As a result Rona spent ten years on the Australian Advisory Board of Christies International, and eight years on the Advisory Board of the Queensland College of Art.
The catalogue claim that this is a ‘comprehensive collection' is somewhat misleading. If their interest in Australian contemporary and International art was deep, there is little to show for it in this particular sale. Seventy-seven percent of the 188-lot offering comprise Aboriginal art works, and they carry a total low estimate of $1,385,200.
While there are indeed many excellent works, its breadth as a ‘collection’ is not nearly as wide, or as adventurous, as Mossgreen’s previous offerings of the Ian & Sue Bernardt Collection in 2010 or the Elizabeth Jones Collection in 2007.
The collection does however offer the viewer a chance to 'see into the home’ of Ross and Rona Clarke and get a feeling for the joy they found as they indulged in their passion. A flick through the catalogue imparts the feeling that these works were purchased by enthusiastic collectors who simply fell in love with them.
There is not much historical depth here either. Seventy four percent of the Aboriginal works were created after 2000 and of these sixty percent were purchased since 2005.
The Clarkes favored a very small number of galleries, communities and artists.
Amongst the 144 Aboriginal artworks in this sale, no less than 55% were purchased from just 4 galleries: Beverley Knight’s Alcaston Gallery in Melbourne; John Ioannou’s Agathon Gallery; Karen Brown’s eponymous gallery in Darwin; and Kevin and Jenny Kelly’s Red Rock Arts in Kununurra.
They also favoured several particular artists. There are no less than 12 works by Peppiminardi artist Regina Wilson, 7 by Cory Surprise, 12 by Lloyd Kwilla and 4 by his father Billy Thomas. In fact there are 11 artists that are represented by more than 4 works each.
Butcher Cherel, Tommy Watson, Emily Kngwarreye and Angelina George also appear to have been favourites. It is an interesting concept to collect artists in such depth. This sale gives the impression of duplication but in most cases the individual works by each artist are quite varied.
There are few Bidyadanga or western Pitjantjatjarra paintings to speak of, other than Tommy Watson, even though these were the hottest communities during the Clarkes most fevered collecting period.
Perhaps they have decided to retain them?
While they appear to have been committed to both Beverley Knight's Alcaston Gallery, and John Ioannou's Agathon Gallery, they must have agreed to disagree with the former over John Ioannou's role in promoting artists from Wingelina.
In fact, to their credit, they appeared not to discriminate between the artist representational model and works created for ‘official’ art centres.
To my mind the auction highlights are Tommy Watson’s Kapi Pulka 2006 (Lot 13 ) and Untju Alkata 2006 (Lot 67 ), Regina Wilson’s Message Sticks 2005 (Lot 17 ) and a work by the same name created in the same year (Lot 110 ), Angelina George’s My Imagined Country 2005 (Lot 37 ) and Limmen Country 2006, Billy Thomas’s Travels of the Black Snake 1998 (Lot 51 ), Emily Kngwarreye’s beautiful early masterpieces Transition 1991 (Lot 52 ) purchased from Robin Purvis, and Summer Rains on Alalgura 1991 (Lot 71 ).
Amongst the works of lesser value I particularly favour Lot 169, Wilkinpa, Lake MacKay 1990, a particularly fine historically important work by Tjumpo Tjapanangka in his early style.
There are three excellent paintings by Abie Loy Kemarre, the most promising of the younger Utopia artists (Lots 114, 115 and 135). Small paintings by Mick Jawalji (Lot 41 ) and Tommy Mitchell (Lot 1 ), Jimmy Pike (Lot 42 ), and Nancy Noonju (Lot 113 ) are all good value at their advertised presale estimates.
Placing very low estimates on works is a well-oiled and highly successful Mossgreen policy as was seen earlier this week with its near sellout of the Holmes a Court and Lisa Ho auctions (which had a combined 126% sale rate by value) and this policy has been continued in this sale.
For this reason, and the overall quality of the pieces on offer, the Clarke’s works would appear to represent great buying.
But with so many works by so few artists Mossgreen will be relying on the goodwill generated by the sale to get all of these works away. Unlike the recent Bill Nuttall superannuation collection sale which Bonham’s offered in Sydney, Mossgreen will stage this sale in the Clarke’s home town of Brisbane.
