DOROTHY ROBINSON NAPANGARDI

Despite having produced paintings from the late 1980s, Dorothy Napangardi’s popularity and the high prices achieved for her works are a relatively recent phenomenon and relate almost entirely to her post-1997 works. In fact, all of her ten highest sales have been for works produced after 2000. All are restricted to the limited pallet and grid-like patterns of vertical and horizontal dotted lines, which mimic the salt encrustations at Mina Mina. Despite the beauty of her highly accomplished and colourful Bush Plum and Bush Banana works, as demonstrated in the Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition and accompanying catalogue Dancing Up Country, the very best of these have never been offered at auction and minor works in this style have attracted very little interest when compared to the more abstracted paintings created after 1997. Before 2012, the highest results for these had been the meagre $3,055 each, realised when two small colourful floral works were offered for sale at Bonham Goodman in 2004 and Shapiro in 2002. Gaia Auction in Paris sold a colourful Bush Banana Dreaming canvas measuring a large 130 x 200 cm in 2011, for AUS$14,550. Though insufficient to indicate a clear market preference for her more muted style, it is notable nonetheless, and perhaps significant that it was sold overseas. Her solo exhibition held from December 2002 to March 2003 at the Museum of Contemporary Art threw those interested in Aboriginal art into a spin. In a controversial and extremely unusual move, Gallery Gondwana held a commercial exhibition of her work at the Danks Street Depot Gallery concurrent to the MCA show. Dorothy’s major large black canvases featuring tight grids of carefully dotted white lines sold for around $60,000-80,000 each, double the prices similar works had attracted just six months earlier in her Gallery Gondwana Alice Springs exhibition.

Similarly, 120 x 120 cm paintings previously exhibited for $10,000-12,000 and 150 x 90 cm works at $8,000 had jumped in price to $25,000 and $18,000 respectively. Dorothy was definitely the artist of the moment, and the show was a sell-out. This intense primary market interest subsequently declined. By 2012 a 150 x 90 cm work of impeccable provenance had decreased in value to around $15,000. Still a healthy increase in value over its value pre-2002. In 2015, a very fine black and white gridwork measuring 122 x 198 cm and purchased by Dutch uber-collector Thomas Vroom in 2001 sold for just $24,400 at Bonham’s, a far from desirable outcome regardless of the depth of Vroom’s pocket.

Dorothy’s MCA show and the success that followed heralded a dearth of quality paintings in relation to the demand generated by serious collectors, setting the preconditions for a sudden rash of works on the secondary market from 2002 onward. While only one painting was offered for sale at auction in 2002, seven appeared in 2003, 27 in 2004 and 26 in 2005. 2015 was her Dorothy’s best year since 2009 when her sales total was $200,930.

Dorothy Napangardi’s most successful paintings at auction have featured a network of closely knit interconnected dotted squares which build to form duotone patterned grids on dark, most often black, backgrounds. By randomly in-filling white dotted squares with yellow or deep red ochre dots, a mottled effect is produced as demonstrated in her top-selling lot, Karntakurlangu. When this work sold at Sotheby’s in July 2004 (Lot 113) it more than doubled its high estimate of $60,000 taking $129,750. In the same auction, a larger subtler piece failed to reach its low estimate of $50,000 and was passed in. The work later sold at Lawson-Menzies in November 2006 sale for $55,200. Dorothy’s second-highest result at auction was for Karntakurlangu Jukurrpa 2003 a much larger 183 x 350 cm work on linen. Carrying a presale estimate of $80,000-100,000 it sold for $120,000 at Lawson-Menzies in November 2007 (Lot 62).

Sales in 2008 were poor, in line with the market slump and the end of Lawson~Menzies specialist sales. This resulted in her career clearance rate dropping below her somewhat respectable 65%. 2009 brought a mixed bag of results, with 13 of the 32 works on offer selling, including a number of impressive sales upwards of $20,000 that sit just outside of the artist’s top ten records. Generally, the majority of the failures carried poor provenance or were smaller paintings. These results should not diminish the results for her finest pieces. Without these failures, her sale rate would have been closer to a spectacular 81%, despite the vast majority of these works having spent such a short time between their original purchase and subsequent appearance at auction.

Dorothy Napangardi was an artist of top calibre and her highest auction results gave her one of the best records for any living artist at the time. Since 2009 she has constantly hovered between 20th and 25th on of the top 100 artists. However, this acclaim is unlikely to last indefinitely. She tragically died a relatively young woman. At just 50 years of age should have had many productive years ahead of her. The heat her career generated from the late 1990s to 2009 will be difficult to maintain now that her repertoire is finite. At the time of her death, her art practice was being severely compromised by the quantity of ‘copycat paintings’ that were being produced by members of her family and others that were sold under her name. The closure of Gallery Gondwana, her principle agent, did not help. Still, 2019 saw Napangardi included in a Sotheby’s New York sale of important indigenous artists, where her two somewhat impressive works sold for AUD50,000

Buyers lucky enough to purchase works prior to her MCA show in 2002 will always be able to make a very good profit on their paintings at sale. However, those paying higher prices in her exhibitions during the following decade will need to rely on a buoyant market and excellent provenance if they are to reap financial rewards.

© Adrian Newstead