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On 20 December 2023, Queensland Police charged Tove Langridge, the proprietor of TW Wonderful Artwork gallery in Brisbane, Australia, with 9 theft offences and seized 20 artworks from storage models he had leased.
The prison fees comply with two years of authorized tussles between a number of artists and Langridge over the return of their works, alleged unpaid gross sales proceeds and revenue derived by way of his artwork advisory, which supplies prints to motels and leases work to companies. A lot of this exercise, the artists declare, has taken place with out their consent or fee.
Alana Kushnir, a lawyer representing the artists, says the case is without doubt one of the first through which police have charged a gallery proprietor for “theft the place an art work has been offered on consignment and the sale proceeds haven’t been remitted to the artist. The repetitious nature of the conduct provides to the seriousness of it.”
A Los Angeles-based artist who needs to stay nameless tells The Artwork Newspaper Langridge is “very charismatic but in addition dodgy”. Based on the artist, who met Langridge through Instagram and had a solo exhibition at TW Wonderful Artwork in 2018, Langridge all the time appeared extra “ within the optics of the gallery” and in being “Instagram-famous” than in working a bodily exhibition house.
Langridge launched TW Wonderful Artwork in 2014 as an “on-line artwork market” promoting restricted version reproductions produced in collaboration with artists. His preliminary providing included items purportedly by Michael Goldberg, an Summary Expressionist artist who died in 2007, and his associate, the painter Lynn Umlauf, who died in 2022. Langridge labored as an assistant of their studios till 2013.
Halley Harrisburg, the director of New York’s Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, which manages Goldberg’s property, questions Langridge’s early enterprise. Rosenfeld and Manny Silverman Gallery, which represented Goldberg earlier than it closed, “by no means authorised” any such prints, Harrisburg says, including: “Michael was not a printmaker.” (Langridge didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark.)
Insta-expander
After opening a bodily house in Brisbane in 2014, Langridge used Instagram to broaden his roster, courting ascendant artists akin to Sebastian Helling, Samuel Bassett and Taylor A. White. One former assistant of Langridge’s (who spoke on situation of anonymity) says: “He had a novel eye for recognizing expertise.”
Jordan Kerwick, an Australian artist now primarily based in France, says of Langridge: “I knew a ton of artists internationally who wished to work with him.” Kerwick began displaying with TW Wonderful Artwork after assembly Langridge on Instagram round 2018. He and a few others who did so now remorse it.
Though Kerwick believes Langridge is a “horrendous salesman” in particular person, it didn’t matter on Instagram. “A lot of the works he was promoting of mine had been going abroad,” he provides. However thus far, Kerwick says, Langridge has by no means paid him.
Langridge’s commanding Instagram following additionally attracted undesirable consideration. Stefan Simchowitz, the controversial Los Angeles-based seller, approached two artists Langridge had “found” in 2019. Based on the previous assistant, Langridge grew to become “very indignant concerning the state of affairs”.
The fallout noticed Langridge ship work by one of many artists again to their studio in Europe; when the artist refused to pay the import obligation, the cargo was returned to Brisbane. The artist, talking on situation of anonymity, says he was “so drained” of Langridge’s “soiled strikes” that he demanded the seller “destroy” his works, “document it” and ship images as proof. Langridge complied.
Kimberly Rowe, a California artist who first labored with TW Wonderful Artwork in 2016, says Langridge refused to return her portray Pleased Birthday to a New York gallery, calling it “his child”. Till lately, the piece was put in in a Brisbane bar co-owned by Langridge; Rowe says she doesn’t know whether it is among the many works seized by the police.
Rowe estimates Langridge had between 50 and 75 items of her artwork in his possession previous to his arrest. “I didn’t give him permission to maintain any of that work. I used to be not paid for any of it,” she says.
Following Langridge’s scheduled look at Southport Magistrates Court docket on 23 January, an additional listening to was adjourned till 27 February. If convicted, Langridge might resist 5 years in jail.
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