The gallery is thought to have purchased one of the principal runaway lots in collection of tribal art sold by Theodore Bruce in Sydney in the old John Williams rooms in Alexandria on 1 August 2015.
Bruce's moved into the rooms just before the late auctioneer's death earlier this year to expand its business and add Williams' big clientele to its own.
Hailed as the Todd Barlin Collection and with a second tranche due for November sale, the offering was by all accounts a mere cull,
It is far bigger and substantial than this “Part One” 312 lot offering on August 1 suggested.
The auction grossed $358,000 excluding 20 per cent buyers premium and while this compared with lower estimates of $160,000 to $220,000 the blow out was not a big surprise. The lots were priced to sell and their description “conservative” was an understatement.
That certainly applied to one of the most seductively beautiful lots in the sale a fine shell money belt from the Solomon Islands estimated at $600 to $800, for $4000 plus premium, possibly purchased by the AGNSW. The Tost and Rohu label attached gave the object a welcome provenance in an age institutions, including the AGNSW, have been concerned in their purchasing strategy by the well publicised problems it and the National Gallery of Australia have had with acquisitions of Indian antiquities through international dealers.
Jane Catherine Tost and Ada Jane Tost ran what was basically a taxidermy firm with an international clientele called Tost & Coates in the late 19th century. They supplied a growing middle-class taste for fancy work and stuffed animals in the home at an enterprise at 60 William Street, Sydney, not far from the Australia Museum. They had a sizable business in tribal art from New Guinea with which Australia had considerable exploration and administrative links.
Tost and Rahu was perceived as “the queerest shop in Australia” (before the term was expanded to its modern terminology) which was highly patronised by museum visitors.
Barlin started collecting tribal art on a visit to the New Guinea Highlands and the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea 25 years ago which he says was “transformative”.
It was the first of 40 trips to Papua New Guinea, Indonesian West Papua, Vanuatu and The Solomon Islands. Barlin hooked into a tradition of trading in tribal art which flourished largely through the participation or help of district officers recruited in Australia to administer the territory.
Other tribal art dealers making similar endeavours left Australia. Among them was Robert Ypes with a gallery in Paddington called The Art of Man Gallery. This, he jokes, he would have top rename today for it to be politically correct. He left to live in Amsterdam while Wayne Heathcote, who occupied another distinct gallery space in Paddington for a brief period left for Miami making a dashing presence with the sale of well presented tribal art to identities on America's social A list.
Most of the finest objects that turn up in Australia are consigned to auctions held by Sotheby's and Christie's in New York and Paris and just one of them would gross as much as Bruce's sale total.
New York medical imager John Friede was the biggest spender in recent times but the market, which was already racing ahead on art museum interest linking the African branch of the art with Picasso and company, sagged when he overspent and proceeds anticipated from his parents' estate were not forthcoming.
His collection was sold in fits and starts by the global auction houses. Sotheby's in particular sought redress for his indebtedness. Objects provisionally donated by him to the John De Young Museum in San Francisco had to be withdrawn and sold despite the building of a special gallery to accommodate them.
Early this month the last of Friede's collection was sold to Takealook, a Montreal tribal art dealership, dispersing the clouds that had been hovering over the market. These remnants will now assuredly be given an orderly and progressive dispersal.
Although not a vast offering Barlin Part I took nearly six hours to sell with auctioneer James Badgery in a red bow tie and suit having to contend with a large number of Internet bids for which the collection was admirably targeted given the overseas interest. It finished at midnight on a bitterly cold evening. Accommodating the wide spread of internet bids was one of the major causes for the delay.
About 80 per cent of the lots went overseas, with the low Australian dollar being particularly helpful.
Lot 3, consisting of fine 18th and early 19the century Barava and Bokota pieces from the Western Solomon islands on custom made display stands gave a hint of what was to come when they made $4200 against estimates of $600.
The top price of $9500 was paid by a Paris buyer for a fine Queensland rainforest shield, early 20th century which had been in the Robert White collection.
Two old Wunda shields with an exceptional recent provenance, the Lord McAlpine collection, had limited support but they were not of high quality. The shields were among the few lots which did not fire, making $1600 and $1700 (against estimates $800 to $1200 and $1500 to $2500).
Fourteen early shell pendants from the Malaita and Makira Islands in the Solomons on custom made display stands with fish, abstract and bird incised designs made $5000 against estimates of $600 to $800.
There were none of the sleepers, however, of the extraordinary scale of the sales held by Lawson's in the 1990s when Edward Wilkinson was employed to put together two sales a year which helped perpetuate an interest in tribal art among a small body of very dedicated collectors also served well by the Oceanic Art Society which is still functioning.
The interest shown by the NGA in the current Papua New Guinea exhibition it is holding is being looked to as sustenance for collectors. It brings together extraordinary and rarely seen examples of traditional art created for cultural practices in the Sepik River region, one of the largest river systems in the world.
The exhibition Myth + Magic: Art of the Sepik River has had three outstanding loans from the Papua and New Guinea Museum and Art Gallery in Port Moresby. They include a 6.3 metre carving of a crocodile, one of only two of any antiquity from the Sepik which have not been sliced in half for transportation purposes.
Similarly the AGNSW held an the exhibition Plumes and Pearl shells Art of the New Guinea Highlands from May to August last year.
Some PNG art buffs are even heading over to see The Art of Papua New Guinea at the Museum Rietberg in Zurich. It goes on to the Musée du Quai Branly and Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin.
The Australia Museum now has its first display of Sepik art hanging in years thanks to its new directorship.
None of the material is understood to have presented the export problems that beset many of the designated major Aboriginal art sales in recent times. These may receive a boost from the move by Bonhams to Queen Street from a back block in Paddington, thereby helping to seal the street, once the heart of Australia's antique trade, as the heart of Australia's art and decarts auction trade.
The old post office opposite where auctioneer Tim Goodman' office, and the then antique dealer the late John Williams shop in Moncur Street used to hang their shingles is touted as Bonhams Australia's new home.
The other two eclectic auction dispersals of Australian interest are been Fogg Hall (meant to be spoken distinctly) in the Blue Mountains and Dorsington in Warwickshire.
Two UK regional auctioneers – Halls of Shrewsbury and Bigwoods of Stratford-upon-Avon – are joining forces to conduct an ‘on-the-premises’ sale of art and antiques owned by the colourful publisher Felix Dennis (1947-2014).
Through specialist publications and the application of digital technology , the British born son of a father who disappeared in Australia became very wealthy.
Dennis was the publisher of the British incarnation of the “psychedelic hippy" magazine, Oz which appeared from 1967 to 1973. Strongly identified as part of the underground press, it was the subject of two celebrated obscenity trials, one in Australia in 1964 and the other in the United Kingdom in 1971.
Dennis was one of the three Oz editors who went to jail for three weeks for publishing. The others were Richard Neville and Jim Anderson in the 1960s famed Obscenity Trials
The former has been ailing a little, while Anderson has continued his creative career with the publication of a new novel, Chipman's African Adventure, (Valentine Press) an Evelyn Waugh-inspired book set at the Hornbill Palace Hotel at a leisure beach hotel in West Africa, among a group of hippies in the 1970s.
A 20,000 sq ft marquee will be erected in Dorsington, Warwickshire, to disperse the eclectic contents of a dozen properties. The three-day sale on September 29-30 and October 1 will number close to 2500 lots with an estimated value of £1.5m-2m, the Antiques Trade Gazette has reported.
Dennis, whose company later pioneered computer and hobbyist magazine publishing in the UK, owned homes in New York, London and Mustique as well as his estate in Dorsington.
With collecting interests ranging from period oak and walnut via tribal art, marine antiques and Modern British sculpture, Dennis bought occasionally at auction but - as surviving invoices attest - primarily from dealers in the Cotswolds in the 1970s, '80s and '90s. Most lots in the sale will have expectations in the mid hundreds with an 1845 Garrard silver racing trophy carrying the top estimate of £60,000.
There remains the decision, yet to be confirmed, about the future of a dozen or so bronze sculptures in the grounds of the property, an old manor house. These are figurative works by a variety of artists of historical and present day identities who inspired him. Dennis was dedicated to the forests he acquired in Warwickshire and it is hoped to provide security to maintain these extraordinary sculpture of people ranging from Gandhi to the Beatles.
The third “sale”- in effect a slow dispersal by multiple listings on eBay, was conducted from Fogg Hall in Hazelbrook in the Blue Mountains, a large house occupied and serving as a private museum, by Roger Foley-Fogg, also known as Ellis D Fogg, a pioneer light/psychedelic artist who emerged in the 1970s.
The rambling house, housing his Museum of 1960s Dreams and Aspirations has been sold and in preparation Fogg sold his extensive collection of costumes, photographs, posters and other archival material, including a lot of work by Martin Sharp.
Lighting technology has moved on but his trademark Ice-Fog machine remains a breakthrough in lighting effects.
The dispersals, alongside the death of Sharp and Dennis, bring a near complete end to an glorious era of hippiedom and sexual liberation.
