All bark, no light: AMP’s auction haul kept in the dark

When Sotheby’s held its first ­Aboriginal art auction in London last month, AMP Limited hoovered up 24 works, a third of the catalogue.

Namarali — The First One by Jack Karedada.

When Sotheby’s held its first ­Aboriginal art auction in London last month, AMP Limited hoovered up 24 works, a third of the auction catalogue. The haul included the star lot, a eucalyptus bark by the late West Australian desert painter Jack Karedada.

The metre-high Wanjiina figure was painted at the critical juncture of 1972, when Aboriginal rock art was first commercialised, but it was listed for sale with modest ­expectations of selling for more than £10,000.

As might be expected for a work bearing the title Namarali — The First One, which can be ­securely dated and which later ­became part of the esteemed Dutch art collection of department-store heir Thomas Vroom, strong demand sent the hammer price soaring to £80,000 ($167,000).

AMP will pay £100,000 including the auction-house premium, a price double the previous record paid at auction for a bark of this kind.

In pursuing the picture, its new owner displayed a keen knowledge of Aboriginal art. Kudos to AMP, but the problem is, despite The Australian having chanced upon a sales report from Sotheby’s revealing it as triumphant in the bidding war, nobody at AMP can say where the artworks have gone.

That is despite AMP’s enthusiastic buying at the afternoon auction on June 10 accounting for the difference between the sale being a hit, with 84 per cent of lots sold, and a mere mediocre event.

The report reveals the listed Australian financial services giant spent £374,200 — or about $780,000 — hoovering up 23 bark paintings and one polymer paint on Belgian linen by Ningura Napurrula, from the catalogue of 75 artworks.

AMP has new London offices in possible need of decoration but its communications department scotched speculation the works had been acquired to hang there.

After being open to the idea a division of the company had bought them, a spokesman said: “We’ve checked into it and as far as we can see it’s not us. It’s a bit of a mystery. Isn’t there another company with those letters?”

Did a division of AMP act as a third-party guarantor for the works and in doing so enhance the results for Sotheby’s first ­Aboriginal art auction, which raised £1.35 million?

The British art auction system uses vendor guarantees more readily than in Australia, where only Menzies Auction House has admitted to the practice.

However, a veteran of the English auction business told The Australian guarantees would not be listed as acquisitions in the manner the AMP Limited purchases have been.

Until the auction market again shakes the works back into public view, the mystery as to where they went remains.

There is no mystery as to the purchaser of auction lot one, however. A rare, 200-year-old broad shield from southeast Australia, also from the Vroom Collection, was bought by the National Museum of Australia for £47,500.