APPROPRIATION, HOW APPROPRIATE IS IT?

• Nat Thomas

PRESS RELEASE

Appropriation, how appropriate is it?
See you tomorrow.

Late last year, a couple of Toorak seniors went down for forging Rover Thomas paintings, and selling them through auction houses. They made more than $300,000 before getting busted.

There is a lot I like about this case. I like the balls it took to go through with the idea. I like the surreal nature of fronting up to auction houses, and in a great performative work, convincing a lot of ‘experts’ that these were ‘real’ Rovers’. One painting alone went for $130,000. I wonder how Ivan and Pamela celebrated this sale? With champagne, and a nice dinner out? Such a cheeky secret. Such a turn on.  

Its conceptual friggin’ art. And I’d say (not that I know much about the law) that with a different defence strategy (i.e. art prank), they could have gotten off with a very public rap on the knuckles. I wonder how they are both doing in jail, Pamela and Ivan. I wonder if she is still painting, or performing?
 
I painted some of my forgeries of forgeries during the recent heatwave. 41 degrees, full afternoon sun. And as I dotted away, I thought about Rover - his life, his art. I wondered if Pamela ever daydreamed about any of this as she forged away. After successfully shifting the works, did she start to spend the money in her head while she painted?

Whilst I forged my forgeries, I thought of how many people haven’t been sprung passing their own work off as someone else’s. Because it’s all work. Genuine work. And the bigger the name, the higher the return. There is a big market for Rover Thomas’ paintings, but it’s best if all markets self regulate, no?
 
And what about Rover? A friend of his, Don Mcleod, remembers accompanying Thomas on a trip to Melbourne in the early 90’s, where ‘he identified works attributed to him in galleries that he didn’t think he had painted.’ As for forgeries of his work, he also said ‘Thomas might have approved, because all he was trying to do was tell his stories.’ No?

I reckon now the Liberto’s have their own stories to tell. I’m gunna visit her in jail, maybe take her some paints.
How will she render this new landscape?
 
All the other stuff in my show is copied too, but I signed my own name.
 
nat
march 2008 melbourne

In September 2008 Nat Thomas and Concettina Inserra were awarded the $15,000 William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize for 2008 for the work Portrait of mother and daughter, after Mirka 2008, which featured in this exhibition.