And what a viewing it was. One of the risen New York stars of the early 2000s, Banks Violette, already etched in art history was represented by the painting (Lot 47 ) Standard (Bergen Pro-Model), 2000, from the period of his debut show at Team Gallery in New York in 2000. This was the type of work which made him famous, an image like the cover from a heavy metal band, with skulls, teardrops and and Nascar flames. Work from a true Goth. On auction night, alas, it passed in at $44,000.
This was the story of the night, as major contemporary works from China, United Kingdom, India, USA, Scandanavia and Germany fell under the hammer. Only 15 of the 80 lots sold on the night; many will be referred to the vendor with bids just shy of reserve. It remains an open question as to why Australian secondary market audiences are not consuming international art; are our curators not inciting the middle classes to riot by the contemporary art that they install in our museums? After all, Saatchi did with the YBA’s (Young British Artists) in the 1990s. In 1997, his Sensation show was banned all over the place, but it got everybody talking, and the artists in it became famous, were written into art history and became the darlings of the international secondary market. Indeed, the secondary art markets of New York and London are powered by Contemporary Art. It is their lifeblood.
Australia’s curators might not be entirely to blame. Subodh Gupta is arguably India’s most famous contemporary artist. Even after the limelight of a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2016, there was no line of buyers waiting to purchase his work. His There is Always Cinema (IV), 2008, (Lot 26 ) was referred to the vendor with a bid of $200,000 on an estimated range $330,000-$460,000. This spectacular piece, consisting of a found wooden door with cross-brace locking mechanism leaning against the wall alongside its brass duplicate, looked fugitive, casual even, but it’s fabrication and sheer presence carries the weight of the Indian nation. Other Indian works fared much better: the kitschy-stylish canvas Coming Soon at Your Neighbourhood, 2008, (Lot 34 ) by design/art duo Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra sold midrange with a hammer of $85,000. The buyers will need a neighbourhood to put it as the canvas measures 2.44 by 7.32 metres. Smaller in scale, and cloaked in collaged fabric, Jagannath Panda’s Absence-in Cite, 2007, (Lot 37 ) sold just below its estimated range at $28,000.
At the lower end of the market, an interesting suite of 5 works by West Coast artist Steve Canaday all found homes at around the $4,400 level—see for example Wasted, 2002 (Lot 63 ). His paintings place exaggerated female anatomies in surprising locations. His work is worth watching as it sits alongside his more famous contemporary American luminaries of exaggerated portraiture such as John Currin and Lisa Yuskavage.
The illustrious Contemporary Chinese section of the catalogue, was loaded with spectacular works such as Zeng Fanzhi’s Sky No 7, 2005, (Lot 10 ) with an estimate $920,000-$1,183,000, or the brilliantly painted Consuming Reigns the World No 1, 2006, (Lot 18 ) by Zhenh Guogu at $33,000-$46,000. All remained unsold, even though, for example, the Queensland Museum of Art has done much to foster, curate and buy Asian art in Australia through many years of devotion to the Asia Pacific Trienniale.
It seems that we will continue to have to take that well-worn track to overseas art fairs: Frieze, Basel, Armory and Miami to consume (buy) international art of the highest quality. (There was little international art of substance at last week’s Sydney Contemporary.) Mossgreen are to be congratulated for attempting to remedy the situation with a classy international sale of this kind.
