What do the top ten sale prices at auction this year tell us about the Australian art market? That it continues to be dominated, for want of a better phrase, by dead white males. For all the fuss about celebrating women artists, only two women made it into the top ten this year, and that in itself is a record. Rosalie Gascoigne was an exciting late entry after her work Beaten Track, 1992, sold at Deutscher and Hackett a fortnight ago for $1.04 million (including buyer’s fees).
Ethel Carrick Fox is the only other woman on the list this year. Over the past decade, women have appeared in the top ten just four times – Fox twice (2019 and 2022), Gascoigne once (2022), and Emily Kame Kngwarreye once (2017).
Loading...
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.
