Art auction hammer-time for fun and the serious

Plans are underway at Australia’s major auction houses as they gear up for another record-breaking year.

Geoffrey Smith from Smith and Singer auction house with a work by John Kelly to be exhibited in Melbourne in February and March. Picture: Aaron Francis

Exhibition plans are in full swing at some of the country’s top fine-art auction houses, with pieces from celebrated Australian and international artists set to go under the hammer.

Major artworks showing in Smith and Singer’s Melbourne presentation of artist John Kelly are still being framed as the collection of paintings and sculptures is finalised ahead of its opening from February 15 to March 12, with price estimates ­between $50,000 to $150,000.

“I cannot wait to finally place them on the walls,” Smith and Singer chairman Geoffrey Smith said. “The consistency of quality and significance of the work is both impressive and inspiring. We are seeing a practitioner who is performing at his peak.”

Mr Smith described Kelly’s work — 11 of which have been ­curated by Smith and Singer — as a melody of Australian larrikinism and highbrow art. “It’s not a big exhibition, but the quality and precision is just fantastic,” he said. “As an artist we know him for his representation of cows and landscape, but he feeds off Australian art, international art and his own iconography.

“He has made his own mark like Sidney Nolan and Ned Kelly — he’s John Kelly with his cows.”

Riding off a record-breaking year where bidding prices soared, Deutscher and Hackett’s 2021 instalment of its Australian and international fine art auction is bound to set paddles waving.

Executive director Damian Hackett said the auction house would pull some exciting sales ­despite the difficulty of “dragging people out of their swimming pools to consign paintings”.

He said paintings in the auction were consigned ­between $10,000 to $600,000.

There will be viewings in Melbourne and Sydney as a precursor to the auction on April 21. The exhibition includes works from painter Fred Williams, Archibald winner John Olsen and Clarice Beckett, whose art is featured in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of NSW.

Works by Indigenous artists including Emily Kngwarreye, John Mawurndjul, and Rover Thomas will comprise Deutscher and Hackett’s Important Australian Aboriginal art auction in March. Price estimates will range between $2500 to $250,000.