104 DECEMBER 2017
Far from the sparkle of Sydney harbour, in the gritty, industrial back
blocks of inner Melbourne, someone else was keeping quiet about a
disturbing scene. Jud Wimhurst was a likeable, easy-going artist with a
musketeer-like goatee and a skateboarding past. Three days a week he
made frames, stretched canvases, varnished paintings and built plinths
for Melbourne art restorer Mohamed Aman Siddique, whose clients
included the rich and powerful. Victorian Art Conservation was housed
in a double-storey, red brick warehouse in Easey Street, Collingwood.
Wimhurst had worked here for just on two years. On a dull winter’s
morning in 2007, after unlocking the fortress-like red front door and
heading upstairs to check the answering machine, he noticed that an off-
limits storeroom had its doors open. Wimhurst had never seen the
storeroom open and had often wondered what Siddique kept in there.
What he saw would shatter his faith in the business: a series of unfinished
paintings, unmistakably in the style of Brett Whiteley, all of them brightly
coloured scenes of Sydney Harbour. Whiteley had died in 1992, alone in a
motel room, claimed by a lethal mix of drugs and alcohol, but in
Siddique’s Collingwood studio, it seemed he was being resurrected.
Stunned by his find, Wimhurst quickly returned downstairs before his
boss arrived. Later that day, after Siddique had turned up, Wimhurst
went back upstairs and saw that the storeroom was locked once more.
Wimhurst was so troubled by his find that soon after he quit the
business. He confided in only one person, his colleague Guy Morel, a
paper conservator and bookbinder who also worked at the studio and
who promised to “keep an eye on things”. Morel was true to his word.
The storeroom’s 2.5-metre-high walls did not reach to the top of the
warehouse ceiling. So Morel placed a chair on the workbench next to the
locked storeroom and, digital camera in hand, climbed on to the chair,
hung his camera over the edge of the storeroom walls and snapped
away. From late 2007 he secretly photographed the paintings evolving
in Siddique’s storeroom. In 2010, Morel handed a CD filled with these
photographs to Victoria Police, triggering the most controversial case of
alleged art fraud to be heard in the Australian criminal courts.
In April 2016, the disparate worlds of Sydney and Melbourne, and the
arts and the law, collided in a complex and fraught five-week trial at
theSupreme Court of Victoria. Silence was no longer an option, at least not
for the 25 witnesses who were called to give evidence, among them an
eccentric parade of art world figures. But the jury would never hear from
the accused. Siddique and his associate Peter Gant, a Melbourne art dealer
who had previously come before the courts for handling fakes, exercised
their right to remain silent. In 2010 Gant was found in breach of the Fair
Trading Act for selling three fake drawings. That was a civil dispute.
Now Gant was facing the possibility of jail, accused of being the salesman
in a joint criminal enterprise with Siddique, the alleged forger.
At the centre of the alleged art fraud were three suspect paintings, each
of them views of Lavender Bay, that had been sold or offered for sale for
millions to Sydney buyers as authentic Whiteley works. The huge blue
painting that Wendy had seen at Pridham’s stately home was hauled into
court as a major exhibit. So too was another painting, titled Orange
Lavender Bay, that had been sold for $1.1 million by Melbourne art dealer
John Playfoot to Sydney luxury car dealer Steven Nasteski. A third
suspect painting, titled Lavender Bay through the Window, given to
Melbourne cafe owner Guy Angwin as surety on a $950,000 loan, had
mysteriously disappeared and police had not been able to recover it. The
three paintings all led back to Gant, who had presented them to Archer
and Playfoot as legitimate Whiteleys from 1988. The prosecution was
alleging that the paintings were the
handiwork of Siddique, created from 2007
to 2009. The defence, however, argued
that Siddique had only been creating
‘copies’ in his storeroom, never intending
them to be sold as the real thing – it is
not a crime to copy an artist’s work.
Mouths dropped open when Wendy
Whiteley walked into court to give
evidence. In her 70s, she remained the
essence of bohemian grandeur. Head
wrapped in a swathe of printed black and
white fabric, she wore a long black dress,
black pearls, chunky bangles, and a grey
plaid shawl draped over her right
shoulder. She stood in the witness box
and swore that the two paintings in court,
and the painting that had gone missing,
were fake. Two art experts from the
University of Melbourne, Robyn Sloggett and Vanessa Kowalski, also
testified that the paintings could not be attributed to Whiteley.
But the defence slashed away at the prosecution evidence, tearing into
the methodology of Sloggett and Kowalski, casting doubt on the
credibility and motives of the whistleblower Guy Morel, and dragging up
the dissolute elements of Wendy’s life with Brett. The couple were heroin
addicts, and in the throes of a volatile separation and no longer living
together in 1988. The defence argued that Wendy could not possibly
know everything the artist had created in 1988. Two witnesses were
particularly damaging to the prosecution case: both swore that they had
seen the suspect paintings in 1988 and in 1989. A yoga teacher, Rosemary
Milburn, who had once worked as Gant’s gallery assistant, identified her
signature on an invoice book listing the three paintings and their arrival
at the gallery on June 28, 1988. And car salesman Jeremy James swore
that he had photographed the orange and blue paintings in 1989 to
illustrate the works in an exhibition catalogue for Gant.
The trial judge, Justice Michael Croucher, declared that the evidence
of Milburn and James demolished the Crown’s case. After narrowly
deciding not to throw the case out, the judge took the extraordinary
step of inviting the jury to acquit the men at the end of the prosecution’s
evidence. The jury rejected the invitation.
On May 12, 2016, in defiance of the judge, the jury found Gant and
Siddique guilty on two counts each of obtaining financial advantage by
deception and one count each of attempted obtaining financial advantage
by deception. Gant was sentenced to five years in jail, Siddique to three,
but their sentences were postponed pending an appeal as Justice
Croucher argued that the jury verdict was “unsafe”. A year later, Gant
and Siddique were sensationally acquitted by the appeal bench. The
appeal judges described the case as a “rare and almost unique instance of
the system having failed”. But they left unanswered the biggest question
of all. They made no finding on the authenticity of the paintings, saying
they were not equipped to do so. The art world did not accept that the
three suspect paintings were by Whiteley. It had counted on the law to
resolve the matter, but the law had raised more questions than it had
answered. The truth remained elusive.
Gabriella Coslovich is the author of Whiteley on Trial (MUP, $32.99;
e-book $14.99). Out now.Mouths
dropped
open when
Wend y
W hiteley
walked into
court to give
evidence. In
her 70s, she
remained
the essence
of bohemian
grandeurVOGUE CULTURE