Unlike their international counterparts, in recent years, Australian auction houses have largely ignored the potential of contemporary art sales, sticking with the commercially-safe formula of Post-War and Impressionist art.
This failure to develop the secondary market for contemporary art – and thus a new generation of collectors – might explain, at least in part, the market’s chronic stagnation. The annual total of Australia’s secondary art sales has hovered around the $100 million mark for almost two decades.
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Gabriella Coslovich is an arts journalist with more than 20 years’ experience, including 15 at The Age, where she was a senior arts writer. Her book, Whiteley on Trial, on Australia’s most audacious of alleged art fraud, won a Walkley in 2018.
