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New York disappointment sharpens focus on next Indigenous art auction

Industry players in Australia are holding their breath to see whether Indigenous art auctions here will react to the lacklustre results achieved by Sotheby’s Aboriginal Art auction in New York last month.

At the Sotheby’s auction on May 21 (New York time), just 37 per cent of 65 lots were sold under the hammer.

Total sales of $US884,936 (including buyer’s premium) compared unfavourably with total pre-sale estimates of $US2,864,000 to $US4,123,000.

Sources said the Sotheby’s result emphasised the loss of Australian consultant Tim Klingender who died two years ago, causing Sotheby’s to skip its annual Aboriginal Art auction last year.

Klingender had spent years building specialist knowledge of Indigenous art, and was able to secure glamour consignments from around the world.

So what went wrong this year? Some market watchers thought estimates in the auction were too high. Others thought the political turmoil in America had unsettled the market.

The New York auction was organised by Sotheby’s in collaboration with Klingender’s widow, Skye McCardle Klingender, who now runs the consultancy he established.

Former auction house executive Geoff Cassidy and leading Indigenous art curator and author Wally Caruana also worked hard on the project to honour Klingender’s memory and help continue the Sotheby’s tradition.

Within hours of the sale closing, with disappointment still in the air, Sotheby’s head of African and Oceanic Art, Alexander Grogan, reiterated the company’s commitment to the Indigenous Australian art sector.

“While the results did not meet expectations, we remain committed to the promotion and appreciation of this category on the global stage,” Grogan said.

Where does all this leave the Indigenous art auction market in Australia? Will Australian-based auction firms see their own prices impacted by the events in New York?

Mirri Leven, the director of Art Leven gallery and auction house in Sydney, told Saleroom that every auction affects what comes after.

Having said that, Leven said she has faith in the quality, provenance and variety of all 82 lots in her First Nations Fine Art Auction to be held on June 17, in her Redfern rooms.

Art Leven auction’s highest estimated lot is by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, the elder who lived in the region known as Utopia about 230 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs.

Kngwarreye died in 1996. She lived to witness her great success as an artist – but not long enough to know that London’s Tate Modern gallery would play host to her exhibition, Emily Kam Kngwarray (spellings of Aboriginal names often differ), which was curated by the National Gallery of Australia and was seen there first.

The exhibition is scheduled to be seen at Tate Modern from July 10 until January 11, 2026.

The Kngwarreye painting in Art Leven’s auction is titled Ankara Merne – Intekwe, 1990, and measures 122 x 92cm. The pre-sale estimate attached to the work is $450,000 to $550,000.

The painting features layered dotting in earthy tones. It has a particularly interesting history, having been in Kngwarreye’s first solo exhibition which was held at Utopia Art Sydney in April 1990.

That first solo show attracted attention from collectors, curators and other artists, “many of whom still express their deep regret at an opportunity missed”, as Utopia Art Sydney’s director, Christopher Hodges, writes in the Art Leven catalogue.

Ankara Merne – Intekwe was number six in the catalogue of 19 paintings.

“It was snapped up on the opening day, and it’s been in the same hands ever since,” Hodges wrote.

Early participants in Kngwarreye’s market were prescient, given the way her prices subsequently rocketed.

A painting by Kngwarreye fetched the second-highest price ever paid for an Indigenous Australian work at auction. That was $2.1 million (including buyer’s premium) for Earth’s Creation, in 2017. (The highest price paid for an Indigenous work of art at auction was $2.4 million including premium, for Warlugulong by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri.)

The second-highest estimate in the Art Leven auction catalogue is attached to another Kngwarreye. Summer Abundance V, 1993, measuring 90 x 120cm, was once held in the well-known Thomas Vroom Collection in the Netherlands, but is now being offered from a private collection in Victoria.

The estimate on Summer Abundance V is $150,000 to $200,000.

The Art Leven auction includes six paintings, lots 11 to 16, from a special subset of Indigenous artworks known as “Papunya boards”.

These were paintings done on boards at the Northern Territory settlement of Papunya between 1971 and 1974. The Papunya boards are revered as totemic of the very beginning of post-colonial Indigenous art as we know it today (notwithstanding the 65,000 years of Indigenous art production that preceded it).

Among the Papunya boards, lot 11 is Walinngi (Women Catching a Snake), 1973, by John Kipara Tjakamarra, which carries an estimate of $30,000 to $40,000.

Lots 12 to 16 are Papunya boards from the collection of the late John Jory, who was executive dean of the faculty of arts and architecture at the University of Western Australia.

Jory was also a member of the Australian Research Council.

“By 2010, the Jory collection included fine art works representing artists from Papunya Tula, Warlayirti, West Pilbara, Warmun, Warlukurlangu, Gunbalanya, Maningrida and Yirrkala, among others,” Jory’s son, Paul Jory, writes in the auction catalogue.

A number of the Jory pieces are estimated at $50,000 to $70,000 each. They include Water Story, 1972, by Old Walter Tjampitjinpa. A diagram on the back of the painting decodes various parts of the painting, including the undulating lines that indicate running water.

Also carrying the same estimate is Water Dreaming, 1971, by Long Jack Philippus Tjakamarra. This work also comes with a diagram pointing out waterholes, falling rain, and a water man invoking rain by his song.

Other artists represented elsewhere in the Art Leven auction include Naata Nungurrayi, Eubena Nampitjin, Tommy Watson, Lydia Balbal, Boxer Milner Tjampitjin, Lin Onus, and Kathleen Petyarre.

Total estimates for the auction range between $1,410,800 and $1,851,900.

Turning to news elsewhere, the Australian-born artist Mortimer Menpes has been the subject of recent auction interest, with the current price record for his work set in November 2024 at $98,161.

Menpes was born in South Australia in 1855 but left to study art in England. He spent the last 30 years of his life in the UK, and died in 1938.

Little wonder, then, that 15 of Menpes’ paintings are coming up for sale through Olympia Auctions in London on June 11.

According to Olympia, Menpes is celebrated for his insights into other cultures through his travels to Japan and India, among other countries.

His interest in the Far East, particularly Japan, was stimulated by working in London as studio assistant to James McNeill Whistler, the leading advocate of japonisme.

The Menpes works for auction include Geisha Playing the Shamisen (estimate £2500 to £3500), On the Ganges (estimate £3000 to £5000), and Family in Kashmir (£5000 to £7000).

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