Dame Marie Bashir art collection goes under the hammer | The Standard

The valuable Aboriginal art collection of former NSW governor, the late Dame Marie Bashir, and her husband Nicholas Shehadie is going up for auction.

The couple were pioneering collectors of Aboriginal art, with Dame Marie travelling to communities in some of the most remote parts of Australia over decades and building close relationships with generations of artists.

Sydney gallery Art Leven specialises in Aboriginal art and the collection is on show at its new premises in Woolloomooloo ahead of the auction to be held on Tuesday.

About 80 works from Bashir and Shehadie’s private art collection will be auctioned, along with dozens more paintings by leading First Nations and Australian artists including Albert Namatjira, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Balang John Mawurndjul and Arthur Boyd.

The couple were unique collectors who engaged deeply with artists, according to gallery director Mirri Leven.

“You could tell every painting had a story, every painting had a history,” she said.

“It was the relationships that they formed with each of those artists that created the heart of the collection.”

Dame Marie went on many extended trips to remote communities in the 1990s, and as the market for Aboriginal art developed, she became an influential collector who helped introduce the artists to a bigger audience.

She was also part of a small group of collectors who chartered biplanes to art centres across the country, places such as Yuendumu in the NT, Balgo and Kununurra in WA and Melville Island in the eastern Timor Sea.

Flying the collectors on these journeys was pilot Helen Read, who runs art tour company Palya Art and has been touring remote communities for more than three decades.

Also a nurse and midwife, she began working in the remote Northern Territory in 1985, and had the groundbreaking idea that promoting Aboriginal art to influential collectors could help improve living conditions.

Read recalls Dame Marie’s compassion and regard for First Nations people at a time when cross-cultural engagement was rare.

“She had a kindness about her that was erudite and perceptive, she would see people’s situations, predicaments and she thought of most people as being good souls,” said Read.

“When you met her, you felt warmed and nourished, you felt good about yourself.

“She was remarkable, really.”

Australian Associated Press