Herald Sun
January 15 2010
Bloody survivors of the black arts
Peter Coster
Winning Bid
 
 
Watson: Pirurpa Kalarintja 205 x 285cm 

TOMMY Watson held what he said would be his last exhibition in Sydney last year, two years after one of his paintings
sold for $240,000, includingbuyer’s premium, at a Lawson-Menzies auction.That remains the highest price paid for a
painting by a living indigenous artist. But another of his paintings, Pirurpa Kalarintja, priced at $350,000 at the Agathon
gallery in Sydney, may overtake it.

Watson does not know his exact age. He is probably in his 70s, but carries the scars of five spear wounds in his legs
from tribal disputes and is confined to a wheelchair. His brilliantly coloured canvases have been shown in Paris and
compared with the paintings of Henri Matisse and the Russian abstract colourist Wassily Kandinsky. Watson now wants
to help emerging Aboriginal artists and has goneinto partnership with John Ioannou, a Greek-born dealer and collector of
Aboriginal art, who has learnt the Pitjantjatjara language and been initiated as a tribal man. Ioannou and Watson are
about to open the Alice Springs Aboriginal ArtCentre on an old camel farm near the Alice Springs Airport. The centre will
be run by an independent board that will represent indigenous artists and return at least 50 per cent of the sales of
their work to them.

Ioannou says the transactions will be transparent. ‘‘Up until now, artists have been victims to people eager to
buy their work for cash at well below market prices,’’ said Ioannou in a letter sent to collectors last month.In the letter,
he said he had met with ‘‘nothing but opposition by most in the art establishment’’ who ‘relied upon second or third-hand
information about me from those in the European indigenous art establishment who have a vested interest in discrediting me’’.

Ioannou, who started collecting tribal art before opening the Agathon Galleries in Melbourne and Sydney, discovered what
he calls ‘‘the darkside’’ of Aboriginal art.The Alice Springs Art Centre is his ‘‘determined response to set the record straight
and demonstrate in a very positive way the truth of mylong-term commitment to the empowerment of indigenous artists’’.

The Alice Springs Art Centre willhave accommodation for artists and their families and two trained nurses operating a dialysis
machine for those suffering from kidney problems that have reached epidemic proportions because of poor diet and living
conditions. For too long, says Ioannou, Aboriginal artists have been paid a pittance and forced to live in squalor.

Instead of being hailed as ‘‘a saviour’’ for what he is trying to do for Aboriginal artists, says Ioannou, he has had lies spread about him by
people ‘‘terrified of what I am doing to help Aboriginal artists be properly paid for their art’’. Backstabbing and character
assassination in the outback appears to run as deep as the spear wounds in Tommy Watson’s legs. But Ioannou and Watson
have proved themselves survivors of the black arts.

Art Market Report
Issue 34, 2009
By Jeremy Eccles

Jeremy Eccles article 'Culture Wars' in Art Market Report Issue 34, 2009 argues that the decision by an artist or community
art centre (like Tommy Watson or Irrunytju Community Art Centre which is represented by Agathon Galleries) to choose a dealer
relationship over a government funded model or agency should be respected and not the basis of negative or avoidance behaviour
from the art organisations ( he points the finger at Sotheby's auction house and state galleries). He goes on to examine and
question the fairness of the selection over past years of finalists for the Telstra and Torres Strait Art Awards, illustrating the article
with the superb works this year entered by Tommy Watson and Helen McCarthy of Agathon Galleries which were not even short listed.

He also states: 'But, down in the desert......There is the Ngaanyatjarra Council - the $87m-a-year organisation concerned with supplies
of food and fuel to its remote communities, health, road maintenance and the licensing of its 12 member communities' art centres- wants
to undertand why one of its art centres is being discriminated against by others, and whether this could lead to "Mr Watson being
blacklisted at the Telstra Award". For as Wilton Foster OAM, Chair of the Council explained to me, "This is not the Anangu way of doing
things." His conclusion is that it has to be the white art coordinators who are 'undermining our people", and he's bemused as to why he
can't get them (and Desart) to understand that the Council sees Irrunytju as a fully conforming, Aboriginal owned community art centre
which should be treated by everyone (including government funding bodies) as an equal, apart from not wanting to be part of Desart.'
He identifies Edwina Circuit art co-ordinator at Warakurna and Desert as protagonists in leading the Telstra boycott of Agathon Galleries
and its Irrunytju artists in 2008, noting they were called in by the Ngaanyatjarra Council to sort things out.

Eccles also identifies the personal blog site written by Edwina Circuitt, as being one of the sources of much of the negative comments
about artists from Irrunytju that Agathon represents. He notes she was asked to remove the blog and apologize to the artists by the
indigenous Council that overseas her operations....'she has now apologised "publicly to any Yarnangu, including artists from Warakurna
and Irrunytju who were hurt or upset by those comments or who suffered direct or indirect damage as a result of those comments."..."
the level of upset included women from Irryunytju armed with spears being turned back from Warakurna"....Eccles notes that
"Wilton Foster came away from the meeting feeling that 'deep inside, Desart don't want to work with us'. And the meeting quite failed
to obtain the hoped-for unequivocal statement about the governance of Irrunytju art Centre despite Foster's assertion, "It's simple -
we own that."'

Eccles notes: ' "It's odd that the Ngaanyatjarra view isn't mirrored at Desart." And its a worry that Desart's view seems so unquestioningly
accepted by State galleries, distant auction houses and by that benchmarking standard-setter, The NATSIAAs.'

Sydney Morning Herald  
7 November 2009
Extract of the article "Spirit of the land captured in bark " 
Gunybi Ganambarr - incised + shaped barks, ceremonial poles & sculpture 
by John McDonald 

At the age of thirty-six, Gunybi is not only the brightest new talent in the ranks of indigenous artists, he provides a reason
for feeling optimistic about the future of Aboriginal culture. His emergence is thrown into relief by the deliberate withdrawal
of one of the leading painters of the western desert, Yannima Tommy Watson, who has declared that his show last month
at Agathon Galleries in Sydney, would be Kutju wara - “the last one”.

Watson’s career has followed a more established pattern for indigenous masters. He picked up the brush in his seventies and
was recognized as special talent from the very beginning. In a brief time he became the most desirable of painters, with works
going for huge sums at auction. The only hiccup in this tale of success is that John Ioannou, the dealer who put Watson on
the map, has become the particular hate-object for the many of his peers in the Aboriginal art business. He has been
accused of endless crimes, but as far as I can see his sole offence has been to pay his artists the kind of percentages that
non-indigenous artists routinely expect from their dealers.

Under the long-established art centre system individual artists may expect to receive smaller sums, as the money is channeled
back into the community. Yet no-one in the Irrunytju community, which Ioannou has backed, seems to be clamouring for the
restoration of the previous system. The moral of the story is that there is no true and holy method that works perfectly every time.
The industry, like the art itself, must be free to evolve and change, even if this is not to everyone’s taste. Armed only with gossip,
Ioannou’s detractors would do well to adopt that old but sound maxim: live and let live.

Tommy Watson is now in his eighties and feeling his age, but his “last one” doesn’t mean that he will never paint another picture,
merely that he no longer wants to leave his home territory to appear at exhibitions. His paintings will be smaller, and perhaps a bit
more roughly executed, but his reputation rests on his extraordinary abilities as a colourist, a