In this exhibition, Amy Stuart presents a small selection of replica works — or props — she has fabricated for researcher Emily Kobayashi. For the past three years, Kobayashi has been investigating the prolific art forger Mari Matsumoto, who vanished in approximately 2002. Under careful instruction from Kobayashi, Stuart has produced these replicas of Matsumoto’s forgeries drawn from oral descriptions, photographs and newspaper articles.
Working during the 1980s and 90s in Naarm (Melbourne), Matsumoto’s main fare was in forging the paintings of the so-called Australian Impressionists — Frederick McCubbin, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton — because of the high market value their paintings did (and continue to) command. Kobayashi, for her part, came to Matsumoto’s activities via a critique of these deeply nationalistic champions of the white, settler-colonial imaginary. For Kobayashi, her current project is to think through the potential destabilising effects of Matsumoto’s fakes as they circulate through private and public collections.
