AFRGA1 A014

M E L B O U R N E | S Y D N E Y

leonardjoel.com.au

VIEWING 28 FEBRUARY - 2 MARCH

AUCTION SUNDAY 3 MARCH, MELBOURNE

THE MAGICAL STUDIO OF

MIRKA MORA Untitled Mural (detail)mixed media, 120 x 244cm. $60,000-80,000

AUSTRALIAN & INTERNATIONAL FINE ART & SCULPTURE

CATALOGUE ONLINE NOWMELBOURNE EXHIBITION 14 – 17 MARCH, 11AM – 6PM

Menzies Gallery, 1 Darling Street, South Yarra

SYDNEY EXHIBITION 21 – 27 MARCH, 11AM – 6PM Menzies Gallery, 12 Todman Avenue, Kensington

(Sunday Exhibitions from 1pm)

28 MARCH AUCTION, SYDNEY

VIEW CATALOGUE | BID ONLINE

menziesartbrands.com

Lot 42. JOHN BRACK Green Nude 1971 | ESTIMATE: $300,000 - $380,000© courtesy of Helen Brack

AFRThursday 28 February 2019The Australian Financial Review | www.afr.com

14 Saleroom

Crowdfunding secures Mirka Mora’s legacy● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Australian art TheHeide Museum ofModern Art raised$180,000 to buy 31works ahead of auction.

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Bo Seo

Clockwise from main:Mirka Mora in 1955; her

studio has beenrecreated for the auction;

Mirka Mora’s items ondisplay in her recreated

studio; Good MorningAngel and a previously

unknown slate paintingby Sidney Nolan were

bought by HeideMuseum of Modern Art

ahead of the auction.

The Heide Museum of Modern Art hasacquired 31 personal items of the lateMelbourne-based visual artist MirkaMora, after a $180,000 crowdfundingcampaign to keep the artifacts in thepublic eye.

On Wednesday, auction houseLeonard Joel confirmed the acquisi-tion, which brings down the number ofartworks and personal effects up forsale to the 700s. The auction is sched-uled for March 3 in South Yarra.

Among the Heide acquisition is thepreviously undiscovered Sidney Nolanpiece Figures with Flowers, whichdepicts a ghostly woman painted onmoody-grey slate. It was estimated at$60,000.

Mirka’s son and independent galler-ist William Mora said he had dis-covered the Nolan piece wrapped inlace and stored in his mother’s under-wear drawer.

‘‘She loved all her objects and shehad a keen eye for beautiful things.Every little thing had a story for her,’’ hesaid.

Born to Lithuanian-Romanian Jew-ish parents in 1928, Mirka Mora andher family escaped a concentrationcamp and survived the Holocaust by

hiding out in rural France.She migrated to Melbourne with her

husband Georges in 1951. The couplesettled into the conventional trades ofEuropean-scented bohemia: art, galler-ies, and cafes.

Between the Mirka cafe on Exhibi-tion Street and later Georges’ TolarnoGalleries in St Kilda, the Moras playedhost and caterer to the city’s avant-garde.

At their studio apartment on 9Collins Street, the re-established Con-temporary Art Society – featuring thelikes of Arthur Boyd, John Perceval, JoyHester and art patrons John and Sun-day Reed – held early exhibitions andbacchanal parties.

It was the same group that, since the1930s, had loosely co-inhabited a for-mer dairy farm called ‘‘Heide’’ on theYarra River.

The Heide Circle is now considered

the vanguard of 20th century Austra-lian modernism. Their old farmhouseis the Heide Museum of Modern Art,where the 31 newly acquired personalitems of Mirka Mora will soon be ondisplay.

Mirka Mora worked across drawing,painting, doll-making and sculptureuntil her death, at age 90, in August2018.

Ahead of her state memorial atPalais Theatre, Victorian premierDaniel Andrews pronounced her aMelbourne icon.

‘‘Mora drenched our city and ourstate with colour,’’ he said.

For patrons in search of bright col-ours, an untitled mural by Mora herself– a frame crowded with iconographyand rainbow hues – remains up forsale. It is likely to be the highest gross-ing item at the auction, with an estim-ated value of $60,000 to $80,000.

There is also the vintage globe onbarley twist stand, the rustic Frenchbutter churn, and the wooden spinningwheel each valued at between $50 and$100. Mora’s collection of French andGerman dolls, sold in small clusterstucked into baskets and prams, areexpected to fetch between $200 to 400each.

The modest price tag and pop-upinstallation setting give this auction amore democratic feel than the averageart sale. Mirka Mora was after all anartist of the people – a beloved fixture ofMelbourne bohemia who lent as muchto its distinctive culture as she tookafter it. Anna Grassham, head of mod-ern design at auction house Leonard

Joel, said personal items tended todraw buyer interest because of the‘‘human stories’’ attached to them.

Though there is a robust resale mar-ket for personal artifacts, she said themotivations for purchasing Mora’spossessions were more likely senti-mental than commercial.

‘‘People want to own a little piece ofMirka, and to have her in their homes ...Everything in this room exudes herbeing, her love, and her passion for lifeand the arts,’’ Ms Grassham said.

William Mora said he had extens-ively discussed with Mirka what hisfamily would do to preserve the artist’smemory after she passed on.

‘‘It’s being done with love,’’ he said.

George Michael’s testThe art collection of singer and songwriter GeorgeMichael, who died in 2016, has been touring the world thismonth, stopping off in New York, Los Angeles and HongKong. Next month, it will be land at Christie’s London,where it will be sold at auction on March 14, and onlinefrom March 8-15. It’s a big collection – 170 works with anestimated value of £6-9 million ($11-$16 million). A coupleof Damien Hirsts could make more than £1 million; worksby lesser-known artists should fetch around £2,000.

Most of the collection was bought between 2006 and2008, when the market was booming, and is focusedalmost entirely on British contemporary art of the late20th and early 21st centuries, when the so-called YoungBritish Artists – led by Hirst, Tracey Emin, Jake and DinosChapman and Sarah Lucas – overturned art world pro-tocol and the long-standing dominance of American artwith a succession of shocking, irreverent artworks.Whether they still carry the same weight is one of the teststhe sale faces. THE TELEGRAPH, LONDON