The Telstra Effect

Posted by Aboriginal Art Directory | 21.12.07

Author: Jeremy Eccles

Analysed by Jeremy Eccles for Australian Art Market Report issue of Summer 2007

What influence have the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (the NATSIAAs, or, more commonly since Telstra started sponsoring the Awards in 1992, the Telstras) had on indigenous artists' careers?

Darwin in August is always a toss-up between the barmy and the balmy! Mad because you can't get hotel beds or planes in and out to catch the absolute torrent of things happening in the city that's the only place to be in indigenous art for a week or two; all that balanced by a gorgeous climate, unbroken blue skies and sunsets to die for over the sea beside the Museum & Art Gallery of the NT (MAGNT) as the NATSIAAs are handed out with due ceremony.

But as the 25'th such ceremony approaches in 2008, it's only appropriate to ask, 'What's it all about?'. What benefits to indigenous art has exposure through the Awards been – is all publicity good publicity, for instance, when grubby details of Kathleen Petyarre's private life were exposed by a newspaper in conjunction with doubts over her selection for the Big Telstra in 1996 ? Have institutions and collectors rushed the barricades as the results were announced – or did the fact that the main Award was acquisitive by MAGNT until 2006 put a lid on such a hunger? Perhaps most importantly, have indigenous artists continued to set the NATSIAAs on a high pedestal as rival awards such as Canberra's Heritage prizes, the Xstratas for Emerging Indigenous artists and this year's pioneering Indigenous Triennial at the National Gallery have come, and in one case gone?

The person who thought the whole thing up was Margie West. Trained as an anthropologist, she arrived at the MAGNT in 1978 under the wild and prescient leadership of Director Colin Jack-Hinton. Unlike Australia's other State galleries, he'd actually appreciated the importance of the Aboriginal art movement emerging from Papunya in 1971 and had bought no less than 260 early boards in job lots from there via Alice Springs dealer Pat Hogan, who was on MAGNT's board. It's a regrettably under-seen and unpublished hoard of treasures. He also used the Museum's poverty in post-Tracey Darwin and the absence of any commercial outlets for practising artists in the 70s as an excuse to sell art through his public gallery, funding further purchases with its commissions.

But by 1983, West felt it was time to recognise this art movement with an annual, national prize. "It's hard to remember today just how small this new art business was then. There were very few community art centres, for instance, even in the NT. And I didn't want to make it solely an event for the North; I wanted to show the NT art coming from the cities of the South as well. You could call it a democratic ethic – and that breadth's been maintained in our uncurated surveys ever since. I think it's been part of the Awards' appeal as organisations like the Australian Heritage Commission and, this year, the Public Service Commission have attempted other indigenous art prizes. Really they only work in an art institution".

One can argue with West about the value of comparing remote and southern art, as it's chalk and cheese. This year, even a huge Shane Pickett suite of black and white abstract panels (priced at $70,000) and accompanied by a lengthy explanation of Nyoongar weather and energy paths in Western Australia looked and felt absolutely nothing like the Desert, Kimberley, Arnhemland or Torres Strait works hung around it.

But perhaps Margie West's key word in 'uncurated'. The prizes have always relied on artists to enter their best works, requiring a discipline to select that work by April in any year, send in a photo, get selected by the outside panel for hanging with c100 others in August, and hoping that one of what is now five NATSIAAs will be handed to you by the usual 'odd couple' of judges – a State Gallery curator/director plus an urban indigenous artist. Until last year – coincidentally as Margie West retired and handed her job and the Award over to Franchesca Cubillo - the Big Telstra was worth $40,000 and was acquisitive. If that had continued, this year's grand winner, Dennis Nona's 3.5 metre bronze crocodile, /Ubirrikubirri/ would never have even been made. It cost $100,000 to cast and sells (in an edition of six) for $193,000. Another six entries were priced above $40,000 – which says an awful lot about the growth in both the ambition of and the market for indigenous art over 24 years.

Cross-checking with Apolline Kohen – both Art Adviser at Maningrida in Arnhemland and Chair of the current MAGNT board – and she assures me that "That Darwin Prize" as her artists tend to refer to it, is still a big draw. "Remote artists definitely still want to enter, want to win and want to visit the prize exhibition to experience that side of the market at first hand", she told me.

Interestingly, though, she hasn't entered Maningrida's star artist, John Mawurndjul (Quai Branly, Museum Tinguely, and, recently London) since he won his second bark Telstra in 1999. And that's not because of the then acquisitive nature of the prize. It's because he could gain little further reputation from winning – though he never took out the big one. Also, Maningrida has other deserving artists who needed to be seen outside Mawurndjul's proud penumbra. Democracy has its place there too.

Could this help to explain why such superstars of indigenous art as Emily Kngwarreye, Rover Thomas and Clifford Possum have never appeared in the NATSIAA prize lists when such unknowns as Daisy Bell Kulyuru ('91) and Djawida Nadjongorle ('85) did get chosen? Were they, perhaps, let down by the line-up of dealers who were happy to exploit these great artists while they were alive but weren't keen to take on the nitty gritty of career development by organising a quality entry?

Margie West says all three submitted works at various times, but not many; and not great works, which went straight to market. "But I don't think the Award is diminished by their absence from the lists. Unpredictability is the nature of awards; part of the fun. The only thing I've thought is that a Lifetime Achievement Award might be a way of filling the gap with such worthy artists".

When I originally broached the topic of the Award's career effect with West, her response was: "I can say offhand that it has made a significant difference for some artists such as Dorothy Napangardi, Kathleen Petyarre (until the scandal broke), and I would say Richard Bell's career took off after his win as well. When the Blackstone Womens' Tjanpi Grass Toyota won, it really assisted the profile of women's fibre art. I'd been trying to promote that work for 15 years, so it was wonderful to have it acknowledged".

Analysing this summation, it's intriguing that all of the women involved were making significant changes to their artworks at the time of the Awards, which must have been recognised by the judges. Napangardi in 2001 was initiating her black and white /Mina Mina/ style; Petyarre (with or without her Welsh boyfriend) was discovering those tiny fields of dots that she's done ever since; and the Tjanpi women were bursting the boundaries of woven spinifex application.

Then I added to West's top-of-her-head list John Mawurndjul in 1999 revealing the first signs of his significant move into abstraction and his fellow Central Arnhemlander, Lena Yarinkura really leaping hurdles in paperbark sculpture in 1994 with her weird and wonderful figures. West concurred: "Mawurndjul was already well-regarded; but after 1999 he was a genius. And Lena revolutionised fibre art in Central Arnhemland so that a whole new school emerged" - rather like the unrewarded Rover Thomas in the East Kimberley.

And has Dennis Nona, the young but delightfully cultural Badu Islander broken free from his existing fame as a lino-cutter /sans pareil/ with his giant croc and recumbent warrior this year? Another appears at the NGA's Indigenous Triennial, bought by the Gallery for that record-setting $193,000.

But we're actually walking into two minefields as we speak about such matters. One is Big Things, so close to being Aussie kitsch – an issue raised by both Susan McCulloch and Nicolas Rothwell in 2005, the Year of the Toyota. Now we have 480kgs of decorated bronze to admire. Is the Big Telstra inevitably going to go to the art/craftwork that requires the greatest amount of logistical effort to bring off? Or should it be restricted to the artist who not only hits all the right emotional buttons but can also be seen to taking his or her art on a trajectory forward? And maybe the Blackstone Women and Nona were bringing both off?

And what about Richard Bell, whom I've been studiously ignoring up till now. There's no doubt that Margie West is absolutely right in listing the Brisbane controversialist as one of the artists clearly given a huge shove by winning the NATSIA Award, and wearing a sexist T-shirt to accept his prize from Chief Minister Claire Martin. The following year he made the Archibald for the first time, previously an unknown in Sydney. This year his ego is all over the Brisbane entries to the Telstra. 2003 Telstra judge, Brian Kennedy has insisted to me since that Bell did deserve his accolade that year. But I've always wondered whether Kennedy read, or understood the Statement accompanying Bell's Big Painting, making the oddest claims about the passing of traditional Aboriginal art as a mere tourist thing and Bell's own inheritance of the Dreaming.

Bell clearly has no problems with accepting star status. Ironically, Margie West, the Award's inventor does have "a certain unease in elevating one artist above another". Right through until the 90s, it was accepted wisdom in art centres and many city galleries that community was what mattered to Aboriginal artists – it was where the stories, the responsibility for land and the moral rights were all sourced. And it must be what Minister Mal Brough has recently damned as "Communism". But times have changed. Most city shows are now of solo artists – though Darwin at Telstra-time still offered a new community Art Fair and group shows from Papunya Tula, Bidyadanga, Yirrkala and Maningrida. But even dyed-in-the-wool community art advisers are, in West's words, "acknowledging that some artists have either more talent or more marketability".

Perhaps the NATSIAAs is the last place to go to discover new talents? Like painters Helen McCarthy Tyalmuty and Daniel Walbidi, or innovative bark man, Glen Namundja this year. Even a newish community like Kayili.

And for the 25'th Award next year, how about recognising an old star and highly discriminating observer of indigenous art by inviting John Mawurndjul to be one of the judges of this enduring event? As catalogue essays accompanying the Josh Lilley show of Kuninjku art in London during September and October makes clear, Mawurndjul has acceeded to 'the role of the artist' in a Western sense like no other remote creative artist before him.~

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