Whiteley on Trial Read online

  ‘Since the day you were in the boardroom and today, have you been asked to identify these paintings in the flesh before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The blue painting—when was the first time you were shown an image of that painting since 1988–89?’

  ‘When I made that affidavit which that was attached to in 2011.’

  ‘When was the first time you were asked to recollect Le Tet’s PA’s name?’

  ‘I don’t believe I was.’

  ‘Other than today?’

  ‘I don’t believe I was.’

  ‘In terms of lithography—is that process still available today?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s it, Your Honour, no further questions.’

  After the court rose, I looked at the exhibit that had just been tendered, the running proof of A Private Affair. I compared it to the finished catalogue that had been previously tendered to the court and noted that the corrections marked on page three of the running proof had not been carried through in the supposed final print.

  The finished catalogue had missed its own corrections: Photography -Jeremy James (the dash still hard up against Jeremy), Printing – Kenneth James Print Melbourne (the word ‘Print’ had not been deleted). And no-one had picked up a big error—Gant’s old address of 268 Coventry Street, South Melbourne, was still printed on the catalogue for the November 1989 exhibition. Wasn’t he supposed to be moving to his new address of 377 Montague Street, Albert Park, from 1 September 1989? Or was he working from two addresses at that time?

  At home I checked my own files, shuffling through piles of manila folders to find the version of the A Private Affair catalogue I had seen and photocopied in 2010. It had a different layout again. My copy, which was the copy given to Steven Nasteski, had the following written on the bottom of page three: Photography—Jeremy James; Printing—Kenneth James. No errors. Why were there two final versions of the catalogue floating around? Hadn’t there only been one print run of twenty?

  The footage was grainy, but the figure of Gant was unmistakable. I had come to know that posture and attitude well. The unflattering camera angle accentuated his forehead, making it appear large and bulbous, his facial features compressed beneath. He sat slumped in his chair, arms crossed, emphasising his paunch below. On the table in front of him was a book. Trust the book-loving Gant to pack one for his trip to the police station. He might have been thinking it would be a long day.

  I know if I was on a jury I’d want to hear from the accused. But Gant never did speak directly to the jury. His defence team must have thought better of it. The jury only heard from him in the video of his police interview, played to them on the afternoon of Wednesday 27 April 2016, the trial’s seventeenth day. The video played on a screen opposite the jury box and next to the big blue painting.

  On the morning of Thursday 6 March 2014, just as he was getting ready to set off to Melbourne with his son, two police officers arrived at his Hamlyn Heights home, arrested him and took him to the Geelong Police Station. His plans had been scuppered; he found himself in a grim, grey room, sitting at a bare table, opposite the officers. Out of frame I could hear Stefanec’s calm, reasonable voice explaining to Gant that he had been brought in to be interviewed about suspected forged Brett Whiteley paintings.

  ‘What can you tell me about those paintings?’ Stefanec asked.

  ‘I don’t want to say too much at this stage,’ Gant mumbled.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But I’ll tell you they are not fakes.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And that they were acquired by me in the late 1980s.’

  ‘Yeah, okay.’

  ‘Directly from Brett Whiteley through his agent Christian Quintas.’

  Gant clasped his hands behind his head, elbows spread out wide, another posture I had seen many times in court. Was it a display of confidence or a posture adopted to hide his nerves?

  ‘And would there be any records of that purchase?’ Stefanec asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t be sure, I’d have to go through books that are thirty years old, so …’

  ‘Do you still have those books?’

  ‘I … I may have. I’m … I’m not a hundred … I just don’t know.’

  The officer’s face came into view as he slid some photocopies towards Gant—images of paintings. Gant looked at them indifferently. He recognised the orange, he wasn’t sure about one as the police only had a detail of the picture, and he couldn’t remember the title of the third.

  ‘I’d have to look into the consignment book … I’ve got a record of …’

  ‘You have?’ Stefanec said evenly. Moments ago Gant had been telling him he wasn’t sure he had records. Now he seemed to have changed his mind.

  ‘I’ve got a record of when the pictures were first sent to me in the 1980s,’ he said.

  ‘Okay,’ Stefanec said. ‘I know it’s a long time ago, any idea how much you paid for those paintings?’

  ‘A lot of money. Offhand I can’t be exact, but it would have been, for the three of them it would have been well over 100 000.’

  ‘Even back then?’

  ‘I’ve still got the original consignment book where, from when those three pictures were sent to me.’

  ‘Okay. And where would that be at the moment?’

  ‘My barrister’s holding it. Or my solicitor. I’m not sure which one’s got it. One or the other.’

  ‘Are we able to get a copy of that?’

  ‘Of course you are … I would have thought you would have seen it … didn’t Pridham make that available to you?’

  Was Gant fishing? Was he trying to work out how much the police knew?

  Stefanec asked about Quintas—what was his role?

  ‘He was Brett’s best friend cum manager cum drug dealer,’ Gant said.

  And what was Gant’s relationship to Whiteley and Quintas?

  ‘A very distant one,’ Gant said. ‘I was—I had a business in Melbourne. I was very keen on his work. I actually at one stage when I was getting married, I asked permission to use one of his paintings on my wedding invitation, which they gave me. I ended up not using it, but—and I’d handled a lot of Brett Whiteley paintings in those days. And even then they were in the hundreds of thousands,’ he said, shifting from evasive to effusive. ‘It was—that was ´88, ´89 and it was what—it was, like, an art boom at that stage. Which collapsed in about 1990.’

  ‘Okay, all right,’ Stefanec said patiently.

  ‘I produced catalogues at the time …’ Gant said, tapping the photo of the orange painting, ‘this was illustrated in the catalogue at the time that we never actually did a show on, but … it was illustrated. I’ve still got the catalogue.’

  ‘You’ve still got the catalogue for that as well?’

  ‘I got a copy of the—I’ve got a couple of catalogues still. Yeah. The show never proceeded, but it’s in the catalogue.’

  ‘So you handled a lot of Brett Whiteleys back then?’

  ‘Oh, well, I say a lot. If you go through my catalogues I probably illustrated about ten over that period of three years.’

  ‘So Brett Whiteley passed away in ´92, I believe,’ Stefanec said.

  ‘I don’t know, to be honest … just records I look at,’ Gant said.

  But in the next breath he was boasting that he was more familiar with Whiteley’s work ‘than 99.9 per cent of Australian art dealers’.

  ‘I would not say I’m the absolute authority, but I’ve got a very good, strong working knowledge of it. I’ve been working and handling paintings for thirty-odd years.’

  Stefanec wanted to know where the paintings had been stored since 1988.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about that at this stage,’ Gant said, shifting back to guarded mode, hands clasped behind his head once more.

  ‘Were they in your possession?’

  ‘Most of the time, but not all of the time. Most of the time they’ve just been locked away. There have been a few tim
es when I had that’—pointing to the photocopy of the blue painting—‘hang in the gallery at Armadale at one stage, back in, I don’t remember what year. Probably around 2000. And people would have seen it at the time. Some people did see it. And they would certainly … They would certainly be able to swear to that. But if this, you know, if this ends up going further then obviously I’ll have to search them out and …’

  ‘Yeah. For sure, yeah,’ Stefanec said reassuringly.

  There were people who were aware of the paintings in the 1980s, Gant said.

  ‘Anybody that tries and says they’ve been painted or knocked up in the last few years is just wrong,’ he said, his voice even, calm.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Fair enough.’

  Stefanec slid a photocopy of the ‘brown’ painting, View from the Sitting Room Window, Lavender Bay, towards Gant.

  ‘Do you recognise that painting?’

  He looked at it diffidently.

  ‘It’s not a very good reproduction.’

  ‘No, it’s just a—probably another Internet photo.’

  ‘But yeah, I basically recognise it. Colour’s all wrong.’

  ‘Yeah. Probably just a bad print, I’d say. And do you agree that it’s a Brett Whiteley painting that you’ve handled in the past?’

  ‘It’s a Brett Whiteley painting, yeah. When Wendy was first shown it she said it was fake,’ Gant sneered.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve heard things about that, but …’

  ‘She says that about almost every picture she’s shown until she’s proven wrong,’ Gant said.

  ‘Yeah, right, okay. Anyway, that’s another issue. So … the information I have is that on the thirteenth of March 2007 you purchased this painting. Does that sound right from your recollection?’

  ‘I didn’t purchase …’

  ‘March 2007? No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you recall purchasing that from Menzies Art Brands?’

  ‘Oh, sorry, oh this?’

  ‘This one here, yeah, sorry—Through the Window,’ Stefanec said, confusing his titles and meaning View from the Sitting Room Window.

  ‘Oh, yeah, yeah. That was about then, yeah,’ Gant said.

  ‘Okay. Do you remember what you paid for that, roughly?’

  ‘No. Maybe 1.4, but I—I can’t remember precisely.’

  ‘Yeah. Oh, records I’ve got is 1.65 million.’

  ‘That’d be right, yeah.’

  ‘Do you recall when you purchased that painting where it went from Menzies Art Brands?’

  ‘Yeah, it went to South Melbourne to a company called Questco, ‘cause they were providing the finance for it.’

  ‘Okay, yeah. So do you know the location in South Melbourne?’

  ‘Not the number. It was Eastern Road, South Melbourne.’

  ‘Eastern Road. Yeah, okay. And why did it go there?’

  ‘Well, ’cause it was, at the time, it was a judgement made that it was a good buy and that we’d hang onto it for years and sell it and make some money. Which proved wrong. It went there to be in safekeeping ‘cause they were providing the finance so it was basically security.’

  ‘Okay. So when you say “they”, who’s “they”?’

  ‘Well, the company, Questco.’

  ‘Yeah, and who’s the company?’

  ‘I don’t really know what the company is.’

  ‘Do you know who the director is?’

  ‘Yeah. I know the director.’

  ‘And how many directors are there?

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Okay. Who’s the director you know?’

  ‘The guy I know is Robert Le Tet.’

  ‘Okay, okay. So to your knowledge that painting went straight to Eastern Road?’

  ‘From memory it did, yes.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But I—I don’t see where else it would have gone, so …’

  ‘Okay. The information I’ve got is it went to a studio in Collingwood at the address of 26 to 28 Easey Street, Collingwood.’

  ‘Oh, Aman Siddique?’ Gant said, looking surprised.

  ‘Yeah. Do you know Aman?’

  ‘I know Aman. It would have gone to Aman at some stage for cleaning and—and a condition report and all sorts of things like that.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But I don’t recall when.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I—I honestly just don’t know.’

  ‘Yeah. So, it didn’t go straight to Aman from the auction house?’

  ‘From the auction house?’

  ‘From the auction house.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. But I—I wouldn’t swear on the Bible ‘cause I don’t recall. I would have thought it would have gone straight to Questco,’ Gant said, sliding his hands into his pockets.

  ‘There will be records of couriers?’

  ‘There would be records, yeah, I wouldn’t have them, but … yeah … somebody would have a record.’

  Was the auction at Menzies in Sydney? Stefanec asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Gant replied.

  ‘So not Menzies in Melbourne?’

  ‘No. He does his sales in Sydney mostly. More wood ducks up there.’

  Gant was vague about how long the ‘brown’ painting had been at Siddique’s, but thought it wouldn’t have been there for more than a few weeks. As the jury knew, the painting was at Siddique’s workshop for two years and three months.

  He was equally evasive about Big Blue Lavender Bay. Stefanec wanted to know whether the blue painting was framed when it came into Gant’s possession. Gant avoided giving straight answers; he seesawed from one position to the next.

  ‘I don’t recall whether it came down framed or whether we had it framed, but it was framed,’ he said.

  Had the blue painting ever been at Easey Street? Stefanec asked.

  It ‘would have been’, Gant said, but he couldn’t recall whether it had been reframed, and he couldn’t be sure whether it had been cleaned. But ‘anything major’ he’d ever handled went to Easey Street, he said, because Siddique was ‘the best conserver art restoration guy in Australia’, ‘one of the best in the world’.

  ‘I know you probably think I should know all these things, but I have handled that many pictures,’ Gant said.

  ‘I could imagine, yeah,’ Stefanec said encouragingly.

  Suddenly, Gant had a flash of recollection.

  ‘I’ve got a feeling … yeah, that that was reframed,’ Gant said, pointing to the photocopy of the blue painting. ‘Now I don’t know who reframed it. It would have gone to Aman’s for cleaning, and he may have advised on reframing; I don’t think he would have reframed it. But I don’t know.’

  ‘What happened to it from there? From Easey Street?’

  ‘I don’t recall. It was sold to Anita.’

  ‘Yeah. So, okay, just getting into that side with Anita. What was your involvement in that transaction with Anita?’

  ‘I introduced the painting to her.’

  ‘Okay. As being yours?’

  ‘No, not as being mine,’ Gant said, scratching his ear.

  Pridham paid $2.5 million for the blue painting, but what was the asking price at Gant’s end? He couldn’t recall. Stefanec suggested it was $2.1 million. Gant said that sounded ‘about right’. Did he receive the money? He was ‘pretty sure’ that he had, but he couldn’t recall what happened to it. Did anyone else receive some of that money? They would have, Gant said, but he ‘honestly’ couldn’t remember where it all went.

  ‘And again, I don’t, I don’t want to say something that’s then used in court. And I’m proven to be—that I’ve made a mistake. And it makes me look like …’ he said.

  ‘So, well, just off the top of your head …’

  ‘No, at this stage … At this stage I won’t answer. I don’t know.’

  ‘That’s fair enough, all right, okay.’

  ‘I know that I don’t have $2 million though, so …’

  ‘Yeah. Don�
��t have it sitting around?’

  ‘No, I wish I did,’ Gant said, laughing.

  He told the police that he ‘probably’ communicated with Archer about that sale by phone, as he was ‘not computer literate’ and ‘anything to do with emails’ would have been done by his ‘PA’. His dealings were ‘direct’, ‘either over a coffee or over the phone’.

  He didn’t have a clue where Big Blue Lavender Bay was now, but he imagined it was still with Pridham, unless he’d burnt it as he said he would, ‘cause it’s a fake’, Gant said mockingly. The calm façade came to an end. Gant started ranting, waving his arms about, spouting lines that I’d heard before.

  ‘My question to somebody liking this,’ he said angrily, ‘why would they buy these pictures? Do they purely buy them, do they buy them because they think they’re—they look great and they love them or—or are they just—just purely to … say they’ve got something that’s … you know, like …’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘It’s a joke. How, how can it be that a picture that he thought was worth paying two and a half million dollars—now he’s claiming it’s worth nothing?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Gant was thumping the table with his hands, emphasising his point.

  ‘This is where it makes a mockery of the whole art world and the whole art industry! When Anita first sent it to him it was hanging in his lounge when they had a big function for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and I don’t think he said it was a fake then,’ Gant went on.

  It was all Steven Nasteski’s fault—Nasteski who was ‘at’ Pridham ‘all the time, trying to tell him it was a dud’, Gant raged on.

  ‘He bought that orange one, then wanted to turn it over almost instantly and double his money or something. And then he was told someone in the auction didn’t want it or something and then he decided it was a fake so he’d get his money back. From my perspective, he seems to be the one that was, you know, pulling all the strings, trying to say that they were all wrong.’

  Did the orange painting go to Easey Street?

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Gant said. ‘It went to all the auction houses.’

  ‘Oh, did it?’

  ‘Playfoot had it. He was sending it everywhere. They all loved it. It went to Chris Deutscher who loved it, went to Geoffrey Smith who thought it was a masterpiece at the time, it went to Tim Goodman. They were all offering it to different people. And from what John told me I think Stokes in Perth made an offer on it through one of the agents,’ Gant said. It was like deja vu, like hearing Playfoot’s recent testimony to the court.