SYDNEY.- In November 2017, Cooee Art, Australia’s oldest established Aboriginal specialist dealership, launched its new auction wing, The Cooee Art MarketPlace, with an auction that achieved a success rate of 78% for a sales total of $2,709,506. This result more than vindicated the decade Cooee has spent building the online resources to underpin auctions specialising in the Indigenous art of Australia and Oceania – resources that are available on its website free of charge to both potential buyers and sellers. The sale highlight, Emily Kngwarreye’s international art sensation Earth’s Creation I (275x632cm) sold for $2,1 million. New secondary market records were set for 19 individual artists, including many up-and-coming artists from the APY Lands.

Now Cooee Art MarketPlace has consigned a fine selection of artefacts, sculptures, paintings, and prints for the first sale of 2018, which will be held on May 29th 2018. The sale will comprise approximately 100 pieces worth $1 million.

While each piece in this curated collection is historically and aesthetically significant, a number of highly desirable pieces are included. Amongst them are an early board by Western Desert Art Movement Founder Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa (b.1926 d.1989), a large Tiwi Tutini and Tunga ceremonial pole by Timothy Cook, and major paintings by the Pitjantjatjarra elders Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri and Tommy Yannima Watson, Yulparaja artist Daniel Walbidi and three of the four most significant artists of the entire movement, Emily Kngwarreye, Rover Thomas and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri.

Kaapa’s early board Goanna Dreaming was created in 1973, just as Western Desert art began to flower. It is a piece rich with history. Its symmetrical motifs and radiating, sinuous lines represent water courses indicating the journey of goanna ancestors and the ceremonial enactment performed for this Dreaming ancestor.

Timothy Cook’s Tutini and Tunga ceremonial hardwood pole represents the last physical reminder and the wandering spirit of the deceased before being reclaimed by the country of their birth. No other living artist has Cook’s ability to transform and animate these massive poles and folded stringybark baskets so that they seemingly come to life anthropomorphically guiding the spirits of the deceased to their spiritual home.

Major contemporary paintings by living artists Daniel Walbidi and Christine Yukenbarri join those of revered elders Bill Whiskey and Emily Kngwarreye. Historically significant ethnographic pieces add context and content to what is a significant selection of fine collectable pieces.