PARTI
Tell the Truth
âI WAS JUST NEVER sure what Iâd seen. Iâm not saying Iâm sure now.â
To the casual observer it would have seemed the most innocuous of things, a cluster of unfinished paintings, impressions of Sydney Harbour. But what Jud Wimhurst saw and how he made sense of it would shadow a decade of his life, consume the art world, and lead to Australiaâs most significant and ultimately controversial examination of art fraud. What he saw was never far from his mind.
âI wished I hadnât gone to work that day,â he said. âAs soon as I saw it, everything changed.â
I was asking him to tell me again what had happened. We were both trying to understand it, to resolve what weâd heard in court with what we knew, or thought we knew. His voice was earnest and candid, the voice of someone who told stories straight, even when there was nothing straight about them. We were sitting around the corner from the now headline-making studio where it had happened, having coffee at a footpath table, taking in the morning sun and exhaust fumes. Wimhurst was an easygoing, young-looking 42-year-old, with plump skin and black-rimmed glasses, neatly dressed in blackâcap, t-shirt, sneakersâand loose-fitting, rolled-up denims with a long silver key chain trailing from a pocket, a look that suggested his skateboarding past. He was an artist and had a musketeer-like goatee. We had spoken several times by phone, but this was the first time weâd met; the only time Iâd seen him other than when he stood in the witness box. Trams rattled by as he took me back to that grey winterâs morning ten years earlier in 2007.
As usual, he had been the first to arrive at his work, in the industrial and gentrifying inner-Melbourne suburb of Collingwood. Victorian Art Conservation was housed in a double-storey, red brick warehouse in Easey Street, a street synonymous with the cityâs history of crime. Wimhurst had worked there for just on two years. His priority was his art, but art didnât pay the bills. So three days a week he made frames, stretched canvases, varnished paintings and built plinths for his boss and owner of the business, Aman Siddique. A painting restorer of high regard, Siddique generally left Wimhurst alone to do his work. This suited him and despite Siddiqueâs sometimes gruff manner and occasionally explosive temper, Wimhurst genuinely liked him.
âI did like him. I respected him and maybe the liking him was because I respected him. I was there to learn and he was happy to teach me.â
Siddique had also been kind to him when his father was dying of cancer, giving him as much time off as he needed. This happened in the first month of him starting work there and had left him feeling loyal towards his boss. He loved too that at Siddiqueâs he had the chance to see the work of Australiaâs prime artists at close range.
âThat felt like a great privilege, to be honest. It was anyone and everyone, but it was always interesting for me when something of note came in, so when Gleesons came in I liked that, when Arkleys came in, when Whiteleys came in, when Tuckers came in, things like that, your classic Australian artists, it was great for me to be able to see those paintings.â
But the paintings he saw on this particular morning would shatter his faith in the business. Just before 10 a.m. he unlocked the buildingâs fortress-like red front door and began his daily routine: security system off, lights on, check the answering machine on the second floor. When he reached the top of the metal stairs he saw that something was different. Directly in front of him was Siddiqueâs desk, to the right, the retouching room, and next to that a smallish storeroom. Wimhurst had never seen the storeroom open and had often wondered what was in there. What was so important that it needed to be locked away? Valuable artworks, some worth millions, were continually passing through the workshop to be cleaned or restored. Paintings were left out overnight. There was no need to lock them upâthe security system was first rate. Today the twin sliding doors of the storeroom were wide open. The sight jolted himâhad there been a break-in? Unlikely. He had just turned off the security system. He walked towards the storeroom and glanced inside.
âI didnât walk all the way in and I didnât necessarily want to walk all the way in,â Wimhurst told me. âI didnât even want to see what Iâd already seen.â
It looked as though someone had been interrupted in the middle of a job. There were several paintings in progress, brightly coloured in blues and yellows, scenes of Sydney Harbour, which he instantly recognised as in the style of Brett Whiteley. He also noticed a paper cut-out of a vase lying haphazardly on the storeroom floorâa vase of similar shape and size to one he had seen in the foreground of a Whiteley painting that had recently come into the studio; an unusually bleak, predominantly brown painting of Sydneyâs Lavender Bay, that had not been locked up and that was always getting in the way. Siddique had asked him to remove that paintingâs frame. What was going on? Why were these Whiteley-like paintings being made? He knew that Siddique would occasionally conduct little tests in the style of an artist whose work he needed to conserve, but there were too many unfinished paintings here for it to be simply an experiment.
His boss could turn up at any moment and he didnât want to be caught looking at this place that had always been off limits. He went quickly back downstairs and got to work. But he could not put those paintings out of his mind. What reason could there be for them? It was hard for him to come up with many legitimate motives. Should he confront Siddique? And say what? It wasnât a crime to copy an artistâs work, was it? Later that day, after Siddique had turned up, Wimhurst went back upstairs and saw that the storeroom was once again locked. He told no-one what he had seen. But had he been right to say nothing? Should he have given Siddique the chance to explain?
Wimhurst began to suspect other things at Easey Streetâthe arrival of timber panels of various sizes, some huge, others smaller. A group of these had been stacked up against Siddiqueâs desk. Siddique had brushed off his questions about why they were there. They belonged to Peter Gant, Siddique had said, referring to the art dealer who was often around. Why, then, had they been delivered to Easey Street? They were doors for Gantâs house, Siddique told him. Was Gant building a house for dwarves? Wimhurst had cheekily asked. Siddique chuckled and said no more. The doors disappeared soon after. Wimhurst was not alone in knowing that Whiteley would sometimes paint on smooth-faced wooden doors.
A few weeks after finding the storeroom unlocked, Wimhurstâs workmate Guy Morel showed him something that added to his disquiet. Morel was a bookbinder and paper conservator who worked upstairs at Siddiqueâs studio. Born in the Seychelles, Morel was a big-hearted man with a nervous manner; he had the trace of a French accent and would stutter when anxious. He had first met Siddique in the 1980s, when Siddique was working as a painting conservator in the regional Victorian town of Ballarat. In the early 2000s, Siddique invited Morel to set up a workspace at his Easey Street studio. Morel would divide his time between Easey Street and his home studio in Brunswick. The two were always bickering about money.
On this day, Wimhurst was working upstairs when Morel called him over. âHave you seen this?â he asked, holding out a scrap of paper filled with the signature of the Australian painter Fred Williams, as if someone had been practising the name again and again. The sight of these signatures made Wimhurst break his silence.
âI just said to him, âHave you seen the Whiteleys floating around?â because, you know, if there was nothing to be ashamed of they should have been out at some point. And he hadnât seen them. So thatâs when I told the story.â
Morel decided to look for himself. The storeroomâs 2.5-metre-high walls did not reach to the top of the warehouse ceiling, so Morel placed a chair on the workbench adjoining the locked storeroom. Digital camera in hand, he climbed onto the chair and hung his camera over the edge of the storeroom walls. When he looked at the cameraâs screen he saw what had been troubling Wimhurst for weeks.
Whatever was happening at Easey Street, Wimhurst wanted nothing to do with it. His artistic career was on the brink of taking off, and he needed a bigger home studio than he could afford in the city. He reasoned that he could use this excuse to quietly depart without giving his real concerns to Siddique. By the start of spring in 2007, Wimhurst had left Victorian Art Conservation. Morel stayed on and promised to âkeep an eye on thingsâ. Wimhurst moved to the country with his partner and dedicated himself to his art. But the move did not quarantine him from the activities at 26â28 Easey Street.
âI wasnât completely surprised when I got the call,â Wimhurst explained when we met. âI had a feeling something would happen at some time, if what I saw was what I thought it was. And I always hoped it would never surface, and I was wrong.â
The call came in 2014. Siddique phoned Wimhurst telling him that he might soon be hearing âbad thingsâ about him, and that the police might come calling. Wimhurst asked what he should do. Siddique answered: âTell the truth.â
In 2016, Wimhurst told his story in the Supreme Court of Victoriaâor at least as much of it as the law would allow. We had both been staggered by the restrictions placed on what witnesses could and could not say; he as a witness and I as an observer wanting to write a book on the case.
âThat was a shock,â he said. âI thought the idea was to get to the bottom of the truth, but thatâs not necessarily the case. Itâs a lot more complicated than that. I understand now that it was also about Peter and Aman feeling theyâd had a fair trial. But I also feel, was it a fair trial if so much was left out? I donât know.
âIt makes me feel really quite confused, the whole situation. Itâs hard. I want to believe the best but Iâm not sure I can do that. And I donât know whether talking to Guy was the right thing to do but I felt that I needed to do something, and I needed another opinion. There was no-one else that worked there except me at that time.â
I asked him to describe once more the paintings heâd seen in the storeroom. He had consistently told me that they were yellow and blue, and yet, the paintings that had ended up in court were orange and blue. Was he sure heâd seen yellow?
âI really donât know,â he said. âI remember seeing yellow so maybe Iâm remembering it incorrectly, or it was underpainting. I mean they were in early stages. Thereâs so many reasons why they could have changed. I also remember them as being smaller.â
He couldnât even say for sure whether the paintings he saw were the same ones that had ended up in court.
âI know that doesnât link up, but I think maybe I might have seen some that were test pieces or something like that. Or ones that werenât good enough. They did seem to be painted on those door panels that had been delivered. They were smaller than full door size, maybe a bit wider, they werenât as large as the ones in the courtroom, so I donât know. I know these things donât match up, I might have seen something different, but Iâm just saying what I saw. I wish I had the definitive ⊠but I donât.â
A week after our meeting, there would be a definitive answer. The Court of Appeal would rule that the jury that had found Aman Siddique and Peter Gant guilty on three counts of art fraud had got it wrong. That it was not possible to find the men guilty âbeyond reasonable doubtâ on the evidence presented to the court. It was an exceptional ruling in a judicial system that considers the role of the jury utmost. Significantly, the appeal judges made no finding on the authenticity of the paintings. So where was the truth in this story?
At the time of Wimhurstâs unsettling discovery, I was working at The Age, and had been for ten years as an arts reporter. My knowledge of Australiaâs art-faking industry was minimal and my curiosity slight. I was interested in living artists, in people who were creating, not copying. My biggest coup in 2007 was tracking down a reclusive professional gambler and self-described nerd from Hobart who would go on to build Australiaâs most extraordinary museumâMONA. His name was David Walsh.
The closest I came to writing about forgery that year was covering the National Gallery of Victoriaâs shock announcement that its only painting by Vincent van Gogh, Head of a Man, was not a van Gogh at all. The NGV had bought the painting in 1940 believing it to be by the great Dutch post-impressionist, only to find sixty-seven years later that it was by an unknown artist. The Van Gogh Museum and Institute of Dutch Cultural Her...