This surreal life
After leaving school at 15 to become a jackaroo, art aficionado Christopher Talbot has gone on to live a life with more twists and turns, fast cars and exotic locations than a James Bond film.
Sitting among Salvador Dali’s surreal bronze sculptures in the d’Arenberg Cube, with a panoramic view over McLaren Vale’s picturesque vineyards, Christopher Talbot is in his element.
“It’s just the outrageousness of it,” he says, when asked what sparked his lifelong love of the Spanish artist. “Dali was a massive disrupter … his work is exotic, it’s unusual, and I like anything exotic and unusual.”
The Dali exhibition has drawn more than 250,000 art lovers to the Cube over the past five years, and it was Christopher’s vision, as president of international fine art company Art Evolution Inc, that led to it coming to South Australia.
The story of how he ended up here himself begins more than five decades ago, with the then-15-year-old leaving school and his Melbourne home to escape an unhappy childhood. Teenage Christopher lied about his farming skills to get work on properties at Ivanhoe and Wilcannia, in outback New South Wales.
“I went bush,” he says. “So, I was a young jackaroo, running around there on horses and motorbikes and rounding up sheep … I grew up in a real big hurry.”
Despite his education being cut short, he was ambitious. With car sales in his blood – his dad owned a dealership in Melbourne – Christopher moved to Sydney and got a job selling motorbikes. By 21, he had struck out on his own as a car dealer, was married, and had bought his first Rolls-Royce and his first home.
“I just worked like a demon. I was determined not to be poor. I was determined to try and make something of myself. And I know it sounds a bit goofy, but one of the catalysts was that I became addicted to watching James Bond movies.”
For an aspiring young entrepreneur, the dapper spy seemed to display all the hallmarks of success – and soon his own life did, too. Christopher was dating models and actresses while running a dealership that specialised in prestige vehicles and had secured the Maserati franchise in Sydney. Then, at 27, he traded car sales for an equally lucrative career in real estate, partnering with a Queensland builder and basing himself on the Gold Coast.
“While I was there, I did two remarkable deals: one was for two properties in the French Riviera (where he has spent every summer since), and the other was swapping a block of apartments for two Salvador Dalis and a Picasso,” he says.
Christopher had begun dabbling in art after buying a Pro Hart oil painting from an artist he met while jackarooing. He says the apartment-art swap came about through his connection with a property developer who owned a Picasso drawing titled Pan and two original Dali works.
“I used to do a lot of wheeling and dealing. So, we were just having a drink one night and I said, ‘I tell you what, I’ll take those and give you that block of apartments’.”
Later, when his multi-million-dollar property portfolio was wiped out after interest rates soared to unprecedented heights, the Dali artworks and French Riviera homes were among the few possessions Christopher managed to hold onto.
“I literally left Australia with the Dalis and $20,000. And I went to America and started my life over,” he says. “It was a shock when it all came crashing down … It was just circumstances, but I was still too young and immature to know that things could go that badly that quickly.”
After moving to Texas, where he had a friend in the oil industry, Christopher soon got back on his feet. He credits this to an obsessive path of self-education that began with reading American self-help author Napoleon Hill’s bestseller Think and Grow Rich.
Christopher rose through the ranks of the oil business, while at the same time securing his professional car racing licence, studying photography and establishing himself as a glamour photographer. The latter led to him being invited to judge Miss USA pageants and becoming entwined in the beauty pageant circuit for around a decade, during which he says he was regularly invited to parties at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion.
At the turn of the millennium, by which point he was living in Canada, Christopher’s career took another U-turn when he decided to focus on the thing he had always loved: art.
He became a Dali art dealer after connecting with the Dali Universe, which manages the surrealist’s extensive sculpture collection. He also established Art Evolution Inc, which at one point owned half a dozen galleries and still represents a number of international artists – including British actress and former “Bond girl” Jane Seymour.
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His home was a sprawling log cabin on a reserve looking out to the Rocky Mountains.
“It was stunning beyond words … but it was reclusive,” he says, explaining that the solitude became too much and eventually led to him deciding, during one of his regular sojourns on the Riviera, to return to Australia. “I was in the garden in France and I was at a crossroads and I thought, ‘I’m getting to an age where I need to sort myself out; no more James Bond stuff’.”
When he told Dali Universe he wanted to bring a major Dali exhibition to Australia, it agreed to back him. Reflecting on the serendipity, he says: “I left with Dali and I came back with Dali.”
The Dali exhibition was originally presented at Australian surrealist artist Charles Billich’s gallery in Sydney, where some visitors suggested Christopher should take it to South Australia.
“They said, ‘There’s this thing called the Cube and it’s in a winery – you should check it out’. I’d never been to South Australia, apart from when I drove through as a kid to go to Wilcannia on the Greyhound bus.”
The five-storey Rubik’s Cube-inspired building – the embodiment of the vision of d’Arenberg Winery’s eccentric chief winemaker Chester Osborn – is a surreal space befitting a surreal exhibition. Chester and Christopher initially agreed that the Dali works would go on show in the Cube’s second level for three months, but they drew so many visitors that the exhibition is now in its sixth year and has been extended until 2028.
There are around 30 Dali sculptures across the gallery space and winery grounds, with price tags ranging from $25,000 to $3.5 million. Alongside these pieces – including multiple 3D versions of Dali’s famous melting timepiece – are artworks by Charles Billich. A Modern Masters marquee adjacent the Cube displays works by other artists, including examples of Christopher’s creative photography.
Even on a weekday morning the gallery space is buzzing, with visitors taking in the artworks as a soundtrack of blues, jazz and soft rock plays in the background. Like Dali, Christopher sees himself as a disrupter who wants to upend the idea that the art business is exclusive.
“Eighty per cent of people have never walked into an art gallery because they feel intimidated,” he says. “So, my mission is to make art inclusive, educational, inspirational.”
If Christopher has one regret, it might be that the pace at which he moves has made it difficult to maintain a relationship, but he says with a laugh: “I’ve had enough now – I’m ready!”
With kangaroos visiting the backyard and views over both the ocean and adjacent conservation park, the beautiful home he bought two years ago at Moana, on the Fleurieu Coast, offers a tranquillity far removed from the razzle-dazzle of the French Riviera. Here, he has found contentment, the story of his life writ large through an extensive personal art collection that still includes the Pro Hart painting he bought at 16.
“It’s 4000 square feet, including the rooftop, and it’s wall-to-wall art. There are probably 30 sculptures there … and I’ve got Indian artifacts, I’ve got museum pieces, I’ve got memorabilia, I’ve got vintage gas pumps, vintage weight scales, Mayan pieces and Aztec pieces. It’s my whole life in one space.”
This article first appeared in the September 2025 issue of SALIFE magazine.
