 1985 and regularly exhibited with them until he stopped painting in 2000. His canvases were significant for their bold gestural qualities and their intense vibrant colours. His work was included in major exhibitions including Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia, at the Asia Society in New York in 1989 and Mythscapes: Aboriginal Art of the Desert at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1989.

LOT #68

PADDY NELSON JUPURRURLA (1919 - 1999) Wakulyarri Jukurrpa - Rock Wallaby, 1989 121.5 x 91 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas PROVENANCE Warlukurlangu Artists, NT Cat No. 344/89 Private Collection, NSW EXHIBITED Masterworks from the Lawson~Menzies Collection, Manly Art Gallery, Tweed Regional Gallery and additional venues, 2005-2008 EST $7,000 - 10,000

In 1983, Paddy Nelson Tjupurrula and five other elders painted the school doors in the tiny Warlpiri settlement of Yuendumu. This project marked the beginning of the painting movement in that region, just as the Honey Ant Mural had done a decade earlier in Papunya. The creation of these images also marked the beginning of an art career that saw Paddy Nelson rise to prominence as the most celebrated of the founders of the Warlpiri art movement. Along with the images that he painted on the doors, Paddy’s early paintings were characterised by fluid, bold brushstrokes depicting variations of classic Warlpiri iconography, with its far more eccentric compositional placement than those in the more formal Pintupi style. The large collaborative canvas, Star Dreaming, on which Nelson and the original group of elders collaborated two years after painting the doors, hangs in the National Gallery of Australia. It helped launch the careers of the founding Yuendumu artists. Nelson’s works, typically featuring circles, meandering lines, and animal tracks are infused with a vibrant energy generated from within the background of dotted areas and outlines. From his participation in the creation of a large traditional ground painting for the ‘Magicians de la Terre’ exhibition in Paris in the mid 1980s to the posthumous presentation of his work in Colour Power 2004 at the National Gallery of Victoria, Paddy Nelson’s art has appeared in major exhibitions and toured internationally for more than two decades.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #69

LOT # 70

LOUIS KARADADA (1940 - )

LILY KARADADA (c.1937 - )

Untitled, 1995

Wandjina, 1995

90 x 124 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas

97 x 35 cm natural earth pigments on bark

PROVENANCE Commissioned by psychologist for WA education department in Derby Private Collection, SA

PROVENANCE Collected in Kalumburru, WA Cat No. AK100 Private Collection, SA

EST $,2500 - 3,500

EST $2,500 - 3,500

COOEE ART

LOT #71

LOT #72

QUEENIE MCKENZIE NAKARA (1930 - 1998)

Jack Britten (c.1921 - 2001)

History Painting - Hiding Place, 1995

Purnululu, 1993

50 x 70 cm natural earth pigment on canvas

89.5 x 129.5 cm natural earth pigments on canvas

PROVENANCE Commissioned by Neil McLeod, Pensioner Unit, Turkey Creek, 1995 Private Collection, Vic

PROVENANCE Commissioned directly from the artist by the coordinator of the Halls Creek Art Centre, 1993 Private Collection, SA

accompanied by a certificate from Kimberley Art EST $8,000 - 12,000

EST $4,000 - 6,000

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #73

BILL TJAPALTJARRI WHISKEY (c.1920 - 2008) Rockholes and Country near the Olgas, 2007 180 x 180 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Watiyawanu Artists, Mount Leibig, NT Cat No. 10-07398 Private Collection, NT accompanied by a certificate from Watiyawanu Artists EST $40,000 - 60,000

COOEE ART

Bill Whiskey did not begin painting on canvas until the last four years of his life at 84 years of age, by which time he was widely renowned as a powerful healer and keeper of sacred knowledge. His paintings, the first to depict the major Cockatoo Dreaming story and the creation of important sites throughout the country of his birth (Pirupa Alka near the Olgas - Kata Tjuta and Ayers Rock Uluru), are imbued with authority and steeped in traditional knowledge. During the battle between the Cockatoo and the Crow, white feathers were scattered about and the landscape became indented by the entangled combatants crashing to the ground repeatedly. Subterranean streams filled these impressions with water and a circular amphitheatre was created by the sweep of wings. Today, a large, glowing white rock signifies the fallen cockatoo, still sipping the life-giving water from the sacred pools. In Whiskey’s emblematic works, blues, yellows, and reds, are tempered by cockatoo-white, representing the wildflowers that grow in profusion after rain. In keeping with the depiction of Dreaming stories throughout the Western Desert, the mythic and numinous is inherent within the sacred geography.

LOT #74

EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE (1910 - 1996) My Country, 1995 122 x 152 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Private commission Hank Ebes, Vic Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, Vic Cat No. 4895 Private Collection, Vic

By 1992, Emily’s fine dotting and symbolic underpainting gave way to works in which symbols and tracks were increasingly concealed beneath a sea of dots until eventually they were no longer evident at all. She began using larger brushes to create lines of dots that ran across vibrantly coloured, haptic surfaces. These works became progressively visually abstracted and ethereal. By the time this painting was created in 1995, Emily had developed a style employing larger brushes which she double dipped into pots of layered paint thereby creating floral impressions with alternately coloured variegated outlines. Despite her age (85 at this time), Emily’s physicality was evident as she painted. Often with a brush in each hand as she simultaneously pounded them down onto the canvas spreading the bristles and leaving the coagulating paint around the neck of the brush to create depth and form.

accompanied by a certificate booklet from Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings and photo of the artist with the work EST $80,000 - 120,000

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #75

MINNIE PWERLE (1910 - 2006) Awelye, 2004 130 x 270 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Dacou Gallery, SA Cat No. DG05577/A.MP Cat No. 0403 Verso Fireworks Gallery, Qld Cat No. FG010010 Private Collection, Vic EST $16,000 - 22,000

Minnie Pwerle, whose husband was the brother of famed artist Emily Kngwarreye, began painting her country Atnwengerrp and its associated Dreamings in earnest at 77 years of age in 1999, three years after Emily’s death. While Minnie resembles Emily in her prodigious output and gestural vigour, it is the bush melon and its seed, rather than the yam or bush potato, which were her own Dreamings and the subject of her art. The manner in which Minnie Pwerle created her works was the result of an urgency to reconnect to the past and to keep the Dreaming a living reality. Painting after painting depicted the body designs applied to women’s chests and limbs for the regular ceremonial revivification of her country. These bold, linear patterns evoke the movement of the women as they dance during ceremony. After smearing their bodies with animal fat, they trace these designs onto their chests, arms, and thighs, singing as each woman has a turn to be ‘painted up’. Then, often by firelight, they dance in formation accompanied by ritual singing. The songs relate to the Dreamtime stories of ancestral travel as well as plants, animals, and natural forces. Awelye - Women’s ceremony demonstrates respect for the land. In performing these ceremonies they ensure well-being and happiness within their community.

COOEE ART

LOT #76

MINNIE PWERLE (1910 - 2006) Awelye - Atnwengerrp, 2004 120 x 90.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Dacou Gallery, SA Cat No. DG05858 Private Collection, NSW EST $6,000 - 8,000

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #77

NYURAPAYIA (MRS BENNETT) NAMPITJINPA (1935 - 2013) Pangkupirri, 1998 46 x 91 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. NN9811204 Private Collection, NSW EST $2,600 - 3,200

Nyurapayia Nampitjinpa was born near the site of today’s Docker River community. She saw no white men until she was in her teens and spent much of her childhood at Pangkupirri, a set of sheltered rockholes deep in the range-folds of the Gibson Desert. By the time she walked in from the bush to the ration depot at Haasts Bluff and encountered mission life, she was recognised as a healer and person of great ritual authority. During the 1980s, she moved to Kintore, the new western settlement of the Pintupi, closer to her traditional lands. Later she went on to Tjukurla, across the West Australian border. Nyurapayia, was a close associate of the key painters who shaped the women’s painting movement in the early to mid 1990s. Her depictions of the sand-dune country and surrounding rocky outcrops bear a relationship to the designs used for body painting during the inma ceremonial dance. At the time of her death in February 2013, Nyurapayia had reached the pinnacle of desert law and sacred knowledge and was revered by women throughout the Western desert.

COOEE ART

LOT #78

NAATA NUNGURRAYI (1932 - ) Untitled, 2002 61 x 90.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. NN0208309 Private Collection, NSW accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Papunya Tula Artists EST $3,000 - 5,000

Naata Nungurrayi was about 30 years of age when she encountered the ‘welfare patrol’ in 1963, and moved with her family to Papunya. She began painting for Papunya Tula Artists in 1996. Forced to leave behind her beloved desert homelands, the memory of these places and the life she led, has provided the inspiration and the subject matter for her highly sought-after paintings. Naata’s paintings combine the carefully composed geometric style that developed at Papunya amongst the Pintupi painting men, with the looser technique and more painterly organic style introduced by the women after the painting camps of the early and mid 1990s. This work depicts designs associated with the rockhole and soakage water site of Marrapinti, to the west of the Pollock Hills in Western Australia. The lines are sandhills surrounding the area and the roundels represent rockholes. A large group of senior women camped at this place. They are depicted in this painting as U shapes sitting in groups. The myth relating to these women tells of how they first made the nose-bones which are traditionally worn through a hole in the nose web.These nose-bones were originally worn by both men and women but are now only worn by the older generation on ceremonial occasions.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #79

TIGER PALPATJA (c.1920 - 2014) Water-snake Dreaming, 2009 122 x 200 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Minymaku Arts, Amata Community, SA Private Collection, NSW EST $ 7,000 - 9,000

Though he began painting at the late age of 85, Tiger Palpatja’s colourful, lively compositions immediately attracted art world acclaim. His blood reds, delicate pinks, lilacs, and molten yellows impart a lovely gentleness to works renowned for strong lines and writhing serpentine forms. Wanampi, the water snake, believed to be the ancestor of the Pitjantjatjara people, is the source of the austere power of his red desert country. Tiger was a senior custodian for the Wanampi creation story, which was central to his identity. The story tells of the frustration between two brothers and their wives. The men were spending too much time on their ceremonial activities so the women stopped providing food for them. The men then tricked the women by turning themselves into snakes and leaving enticing snake trails nearby, which prompted the women to start digging vigourously and deeply after the food. When one sister eventually speared a snake, the injured and angered men swallowed the women whole and retreated forever into the holes, channels, and gullies that the women had dug throughout the country. Tiger’s artworks offer us a window into the soul of the earth, forged from his own song cycles and connection to the land.

COOEE ART

LOT #80

KUNTJIL COOPER (c.1920 - 2010) Minyma Kutjara, 2007 159 x 200 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Irruntju Arts, SA, Cat No. IRRKC071211 Agathon Galleries, Vic Cat No. AGKC 0109080033 Private Collection, NSW EST $ 6,000 - 8,000

Kuntjil Cooper lived a semi-nomadic life as a teenager and lived into her 90s by which time she was a highly regarded senior traditional owner, respected for her extensive knowledge of the women’s lore, especially the Two Sisters (Minyma Kutjara Tjukurpa) and Seven Sister Dreamings associated with her mother’s country. The Minyma Kutjara Tjukurrpa is an epic song and dance cycle. The route the sisters travelled can be traced through the desert; their actions often created landmarks. Nuanced, multi-layered, and especially important for the women, some aspects of the story are only told in whispers. Women’s business associated with menstruation, courtship, pregnancy, childbirth, as well as inma (ceremonies) and rites associated with them are interwoven into the narrative. Near Irrunytju the sisters sat on two hills and made hair belts in preparation for women’s business. They threw their wanas (digging sticks) creating the rockhole called Wana Wani, where Kuntjil was born. Kuntjil’s paintings feature heavily textured blocks of vivid colour that were painted while singing her songline as she methodically worked on the canvas over many days.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #81

SUSIE NAPALTJARRI BOOTJA BOOTJA (c.1932 - 2003) Kaningarra, 2000 119.5 x 80 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Warlayirti Artists, WA Cat No. 934/00 Private Collection, Vic EST $6,000 - 9,000

COOEE ART

Susie Bootja Bootja was a vibrant and colourful personality, respected for her knowledge of the law and ceremony pertaining to Kurtal, a fresh water spring. As a child, before contact with white people, she played at the Kangingarra waterhole, situated in the northern reaches of the Canning Stock Route. She walked in from the desert as a teenager to Tjumundora, one of the early mission sites. Susie was one of the first women painters at Balgo Hills, renowned for use of both Western and traditional imagery, including trees and snakes, along with a lively use of bright colours. Her innovative dotted colour fields began in 1996. Until her death in 2003, her works were filled with her exuberant personality and joy for life.

LOT #82

CAROL MAAYATJA GOLDING (1930 - ) Walu, 2008 101.5 x 76.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas PROVENANCE Warakurna Artists, WA Cat No. 470/08 Private Collection, NSW

Carol Golding was born at Walu rockhole, not far from Warakurna, over 90 years ago. She grew up living a traditional life in the desert. In the Dreaming story associated with the site of Carol’s birth, there were two men and one little boy camping at Walu.The men went hunting and left the little boy behind. The men returned with an emu and pulled out it’s heart. The boy was holding the heart and blood spilled onto the rocks. He ran away with the heart and turned into wind. The emu’s blood trail stained the rocks and can still be seen at this place today.

Wanarn Aged Care Project written verso EST $3,000 - 5,000

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #83

TJAYANKA WOODS (c.1935 - ) Tjunama, 2007 120 x 182 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Irruntju Arts, SA, Cat No. IRRKC071211 Agathon Galleries, Vic Cat No. AGTWD0109070029 Private Collection, NSW EST $7,000 - 9,000

COOEE ART

Tjayanka Woods is a senior Pitjantjatjara artist who was born near Kalaya Pirti (Emu Water), near Mimili and Wataru in the APY lands, South Australia. As a child she lived a semi-nomadic life in the bush with her parents, frequently camping at Kalaya Pirti where they would hunt ngintaka (goanna), tinka (lizards), kalaya (emu) and gather bushfoods such as kampurarpa (desert raisin), ili (figs) and maku (wood grubs). Now in her late 80s she remembers her remote birthplace with longing and paints intimate renditions of her country. Beside painting,Tjayanka often sits beside a camp fire and weaves multicoloured baskets surrounded by bags of raffia, tjanpi, emu feathers and camp dogs.

LOT #84

TOMMY MAY NGARRALJI (1935 - ) Kurtal, 2018 60 x 60 cm acrylic on perspex PROVENANCE Mangkaja Arts, Fitzroy Crossing, WA Cat No. 3166/17 Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair, NT Cooee Art Gallery, NSW Private Collection, NSW accompanied with a certificate from Mangkaja Arts EXHIBITED Perspective of Country, January 2019, Cooee Art Paddington EST $3,000 - 4,000

LOT #85

LIN ONUS (1948 - 1996) Pitoa Garkman, 1994 50 x 75 cm (image): 70 x 100 cm (paper size) Screenprint on Whatmans Matt 270 gsm paper Edn. 85 PROVENANCE Created by the artist with Port Jackson Press, Vic Cooee Art, NSW Private Collection, NSW EST $3,000 - 4,000

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #86

LOT #87

MILLIE SKEEN (1932 - 1997)

EUBENA NAMPITJIN (1924 - 2013)

Tjimarri - Special Knives for Kangaroo, 1995

Midjul, 1999

90 x 60 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas

120 x 80 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas

PROVENANCE Warlayirti Artists, Balgo Hills, WA Cat No. 51/95 Lawson~Menizes, Aboriginal Art, Sydney, November 2004, Lot No. 62 Private Collection, NSW

PROVENANCE Warlayirti Artists, WA Cat Nu. 129/99 Alcaston Gallery, Vic Cat Nu. AK6909 Sotheby’s, Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 20/07/2009, Lot No. 121 Private Collection, NSW

EST $5,000 - 7,000

COOEE ART

EST $ 8,000 - 12,000

LOT #88

LOT #89

ROSIE NANYUMA (c.1935 - )

JOHNNY MOSQUITO TJAPANGARTI (1922 - 2004)

Ngarlukutu, 2001

Wati Kutjara-Two Mens Dreaming, 1995

91 x 60 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas

90 x 60 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas

PROVENANCE Warlayirti Artists, Balgo Hills WA Cat. no. 750/01 Private Collection, Qld Cooee Art, NSW Private Collection, NSW

PROVENANCE Warlayirti Artists, WA Cat No. 24/95 Private Collection, NSW EST $5,000 - 7,000

EST $1,500 - 2,500

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #90

MINNIE PWERLE (1910 - 2006) Awelye Atnwengerrp, 2000 90 x 122 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Dacou Gallery, SA Cat No. DG03971A Flinders Lane Gallery, Vic Cat No. FG010010.MP Private Collection, Vic accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Dacou Gallery EST $6,000 - 8,000

COOEE ART

Born in the Eastern Desert, Minnie Pwerle did not become a painter until 1999, by which time she was in her late 70s. Her work was driven by an urgency to reconnect to the past and to keep the Dreaming a living reality. In painting after painting, she depicted the body designs applied to her clans-women’s breasts and limbs for the regular ceremonial revivification of their country. These bold linear patterns of stripes and curves evoke the movement of the women as they dance during ceremony. The women dance in formation accompanied by ritual chanting related to their Songline and Dreamtime stories of ancestral travel. In this custodial role they ensure the continuing re-vivification of vital plants, animals, and natural forces. Awelye - Women’s Ceremony demonstrates respect for the land and ensures well-being and happiness within their community.

LOT #91

JIMMY DONEGAN (1940 - ) Pulkara, 2005 149 x 99 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Papulankutja Artists, Blackstone, WA Cat No. 05-980 Marshall Arts, SA Private Collection, NSW ILLUSTRATED McCulloch’s Encyclopaedia of Australian Art, Aus Art Editions and The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne University Publishing, 2006 p. 129 (illus.)

Jimmy Donegan was born at Yanpan, a rockhole near Ngatuntjarra Bore, and grew up in the bush around Blackstone and Mantamaru (Jameson) in Western Australia. This painting shows the Pukara rock hole and surrounding country. The creation story for this painting reveals that two water snakes (really men) were trying to pass through the Piuyi Mountains near Warburton. They threw a magic boomerang that broke the mountain in two before travelling on to Pukara. As in many of Donegan’s works, the lines of colour are composed of thousands of dots in different hues, blending into a mesmerising whole. The resulting pattern evokes the spiritual essence of a dazzlingly illuminated landscape. Jimmy Donegan was the winner of the General Painting Prize as well as being the overall Winner of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2010.

EST $4,500 - 6,500

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #92

Ngura Walytja, Antara, 2012

Milatjari was born in the bush in north-western South Australia. When she was still a young girl, her family encountered stockmen at a waterhole called Victory Well on Everard Park Station. She did not begin painting until 2008, when she was about 80 years old.

152 x 122 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen

Milatjari paints the Maku Dreaming associated with Antara, land close to Mimili. This is her uncle’s traditional country, and Milatjari’s family often went hunting and gathering food there when she was young.

MILATJARI PUMANI (1928 - )

PROVENANCE Mimili Maku Arts, SA Cat No. MIM110-2012 Private Collection, NSW accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Mimili Maku Arts EST $4,000 - 5,000

COOEE ART

Her style and technique has influenced many of Mimili Maku’s younger artists, including her daughter Ngupulya and Tuppy Ngintja Goodwin.

LOT #93

CYRIL AND ELAINE THOMAS Ngarlpulitjara, 2005 131 x 142 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Spinifex Art Project, WA Cat No. C371 Flinders Lane Gallery, Vic Cat No. FG05616 Private Collection, Vic accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Spinifex Arts Project EST $6,000 - 8,000

The lands of the Spinifex people in Western Australia extend to the border with South Australia and North of the Nullarbor Plain. The centre of their homeland is in the Great Victoria Desert, at Tjuntjunjarra, some 700 kilometres East of Kalgoorlie, perhaps the most remote community in Australia. To this day, a traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle is in large part maintained. In 1997, an art project was started in which Indigenous paintings became part of the title claim, which was recognised in 2000. Later, in 2001, Cooee Art Gallery held their first commercial art exhibition in Sydney, which was officially opened by former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and the Governor of NSW, Marie Bashir. Mr and Mrs Thomas, both Spinifex elders, worked together to produce this painting. It shows the dramatic story of the country at Ngalkritjara, where they were both born. Ngalkritjara is a claypan surrounded by higher country. Here, water is always available by digging down into the soil. The Dreaming relates that many small birds called Kunkilkaa lived in this area. Wati Kipara (Turkey Man) the cranky old man from the north who stole fire near Tjukula and headed for the sea at Eucla sweeps through Ngalkritjara, killing and eating all the men, women and children with the stolen fire stick before moving off to the south.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

LOT #94

WENTJA MORGAN NAPALTJARRI (1945 - ) Country West of Kintore, 2007 121 x 121 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Watiyawarnu Artists, Mt. Leibig, NT Cat No. WN10-07402 Flinders Lane Gallery, Vic Private Collection, Vic EST $8,000 - 10,000

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COOEE ART

Wentja Napaltjarri was born at Malparinga, and grew up west of Kintore in the Gibson Desert. She began painting for Watiyawanu Artists toward the end of the 1990s. The daughter of Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi, Wentja paints her father’s Blue Tongue Lizard Dreaming as well as Water Dreaming stories, Sandhills, rockholes, and other landmarks associated with water and Desert Oak trees. In contrast to her father’s work, Wentja’s paintings are less geometric, with a softening of iconography through interlacing with intricate finely dotted patterning. This soft dotting technique is characteristic of many of the Mount Liebig women artists. Wentja was a finalist in the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2002.

LOT #95

LILY NAPANGARDI KELLY (1948 - ) Sandhills, 2004 122.5 x 61 cm each synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Watiyawanu Artists, Mt. Liebig NT Cat No. 12-02170 (red) and 312159 (black) Neil Murphy Fine Art, Vic Cat No. NJM04/0229 (red) NJM04/0230 (black) Private Collection, QLD accompanied by certificates of authenticity from Watiyawanu Artists

Lily Kelly began painting for Papunya Tula Artists during the mid 1980s, when the company’s field officers first began visiting Mt. Liebig regularly. In 1986, she won the Northern Territory Art Award. The win drew attention to the growing number of artists in Mount Liebig and the nascent art centre there. By the 1990s, she had become a senior Law Woman and the custodian over the Women’s Dreaming stories associated with Kunajarrayi, in Warlpiri and Luritja country stretching between Mt Liebig, Haasts Bluff, Kintore and Conniston. Here, she passed on her knowledge of traditional law and ceremonial dancing and singing to her children, eleven grandchildren, and other young women of her clan. Lily’s paintings refer to sand hills, the effect of wind and rain on the desert landscape, and the crucial waterholes found in the area. This work evokes the ephemeral nature of the drifting, changing, sandy country in the finest microcosmic detail. Rain streaks the land as it runs off the sand hills while the blowing wind folds them into the undulating waves of an infinite expanse.

EST $ 6,000 - 8,000

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

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LOT #96

LILY NAPANGARDI KELLY (1948 - ) Sandhills, 2003 91 x 151.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Watiyawanu Artists, NT Cat No. GW10476 Neil Murphy Fine Art, Vic Private Collection, NSW EST $6,000 - 9,000

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COOEE ART

Beholding each of Lily Kelly’s works in its entirety, is to view the landscape as the eye follows the hypnotic fine dotting and muted tones that build up into a mysterious, enigmatic topographic view of her country. As rain streaks the land, it runs off the sand hills while the blowing wind folds them into the undulating waves of an infinite expanse. Rendered in intricate detail, with subtle colour variations, these paintings covey powerful and inspiring visions of her country. Works such as this fine example are highly accomplished.Their spacious textural feel resonates sympathetically with contemporary aesthetics.These are paintings to be valued more for the pleasure they impart than their cultural content.

LOT #97

MINNIE PWERLE (1910 - 2006) Awelye, 2004 35.5 x 51 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Dacou Gallery, SA Cat No. DG05756 Flinders Lane Gallery, Vic Cat No. FG04107.MP Private Collection, Vic accompanied by a certificate from Flinders Lane Gallery

These bold, linear patterns of stripes and curves evoke the movement of the women as they dance during ceremony. After smearing their bodies with animal fat, they trace these designs onto their chests, arms, and thighs, singing as each woman has a turn to be ‘painted up’. Then, often by firelight, they dance in formation accompanied by ritual singing. The songs relate to the Dreamtime stories of ancestral travel as well as plants, animals, and natural forces. Awelye - Women’s ceremony demonstrates respect for the land. In performing these ceremonies they ensure well-being and happiness within their community.

EST $800 - 1,200

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

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LOT #98

MITJILI NAPANANGKA GIBSON (1930 - 2010) Two Girls at Murruwa, 2006 76.5 x 76 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Gallery Gondwana, NT Cat No. 9471MN Private Collection, NSW EST $4,000 - 6,000

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Inspired by her niece, Dorothy Napangardi, Mitjili Napanangka Gibson began painting on canvas in 2006. They shared many Dreaming stories, in particular those associated with Mina Mina, a sacred site for the Napanangka and Napangardi skin groups on Warlpiri land. Fluent in both Pintupi and Warlpiri, Mitjili could trace her heritage to members of the Pintupi whose first contact with white people was a meeting with the explorer Donald Thompson in 1957. While most Pintupi moved north towards Balgo or east towards Papunya, Mitjili Napanangka Gibson’s small family group moved to the Warlpiri community of Yuendumu. In this painting, Mitjili has depicted part of a long narrative Dreaming story about two young girls. Their tracks are shown as they walk between sites around the Murruwa area where they sat down.

LOT #99

WALANGKURA NAPANANGKA (c.1946 - 2014) Old Women’s Travelling Story, 2007 119 x 90 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen PROVENANCE Aranda Arts, Vic Cat No. ASAAWM2274 Private Collection, NSW accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Aranda Art EST $3,000 - 4,000

LOT #100

NORA WOMPI NUNGURRAYI (1939 - 2017) Lukarkurlu Kunawarritji, 2013 91 x 61 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas PROVENANCE Martumili Artists, Newman WA, Cat No. 13-350 Private Collection, NSW accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Martumili Artists EST $1,500 - 2,500

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

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BUYING FROM COOEE ART AUCTIONS PRE-SALE ESTIMATES ESTIMATES PRE-SALE The price range listed against each lot reflects the opinion of the art specialists as to what they expect the hammer price each artwork may achieve and is informed by realised prices for comparable artworks in the secondary market. These estimates are intended as a guide only and may sell outside of these ranges. Pre-sale estimates do not include buyer’s premium or other charges where applicable. RESERVES

RESERVES

The reserve is the minimum price that the vendor will accept for each lot and the lot can not be normally sold lower than this amount. This information is not provided to prospective buyers. CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY & PROVENANCE CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY

& PROVENANCE

Each artwork will be listed with the known provenance or history of ownership. Non disclosure may indicate that the prior history and provenance was unknown to Cooee Art. All artworks sold through the Cooee Art auctions come with a certificate of authenticity from our auction house. We do endeavour to track down the original certificates from the sellers of the artworks prior to the sale, however, these are often misplaced and are no longer available. THE AUCTION

THE AUCTION

REGISTRATION REGISTRATION Prospective buyers must register to bid prior to the auction.

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BIDDING

There are five ways to bid at a Cooee Art auctions In person – Our auctions are open to the public and held at our premises at 17 Thurlow Street Redfern. We welcome your attendance if you are in Sydney. Online – Whether you are just a suburb away or half way around the world you can bid for all Cooee Art lots in the comfort of your home or office, live and in real-time on our dedicated auction website at auction.cooeeart.com.au or on Invaluable. Please note there is a small service fee charged by Invaluable. Absentee – For those who prefer not to attend the auction or bid online, you can either leave an Absentee bid with us directly by filling in the form found at the back of this catalogue or at the viewing in Sydney. Leave your highest bid on any artworks and the Auctioneer will bid on your behalf up to but not over this top bid listed. If there is no one else bidding or they pull out before your highest bid, you will win the work for the next bidding increment which may even be less than your top bid. Absentee on the website - Here you can leave a bid online for an artwork right up until the auction starts at 7pm.You leave your highest bid and you will be informed if someone bids higher than you. Note that you are only informed until the beginning of the auction at 7pm. If you are out bid by someone in the room or on the phones during the auction you will miss out.A good strategy is to leave the highest bid you are willing to buy the artwork for and the computer will keep bidding on your behalf up to that amount. No one is able to see your highest amount so you may just win the artwork for a much lower amount. Telephone - By using this option, you can bid yourself on any artwork from the comfort of your home anywhere in the world.You will be called 2 - 3 lots before your selected artwork comes up and one of our staff will act on your behalf and be your eyes, ears and spokes person for the evening. It is also advisable to leave a Cover Bid (which acts

the same as the Absentee Bid listed above) so that if we are unable to reach you on the night then the person calling can then step in and bid for you up to that amount. BIDDING INCREMENTS BIDDING INCREMENTS Bidding usually opens below the listed pre-sale estimate and proceeds in the following increments however it is at the discretion of the auctioneer and may vary. $0 - $1,000 by $50 $1,000 - $2,000 by $100 $2,000 - $5,000 by $200 $5,000 - $10,000 by $500 $10,000 - $20,000 by $1000 $20,000 - $50,000 by $2,000 $50,000 - $100,000 by $5,000 $100,000 - $200,000 by $10,000 $200,000 - $500,000 by $20,000 $500,000 - $1,000,000 by $50,000 $1,000,000 - and over by $100,000

BUYER’S PREMIUM BUYER’S PREMIUM A buyer’s premium of 25% (including GST) is added to the hammer price on each lot.The hammer price is the last bid that is accepted by the auctioneer. SUCCESSFUL BIDS SUCCESSFUL BIDS The fall of the auctioneer’s hammer indicates the bid has been accepted and the work is sold, the buyer assumes full responsibility for the lot from this time. AFTER THE AUCTION AFTER THE AUCTION PAYMENTS

PAYMENTS

The day after the sale, the Post Sale Service team will send you an Invoice. The final amount due will include the hammer price, the 25% buyer’s premium and the service fee charged by Invaluable if you are using their services. Electronic Bank Transfer is the simplest payment method and your invoice will include our bank details. A 2% surcharge applies to Visa, MasterCard and AMEX payments. Alternatively, payment may be made by cheque, cash or eftpos. Please note: payments made by cheque are subject to a 5-day clearance before goods can be collected.

GOODS AND SERVICES TAX GOODS AND SERVICES TAX Buyers are required to pay a 10% G.S.T which is the sum of: a. Included in the final bid prices where buying from a GST registered vendor; and BIDDING b. Included in any additional fees charged by Cooee Art; and c. Included in the Buyers Premium Where GST applies to some lots the final bid price will be inclusive of GST.

COLLECTIONS, TRANSPORTATION & SHIPPING COLLECTION,TRANSPORTATION & SHIPPING All collection notifications, shipping options and requests for carrier recommendations are to be emailed to our Post Sale Services email address auctions@cooeeart.com. au Cooee Art will endeavour to supply you with the best and most cost affective option for shipping your artwork to you but you are not obliged to use this service and may organise your own transport options but please inform us as soon as possible of your preferred method. Proof of identification is required upon collection and lots not collected within seven days of the sale may incur costs associated with external storage and freight. Should you request that Cooee Art wrap and/ or pack your goods and arrange postage of your items for you, a fee will apply and whilst all care is taken, we accept no responsibility for any damage.

TERMS & CONDITIONS BUYERSBUYERS TERMS & CONDITIONS For the full terms and conditions, please visit www.cooeeart.com.au/buying-from-a-cooee-art-auctions COPYRIGHT

The copyright of the artworks listed in this catalogue may be owned by the artist or third party and used under licence by Cooee Art. The buyer must not reproduce or otherwise use the images or text without prior written consent. Cooee Art has paid the cost of copyright via the Copyright Agency, 2021

BUYER’S PREMIUM

RESALE ROYALTY RESALE ROYALTY

Some lots consigned for this auction may be subject to the Resale Royalty for Visual Artists Act 2009. Any payments due under the obligations of the Act will be paid by the vendor.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

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ATTENDEE PRE-REGISTRATION FORM SALE NO.: 08 AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

(Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss) Name (please print)

Business name

8 JUNE 2021, 7:00PM AEST LOTS 1 - 100 17 THURLOW STREET REDFERN NSW 2016

Address City

State

Telephone/Mobile

Postcode

please eamil or post this completed form to: COOEE ART 17 THURLOW STREET REDFERN NSW 2016 tel: +61 (02) 9300 9533 auctions@cooeeart.com.au

CATALOGUE SUBSCRIPTION FORM Indigenous Fine Art Auction Catalogue (single issue) $35* Modern + Contemporary Fine Art Auction Catalogue (single issue) $35*

Tax invoice required

*price includes G.S.T. postage and handling. Additional $10 per catalogue for international orders

(Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss) Name (please print)

please email or post this completed form to:

Business name

COOEE ART 17 THURLOW STREET REDFERN NSW 2016

Address

tel: +61 (02) 9300 9533 auctions@cooeeart.com.au

City

State

Telephone/Mobile

Subscription payment by:

Visa

Postcode

AMEX

Country

Mastercard

Name on card

Card number

Expiry date

Signature

Date

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CCV

TELEPHONE BID FORM SALE NO.: 08 AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

(Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss) Name (please print)

Billing adress (PO Box insufficient)

Address

City

State

Postcode

Country

8 JUNE 2021, 7:00PM AEST LOTS 1 - 100 17 THURLOW STREET REDFERN NSW 2016

2. 1. Telephone numbers for auction in order of preference

Signature (required)

LOT NO.

Date

ARTIST/TITLE

COVER BID*

please email or post this completed form to: COOEE ART 17 THURLOW STREET REDFERN NSW 2016

2 3

tel: +61 (02) 9300 9533 auctions@cooeeart.com.au

4 5 6 7 8 *Not including buyer’s premium or GST (where applicable). bids are made in Australian dollars. Telephone bids must be received a minimum of twenty-four hours prior to auction. All telephone bids received will be confirmed by phone or email. In the event that confirmation is not received, please resubmit or contact our office. Please refer to the Buyers Terms & Conditions of Auction found at www.cooeeart.com.au/buying-from-acooee-art-auctions for information regarding sales. By completing this form, I authorise COOEE ART to contact me by telephone on the contact number(s) nominated. I understand it is my responsibility to enquire whether any Sale-Room Notices relate to any lot on which I intend to bid. I also understand that should my bid(s) be successful, a buyer’s premium of 25% (inclusive of GST), will be added to the final hammer price. I accept that COOEE ART provides this complimentary service as a courtesy to its clients, that there are inherent risks to telephone bidding, and I will not hold COOEE ART responsible for any error. A member of the Cooee Art team will contact you a few minutes before your indicated desired lots.The Cover Bid Price will be used should a member of staff not be able to reach you. Should your final bid be successful, you will be obliged to pay the final bid price plus buyer’s premium of 25% (incl of GST) of the final bid amount.

INTERNAL USE ONLY RECEIVED BY DATE TIME BIDDER NO.

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

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ABSENTEE BID FORM SALE NO.: 08 AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

(Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss) Name (please print)

Billing adress (PO Box insufficient)

8 JUNE 2021, 7:00PM AEST LOTS 1 - 100 17 THURLOW STREET REDFERN NSW 2016

Address

City

State

Postcode

Country

Telephone/Mobile

Signature (required)

LOT NO.

Date

ARTIST/TITLE

MAXIMUM BID*

please email or post this completed form to: COOEE ART 17 THURLOW STREET REDFERN NSW 2016

2 3

tel: +61 (02) 9300 9533 auctions@cooeeart.com.au

4 5 6 7 8 *Not including buyer’s premium or GST (where applicable). bids are made in Australian dollars. Absentee bids must be received by 2pm the pay of the auction. All absentee bids received will be confirmed by phone or email. In the event that confirmation is not received, please resubmit or contact our office. Please refer to the Buyers Terms & Conditions of Auction found at www.cooeeart.com.au/buying-from-acooee-art-auctions for information regarding sales. By completing this form, absentee bidders request and authorise COOEE ART to place the following bids acting as agent on their behalf up to and including the maximum bid specified. Lots will be bought at the lowest possible bid authorised by the bidder in absentia. I understand it is my responsibility to enquire whether any Sale-Room Notices relate to any lot on which I intend to bid. I also understand that should my bid(s) be successful, a buyer’s premium of 25% (inclusive of GST), will be added to the final hammer price. COOEE ART provides this complimentary service as a courtesy to clients and does not accept liability for errors and omissions in the execution of absentee bids. Should your bid be successful, you will be obliged to pay the final bid price plus buyer’s premium of 25% (incl of GST) of the final bid price. 110 |

COOEE ART

INTERNAL USE ONLY RECEIVED BY DATE TIME BIDDER NO.

COOEE ART ANNOUNCING MODERN + CONTEMPORARY FINE ART AUCTION THURSDAY JUNE 24 2021 7PM AEST REDFERN | 17 Thurlow Street | Redfern NSW 2016

Specialist Litsa Wilkinson | litsa@cooeear t.com.au | +61 (0)413 004 904 www.cooeear t.com.au | +61 2 9300 9533 AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

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Discover more about the services that our consultants can provide at acaa.org.au 112 |

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AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS FINE ART AUCTION

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