SUNFLY TJAMPITJIN

It is a lucky person who has a Sunfly painting especially if it is one of his finer images. No doubt the owners of such works already realise that they have a gem and are unwilling to sell. Sunfly was already around 70 years old when the art centre opened in Balgo and only lived for another 10 years. In those early days of the art centre the volume of art produced was far less/ annum than now. It is estimated that Sunfly produced little more 50 paintings and only 10 have reached the secondary market as yet.

Sotheby’s featured the work that fetched the top price on their catalogue. It was an 118 x 84.5 cm. work, painted in 1991, titled ‘Yapinti-Pinki Dreaming’ and was lot #71 in the July, Melbourne catalogue of 2004, and sold for $2000,250 which was more than double their estimate. The painting with the 2nd highest price was another wonderful image titled ‘Artist’s Own country’. It was painted in 1989 was the same size as the former work and was sold by Lawson-Menzies for $87,000 which was $7,000 above the top estimate (May 2005, lot#46).

It is not often that one can buy a painting on the secondary market and sell it 4 years later for a profit of close to $30,000. That is what some canny collector managed to do by buying ‘Two Women at Yataru’ from Sotheby’s in June 2000 (lot # 298) for a mere $9,200, even though it was a similar sized work to those above. This same work fetched $43,050 at the Lawson-Menzies sale of May 2004 (lot #32).

There have been 3 Sunfly works which remained unsold at auction. Surprisingly Sotheby’s did not manage to get away “untitled 1992 (lot # 103) at their lower estimate of $20,000 in their July 2006 sale.

The other 2 works which did not sell when first presented both sold later. While “Litjin’ was passed in at Sotheby’s in July 2001, it fetched $26,400 at Lawson-Menzies in Nov 2004 (lot # 190). The other work which did not sell when first up for auction sold six months later for only $3,600 ( Lawson-Menzies July 2005 Lot # 168). This was 60 x 120 cm. and an atypical Sunfly work. The next lowest price received at auction was $7,475 for a small work on a canvas board painted in 1985, one year before the art centre opened, and the earliest work on the secondary market. (Sotheby’s June 2000 lot # 299). This was one of the 6 small boards that was in the very first Balgo exhibition organized by the Catholic Mission and held at the Art Gallery of WA. As time goes by, one might expect that theses early works from Balgo , that were painted by old men of high degree, should carry a similar mystique to those from the early Papunya days.

© Adrian Newstead