Good scholarship the key to catalogue's popularity.
Lydall Crisp, The Financial Review, 26 September 2002, p.54
"Never mind the $5 million worth of paintings, the catalogue for the Lauraine Diggins' seventh Annual Collectors' Exhibition has become somthing of a prized possession. Serious collectors consider it their bible, libraries and galleries wouldn't be without it.
'It's not just a matter of taking a photo of a painting and putting it in the catalogue', says Diggins, a Melbourne fine arts dealer, 'it's got to be visually interesting. It's got to look good in the catalogue and hanging on the wall. Exciting.'
Diggins takes great pride in her catalogue, which is not surprising considering some clients buy sight unseen. One overseas client spent $2million last year, such was his confidence in Diggins.
'I try hard to provide really good scholarship about the artwork', she says. 'The text is written to the painting, it's not just filler copy. The serious buyer already knows the autobiographical stuff. If all you do is provide background, it won't be read. You have to say where it sits in the overall ouevre, how it was constructed. That's far more important. I try to trace the history of a painting and if it's been through the auctions, we say that in the catalogue. That doesn't happen very often. It's a very valuable tool for clients. And it's important for young living artists to be in it because it sites them in Australian art history. It gives them releveance of place as to where they sit.'
The exhibition, a masterful collection of 130 works, took Diggins eight months to assemble. It boasts names such as Eugene von Guerard, Frederick McCubbin, Margaret Prestion, Russell Drysdale, Donald Friend, Albert Tucker, Charles Blackman, Fred Williams, Sidney Nolan and Charles Conder."
Le contemporain aborigene.
Beatrice de Rochebouet, Le Figaro, 1 April 2005, p.22
Lauraine Diggins de Melbourne offre une plongée dans la culture aborigene (centre de l'australie et de la region des Kimberley) et ses creations aux lignes abstraites, memoires d'un peuple, exposeés à new york et à paris depuis 1988. Les acryliques peintres en 1945 sur des grands tissus de lin par Gloria Petyarr interprètent avec des signes propres, mélange de graffiti et de pointillisme, l'histoire et les lègendes de la communauté d'Utopia. Ces fresques libres racontent la faune et la flore issues de leur cadres de view avec une poésie qui touche (de 12 à 13 500 Euro). A découvrir absolument.
Lauraine Diggins of Melbourne plunges us into the Aboriginal culture (central Australia and the Kimberley region) and its creations with abstract lines, memories of a people, exhibited in New York and Paris since 1988 (Magiciens de la Terre at the Pompidou Centre). The acrylic paints on grand canvases by Gloria Petyarr interpret with signs, through a mix of scribbles and of dots, the history and the legends of the Utopia community (in the centre of the country). These liberated paintings relate the wildlife and the flora emanate from their frameworks of view with a touching poetry (from 12 to 13 500 Euros). An absolute must-see.
