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Communication Breakdown

AN indigenous art collection valued in the millions could be lost after negotiations between its owners and the Redfern-Waterloo Authority broke down writes Robert Burton-Bradley in the Central of 13th August 2008.

Artists Gordon and Elaine Syron said RWA CEO, Robert Domm, had requested they bring their collection of almost 1400 art works and historical items to a warehouse at Eveleigh rail yards for cataloguing before an appropriate space to house and display the collection was found nearby.

The collection includes Mr Syron's most famous work, Judgement of His Peers, for which he was recently offered $1.5 million. The RWA was paying the Syrons for the cataloguing work and allowing them to live at the warehouse site where the collection was stored.

According to the Syrons, misunderstandings with RWA staff over professional assistance about how to catalogue the works had resulted in only 90 per cent of the work being completed by the deadline of June 30.

"Robert Domm said we were going to be here for 12 months, then he moved us to another building," Mr Syron said. "He was going to buy the collection and help us find a place where it would be preserved and displayed."

Mr Syron said he and his wife were now facing eviction from the North Eveleigh site and the loss of the collection. "The whole point of coming here and doing all this work was so we could preserve this collection in an indigenous art centre for the future, selling this is the last thing we want to do," Mr Syron said.

Elaine Syron said the couple had been led to believe professional expertise in archiving and cataloguing works would be offered and said there had been a miscommunication.

"We had a contract to make a catalogue of the art works, but we are artists, not curators, we needed expertise just to speed things up," she said.

Mr Domm rejected the Syrons' version of events, saying the RWA had gone to considerable lengths to accommodate the couple and had already extended their deadline by three months in the past.

"The RWA offered to assist as the project was consistent with our plan to establish an Aboriginal Cultural Centre. It was always made clear that the accommodation they were provided at North Eveleigh as part of their employment was only short-term," he said.

Source: Central 13th August 2008.