Art Auction Sale Reviews

Without even a saleroom in Australia, Christie's local representative Ronan Sulich is going gangbusters in modern Chinese art. Also coincidentally reaching out to an international audience, his predecessor Roger McIlroy has a career in television ahead of him.

Bonhams Australia is closing its decorative arts department following a stall in the market place which has lasted for more than its four years of direct operation in Australia and shows little sign of reversing.

The move also signals a change in direction for the global group of which it is part and which is now taking on the two major fine arts companies, Sotheby's and Christie's in a serious manner in Europe and the US.

Sydney Morning Herald journalist Julie Power writes that the businessman Trevor Kennedy's plan to sell his $20 million art collection, which includes the earliest known portrait of a European in Australia after the First Fleet arrived, to a buyer in Singapore has been threatened. Mr Kennedy has been fighting the federal government for the right to export the collection in its entirety. Because it contains valuable historical items, Mr Kennedy's agent John Hawkins was refused permission to apply for a single export licence.

It took just over 9000 paintings to gross $102 million at Australian and New Zealand art auctions last year. This was less than the price of a single major painting on the international auction market. Far less, indeed given one such, a portrait of Francis Bacon sold for a world auction of $US142.4 million at Christie's in New York in October.

For more than a decade, art dealer Ronald Coles defrauded his hapless clients, lying to them repeatedly about the paintings they had invested in and evading their desperate demands for what they were owed. But when the 66-year-old fraudster finally walked to the witness box on Friday, it appeared a mea culpa was not foremost in his mind, writes Paul Bibby in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Anne Davies writes in the Sydney Morning Herald that barrister Louise McBride is taking on one of the world's most prestigious auction houses, Christie's, over an allegedly fake Albert Tucker work she bought in 2000.

Amos Aikman writes in The Australian that the niece of one of Australia's most celebrated indigenous artists is in talks with galleries around the country to gain control of his work, in the midst of a bitter feud involving two top art dealers. Tommy Watson - a septuagenarian Western Desert painter whose works have sold for record prices and are held in galleries around the world - is at the centre of a tug of war between his former dealer and manager, John Ioannou; his current dealer, Chris Simon; and members of his own family.

Sky high prices for artwork in New York this week have failed to raise the spirits of Australian arty types with self-managed super funds. Despite the year drawing to a close and with a new government in Canberra – there’s still no sign of an easing of the rules on SMSFs investing in artwork that were tightened up in 2011.

Auctioneers are expecting top prices for a rare collection of rubble next week. But’s not just any rubble – it’s a collection of samples from the long-lost Pink and White Terraces, which will go under the hammer at an art auction. It’s the largest collection to be offered in one lot  from the natural formation, described as the “eighth wonder of the world.” The terraces on the edge of Lake Rotomahana near Rotorua, disappeared in 1886 when Mt Tarawera erupted, killing 120 people, burying a village and causing widespread damage. Part of the terraces were rediscovered in 2011, about 60 metres below the surface of the lake.

The final work of the late artist Margaret Olley sold at auction on Tuesday evening when her Paddington home sold to a local art collector and painter for $2.8 million. It was a hotly contested auction held off-site, with more than a handful of active bidders and a fast succession of offers once the opening bid of $2 million was made.

Mowbray Collectables has brought the hammer down on its purchase of Auckland-based Webb's auction house, priced at at least $1.3 million. The listed Otaki company signalled earlier this year its intention to buy the 51 per cent balance of Webb's auction house it did not already own.

Robert Crawford writes in The South Coast Register that renowned Australian artist and former Shoalhaven resident Leonard Long OAM has passed away aged 102. He died early Sunday morning in a Melbourne hospital. A prolific oils landscape artist, he will be remembered for his generosity in donating paintings (to many different organisations, to help raise funds) and for his help to many young artists.

BBC News reports that  two George Stubbs paintings are to stay in the UK after the National Maritime Museum bought them with the help of a £1.5m donation from shipping magnate Eyal Ofer. The 18th century works were commissioned after Captain James Cook's first Endeavour voyage to the Pacific. They were put under an export bar in January after being sold to a buyer outside the UK, and sparked an appeal backed by David Attenborough to keep them in the UK.

About 1,500 modernist masterpieces – thought to have been looted by the Nazis – have been confiscated from the flat of an 80-year-old man from Munich, in what is being described as the biggest artistic find of the postwar era. The artworks, which could be worth as much as €1bn (£860m), are said to include pieces by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Paul Klee, Max Beckmann and Emil Nolde. They had been considered lost until now, according to a report in the German news weekly Focus.

Interest in William Rose (1929 - 1997) continues to wither even when his works appear in the fertile fields of the arbitrage market ready for picking for offering afresh in Australia. Eight works by Rose from an Australian collection offered in Edinburgh on October 5 in an Interiors sale have been returned to the vendor's residence in France after being passed in at an auction held by Lyon and Turnbull.

Deutscher and Hackett shipped its very special Donald Friend offering from Melbourne to Sydney for sale because that was where the interest was thought to be. But one third of it went overseas with a big buyer in Bali taking much of this.

One of the last links with the George Bell School and the Leveson Street Gallery, the Melbourne commercial gallery which took many of its leading artists, has been cut with the death on October 24 of the artist Dorothy Mary Braund at the age of 86 . Jillian Holst of the Eastgate Gallery said Braund might not have been entirely happy to have this reported as Braund was a private person who lived almost exclusively for her art. But it was important for the preservation of the artist's memory and her art.

The commercial art sector seeking relief from the resale royalty will have to wait until a government review of the scheme is completed this year. Arts Minister George Brandis says he will examine the review findings before determining the fate of Labor's resale royalty, which was introduced in 2010, writes Matthew Westwood in The Australian.

The most significant collection of paintings, sketches, furnishings, ceramics and wood carvings from the late artist Donald Friend is set for auction in Sydney on Sunday. The 242 lots valued at more than $1 million are not from Friend's estate, nor are they owned by his partner or family. They belong Attilio Guarracino, his friend and occasional agent, writes Michaela Boland in The Australian.

An Auckland auctioneer is hoping a Goldie painting can reach $1 million when it goes up for sale next month. Kawhena was painted in 1892 when the artist was only 22. It has an estimated price of $600,000 to $800,000 but, because of its importance, could go for significantly more, International Art Centre director Richard Thomson said.

Michaela Boland writes in The Australian that the value of art and collectables in self-managed superannuation funds plummeted 27 per cent the year after the federal government tightened the rules governing acquisitions. The Australian Taxation Office estimated the total collectables held in SMSFs to be worth $513 million at June 2012 - compared with the ATO's estimate of $699m at June 2011 when the new rules came into force.
 

When Judy DeFord, a retired high school art teacher in Seattle, received an e-mail from Catherine Person Gallery recently, she saw a familiar name on its list of artists. It was a former student of hers, Allyce Wood. “I thought, ‘Great!,’ and I decided to make a purchase,” Ms. DeFord said.
But instead of making the 10-minute trip to the gallery, she logged onto Amazon Art, a fine-arts and collectibles category that Amazon introduced on Aug. 6.

Sotheby’s has adopted a shareholder-rights plan to protect itself from hostile takeovers after hedge-fund manager Daniel Loeb increased his stake in the auction house and called on the chief executive officer to resign. The board adopted the so-called poison pill after the “recent rapid accumulations of significant portions” of outstanding common shares, Sotheby’s said in a statement. The move could make an attempt to take control of the company more costly.

The activist investor Daniel Loeb says auctioneer Sotheby's is lagging behind its rival Christie's and has called for its boss to go. He says William Ruprecht enjoys the perks of a "long-gone era of imperial CEOs", that includes club memberships.

Paintings stolen from the Sydney penthouse of property developer Peter O'Mara have been uncovered by police during a raid on a house in the city's southwest. Police discovered a hoard of 18 artworks estimated to be worth more than $1.5 million.

A Brett Whiteley masterpiece hidden from public view for almost 40 years is to be put up for auction next month. My Armchair is expected to break the record for a Whiteley painting. Art entrepreneur Rod Menzies believes the painting will sell for $3 million to $4 million
 

As previously reported in the Australian Art Sales Digest, the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) is selling paintings valued at £4.2m to plug a deficit in its pension scheme. The works, by the English artist Thomas Baines (1820-75), which record the early history of Australia, seem destined to go to the southern hemisphere, subject to the granting of an export licence. There is further background in this article published in The Art Newspaper.

For the long-anticipated show of Australian art at the Royal Academy of Arts, the opening night was always going to be a joyous affair. The problem is that nobody looks at the art at an opening. Having already spent hours inspecting this exhibition, I felt like a party-pooper when people gushed: "Isn't it wonderful?" No, it is not, writes John McDonald in  The Age.
 

Sotheby's chairman Geoffrey Smith has reignited the bitter public spat with his former lover, Robert Gould, over millions of dollars worth of art.

ABC News reports that when academic Nina Burridge opened the frame of a Margaret Preston print she had bought from a live sale from Arthouse Auctions in Sydney , she could not believe her eyes.  "Oh no, I've done my money. I thought I was buying a limited edition Margaret Preston linocut or woodcut and I thought I got a very good deal because I paid around $300 for it," she said. What she discovered, instead, was a page, cut out of a catalogue.

The art market rarely features in election campaigns but according to a Robert Gottliebson report in Business Spectator over the weekend:  "In the last few days I have been in the company of people very close to the art community. I have never seen them looking so happy. "They have reason to believe that Tony Abbott will allow self-managed funds to hang their art investments on the walls of the homes of fund beneficiaries."

More than two centuries after London was enchanted by first sight of "The Kongouro from New Holland", following Captain Cook's historic first voyage to Australia, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich (NMM) and the National Gallery of Australia are battling to acquire remarkable paintings by George Stubbs, in which the artist struggled to represent the kangaroo and a dingo, neither of which he had seen in the flesh writes Maev Kennedy in The Guardian

He was one of Australia's leading art dealers, raking in millions of dollars each year and enjoying a lavish lifestyle of luxury cars and celebrity lunches. But in Parramatta District Court on Thursday, Ronald Coles admitted to multi-million-dollar fraud perpetuated over more than five years – and he is now facing jail. In a firm voice, the 65-year-old pleaded guilty to 15 counts of fraud and deception as a director, and to larceny as a bailee, committed over the past 10 years.

A John Glover Tasmanian landscape that has been in the same collection for almost two centuries is set to be auctioned in London next month with an asking price of $3 million to $4.34m. If it sells within that range, it will set a new record for the colonial landscape painter who immigrated to Tasmania in the years after British settlement, writes Michaela Boland in The Australian.

The idea of a “national art” is surely out of date in our internationalist times. Yet many countries still wrestle with the concept of an artistic identity. And such categories are useful to museums and galleries: the Royal Academy’s big autumn show, simply called Australia, spans 200 years of the country’s art history. Famous names will rub shoulders with artists familiar only to connoisseurs, contemporary conceptualists will collide with Aboriginal artists and narrative-minded Victorians (from the era, not the state). The RA is calling it the “most significant survey of Australian art ever mounted in the UK”, writes Jane Ure-Smith in the Financial Times.

Over the next couple of weeks there are several major fine art auctions in Auckland and Wellington which have some big name artists and big prices as well as reasonably priced photographs and artists prints

On the eve of the 30th annual National Aboriginal and Islander Art Award in Darwin, the indigenous art market is in crisis, felled by a combination of chaotic government policies, low buyer demand and an oversupply of new works, writes Nicholas Rothwell in The Australian. 

Australia's complex resale royalty right for visual artists was launched in June 2010, with good intentions and much fanfare. It had an ambitious goal: to bring calibration and a degree of fairness to the art trade's frothy, speculative heights, writes Nicholas Rothwell in The Australian.

A decision by Sidney Nolan's widow to reclaim her Australian citizenship could prove lucrative following a ruling to include her late husband's art in the government's resale royalty scheme, says Tim Douglas, writing in The Australian. The artist's works had been exempt from the scheme -- a 5 per cent surcharge on the second and subsequent sales of an original work of more than $1000 - because Mary Nolan, the artist's sole beneficiary who lives in Britain, relinquished her citizenship after Nolan's death in 1992.

The case brought against a leading art consultant over the $2.5 million sale of an alleged fake Brett Whiteley painting has been dismissed by the NSW Supreme Court. But questions remain as to whether the painting referred to as Lavender Bay, signed and dated ''Brett Whiteley 1988'', is genuine, writes Andrew Taylor, in the Sydney Morning Herald .

The suit by a Sydney banker Mr Andrew Pridham against Melbourne art dealer Ms Anita Archer was dismissed by Justice I. Harrison in the Supreme Court in Sydney today. (Monday)

The National Museum of Australia has emerged as the buyer of an exquisite album of seaweed specimens sold as lot 133 at Gowans Auctions antique sale in Hobart on June 29 for $8500 plus 15 per cent buyers premium, writes Terry Ingram

New Zealand artist Alvin Pankhurst, who won his first art award as a seven-year-old at school, has achieved a record price at a sale of important early and rare art in Auckland. His 2006 oil on acrylic on canvas, called About Time, sold for $55,000 at an auction at the International Art Centre last night.

A rare portrait by a Tasmanian convict is expected to create competition between public institutions when it is auctioned in Sydney next month, writes Lucy Shannon in The Australian. The watercolour painted in 1846 by Thomas Wainewright depicts Thomas Giblin, a one-time director of the Bank of Van Diemen's Land.
 

Sir Arthur Streeton was born May 8 1857 but his death on September 2, 1943 is of more interest to the art trade and far more likely to be celebrated.

An auction featuring some of this country's most significant artists includes works owned by Eric and Kathy Hertz, who died when their plane crashed into the sea near Kawhia in March. Among the paintings being auctioned are a 1910 oil of  Arawa chieftainess Rakapa by Charles Frederick Goldie, which is expected to bring up to $250,000. 

In the opaque world of art buying, one man's trash is another gallery's treasure. In this case, a 1000-year-old bronze statue of Shiva sold by the National Gallery of Australia to help purchase a larger Shiva from a disgraced antiquities dealer has turned up in the collection of one of the world's leading museums, reports Andrew Taylor, the Arts reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald.

Art collectors who thought they bought genuine Charles Blackmans have been refunded $120,000 after the expert who authenticated the works admitted he got it wrong, writes Rick Feneley in the Sydney Morning Herald.
 

A rare Sidney Nolan giant bird painting will be offered for sale for the first time in 65 years when it goes under the hammer at Sotheby's Australian art sale in Sydney next month, writes Michaela Boland in "The Australian"

Two auction houses have responded to difficult markets by the very different strategies of re-appointing a former stalwart and redistributing duties among existing staff. A third has taken an expansive view and appointed a competitor's departing staff, writes Terry Ingram.

At Bonhams New Bond Street rooms in the July 16 sale of prints, The Joke by Ethel Spowers ( 1890-1947) sold for £85,250.

The colourful 1932 linocut was among the body of work done by the artist inspired by Claude Flight's modernistic prints.

As police smash yet another counterfeit ring in Germany and Israel, Georgina Adam looks at why this billion-dollar business is growing – and why buyers are so easily taken in.

A 900-year-old granulite sculpture of Shiva with Nandi that the Art Gallery of NSW acquired from disgraced dealer Subhash Kapoor, has been strongly linked to a temple in southern India.

Douglas E. Barrett's 1974 book Early Cola Architecture and Sculpture 886-1014 AD contains a picture of a carving indistinguishable from the 112cm Shiva that the Sydney gallery paid $300,000 for in 2004, writes Michaela Boland in The Australian.

Spectators were spilling out the doors and some bidders had to wave paddles high above their heads to be seen by the auctioneer, as more than 500 people turned out for the final dispersal of Margaret Olley's distinctive bric-a-brac and domestic artworks at the National Art School in Sydney yesterday, reports Michaela Boland in The Australian.

Painter Jeffrey Smart has died peacefully of renal failure, aged 91. Adelaide-born Smart, who relocated to Italy in 1964 "slipped away" in hospital Thursday evening Australian time, said Stuart Purves, one of two gallerists who represented the painter in Australia.

A reclining woman, a cricket bat or a well-bred horse are all fundamental to the sale price of paintings, according to a set of rules developed by one of Britain's most distinguished experts on modern art. Philip Hook, the senior specialist at Sotheby's who declared last week that red paintings sell for up to 50 per cent more than equivalent works in drab colours, has identified dozens of hidden rules that subtly determine whether an auction room is clamorous or hushed.

How is an artist's reputation made? And how is it maintained after death? Katrina Strickland,  arts editor of The Australian Financial Review, explores these eternal and infernal questions by concentrating in particular on the way artists' estates are managed in Australia. The main characters in this book are the widows and other relations, or the estate executors, of a sample of 15 postwar Australian artists, most of whom have had work sold at auction for sums involving six and sometimes seven figures.

A joint investigation by The Weekend Australian and The Los Angeles Times has uncovered copies of invoices indicating that the NGA went on a $3.8 million buying spree, acquiring six precious Indian artefacts between 2005 and 2008 from alleged Indian smuggling mastermind Subhash Kapoor, writes Michaela Boland in The Australian.
 

ABC News reports that prominent Aboriginal artist Dorothy Napangardi was killed in a car accident near Alice Springs at the weekend. Napangardi was regarded as one of Australia's leading contemporary Aboriginal artists, and her works are contained in major collections around the world.

Eamonn Duff writes in the Sydney Morning Herald, that Gallery owners may be forced to operate under licence and use trust accounts under sweeping new art industry changes to be considered by the federal government. Arts Minister Tony Burke has called a summit with the nation's peak visual arts body, the National Association for the Visual Arts, with a view to introducing new measures to provide greater protection for professional artists and the public.

A modest crowd braved the cold to attend Sotheby's Australia's Aboriginal art sale on Tuesday night. They assembled in the beige meeting room where the company holds its auctions, several floors below its offices in Anzac House, at the Paris end of Melbourne's Collins Street. Some of the items on offer were considered to be exceptional, but the sight of the same old faces didn't do much to pique the interest of those attending, writes Michaela Boland in The Australian

The painting that held the record price for an Australian artwork at auction for nearly a decade before the modernists run of 2006-10, and was once owned by a member of the Waterhouse racing family, is coming back to market. Frederick McCubbin’s 1893 painting Bush Idyll has been consigned to Christie’s London for its annual Australian art sale, to be held on September 26. The auction, which also includes a John Glover priced at £1.8 million to £2.5 million ($2.8 million to $3.9 million), has been timed to coincide with the Royal Academy of Art’s big survey of Australian art, which opens only days earlier in the British capital, writes Katrina Strickland in the Australian Financial Review..

A Brett Whiteley painting that has been held in a private US collection for more than 40 years has fetched just under $1 million – more than $600,000 above the reserve – at auction. In its first major auction in its new Collins Street premises on Tuesday night, Sotheby's Melbourne sold Woman in a Bath 1, 1963, to a telephone bidder for $976,000, well above the pre-sale estimate of between $200,000 and $300,000

Quality art attracted competitive bidding at Deutscher and Hackett's first fine art auction for the year in Melbourne last night, but it was cold comfort for the rest that was on offer. Of the 138 artworks offered for an estimated $4.8million to $6.5m, 75 per cent found buyers. The auction house recorded total sales of $4.5m, including the buyers premium.

Two paintings once owned by fake Tahitian "prince" Joel Morehu-Barlow will be offered for sale tomorrow at Deutscher and Hackett's fine art auction in Melbourne. Unlike the carnivalesque auction of Barlow's goods held in Brisbane last month, the two paintings have not been marketed with reference to the fraudster.

Outside the rarefied world of art dealers and collectors, where discretion is often prized nearly as much as the art itself, the Nahmad family does not attract the same recognition as some of their fellow billionaires. But for those who trade in multimillion-dollar paintings, they have long been a major presence at the premier auctions held every spring and fall at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, where they often descend, wives and children included, and have been known to argue loudly with one another, even while others around them engaged in more genteel bidding.

Tullochs Auctions in Launceston usually specialises in colonial furniture but tomorrow's auction will feature a mid-sized Arthur Streeton oil painting too. The auction house says the landscape was painted during the 1930s. It has been owned by members of the Tresise family since 1949 when, according to Singapore-based headhunter Ian Tresise, his parents bought it from an art gallery in Melbourne. The pastoral scene depicted in the painting is evocative of Victoria's Western District farming region and the auction house has called the painting Dunkeld, the name of a town there.
 

An art auction of "unprecedented quality and calibre" and boasting some of the biggest names in contemporary New Zealand art pulled in around $2 million when the works went under the hammer in Auckland last night. More than 200 collectors attended Art + Object's first major art event of the year in Newton, with phone and online bidders from as far away as Europe also bidding on the 66 pieces.

A sale of unique New Zealand art, including work by acclaimed artists Ralph Hotere and Charles F. Goldie, exceeded expectations when it went under the hammer on Wednesday night. The event, at Webb's auction house in Auckland, caused excitement amongst art collectors due to the rarity of the paintings on offer.

Original of one of the most reproduced pictures in the world sells for twice its estimate and a record sum for a work by the artist. The original Chinese Girl, a painting that has become one of the most recognisable and reproduced pictures in the world, sold for twice its estimate when a buyer paid nearly £1m at an auction on Wednesday. The work was sold at Bonhams in London where a new auction record was set for the artist, the late Vladimir Tretchikoff, a Russian émigré who settled in South Africa and regarded his work with utmost seriousness.

It’s no accident that Sotheby’s Australia has found itself a temporary new home at the Paris-end of Collins Street with such recherché neighbours as Gucci, Vuitton and Prada. The company’s Melbourne saleroom sits comfortably amongst the myriad luxury international brands that pepper the top end of town.

In the world of sports memorabilia and philatelic auctions, Charles Leski is a towering presence. But it is a niche marketplace. Conducting business in this specialised field does not require foot-traffic and a prominent street frontage; the company’s headquarters in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn East seemed to fit the bill nicely.

The consignment of four works of art by the hand of one of Australia’s greatest painters doesn’t attract media attention as a matter of course. An exception to the rule is when that artist is Ian Fairweather.

Any suspicion that Bonhams Australia was keeping the doors open to spite Tim Goodman after his much-publicised switch of allegiance to the Sotheby’s brand in 2009 has been put firmly to rest by the company’s latest moves.

In what is likely to be the ‘Sale of the Century’, auction house Bonhams has landed the most sought-after Australian art market prize in recent memory.

TV pioneer and king-maker, Reg Grundy AC OBE, and his wife, Joy Chambers-Grundy, are dispersing ninety works of art from their important collection of Australian art. With an estimated price range between $15.5 million and $20.8 million, the Grundy Collection has the potential to eclipse the Harold E. Mertz Collection sold at Christie’s in 2000 for a total of $15.9 million and the Sotheby’s dispersal of the Fosters Collection of Australian Art for $13.3 million in 2005. These figures are all the more remarkable given that the Mertz and Fosters auctions were conducted during the booming market of the early and mid-noughties, and include buyer’s premium.

The Aboriginal art market will be tested further this month when 20 paintings by acclaimed desert artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye are offered for sale by Deutscher and Hackett. The works were collected by the Holt family, owners of Delmore Downs, a cattle station near Utopia, north of Alice Springs, where the artist widely referred to as Emily spent much of her time.

Artist Ralph Hotere, who has died aged 81, was a “warrior artist” whose provocative work portrayed some of the country’s most divisive historical events. Hotere was a painter, sculptor and collaborative artist and was regarded as one of New Zealand 's most important contemporary artists.

With Sydney's commercial galleries struggling to get people through the door due to the rise of online trading, attitudes to selling in the art world are being forced to change.
 

It could be a sign of more puritanical times, the continuing hangover of the GFC or perhaps the fickle tastes of the art world. But the average sale price of paintings by David Bromley, who specialises in nudes slashed with stripes of colour, has dropped by more than 50 per cent since 2007. The average price of a Bromley artwork was $4565 in 2012, less than half the $9990 his paintings fetched in 2007, according to figures compiled by the Australian Art Sales Digest.

Sydney doctor Colin Laverty, the founder of Laverty Pathology who, together with his wife Elizabeth, built one of the best collections of Aboriginal art in private hands, has died in Sydney, aged 75. Laverty’s death comes after a period living with cancer, before which he and Elizabeth decided to sell, for the first time, a substantial slice of the art collection they had spent 30 years building.

Agnews, one of the world’s oldest art dealers, is to close. The 195-year-old London gallery will cease trading on April 30, after a final outing at the European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht. Chairman Julian Agnew is from the sixth generation to work for the family firm, which has long been in decline. In 2008 the chairman sold its historic Bond Street premises, purpose-built by his great-great grandfather in 1877, for a reported £25m, and moved to a smaller space in nearby Albemarle Street.

When some of the world’s richest people gather for the glittering New York auction season this spring, they will spend hundreds of millions of dollars in an art market that allows opaque transactions and has few outside monitors. At major auctions the first bids announced for a piece are typically fictional — numbers pulled from the air by the auctioneer to jump-start bidding

Select pieces of a notable Australian indigenous art collection are to go on show in London and New York ahead of their sale in Sydney. The contemporary Laverty collection, collated by lauded Australian doctor Colin Laverty and his wife, Elizabeth, is expected to fetch up to $A5.5 million when it goes under the hammer on March 24 at the harbour city's Museum of Contemporary Ar

Sydney's best-kept art secrets are looking for a foster home - but only those with plenty of wall space need apply. Twenty-one massive paintings and sculptures by leading 20th century artists including Brett Whiteley, John Olsen and Lloyd Rees will be dismantled when the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre closes in December for demolition, prompting a nationwide search for buildings big enough to house them.

Bay East Auctions, which began its life in a building previously occupied by the Woollahra Council's garbage collection unit, has closed its doors. Ending an almost uninterrupted charmed life of close to 20 years, its latest owner, Sotheby's Australia, has decided that Bay East does not fit in with its operations. Bay East has been closed so that the owners of Sotheby's Australia can concentrate more vigorously on development of the Sotheby's name, writes Terry Ingram.

The eclectic and expensive tastes of "fake Tahitian prince" Joel Morehu-Barlow will be put to the test when a trove of his belongings goes under the hammer this year. More than 1500 items - including a painting by Jeffrey Smart, a Whitney Houston tour book and Louis Vuitton surfboard - belonging to the socialite accused of stealing more than $16 million from Queensland Health will be sold in two separate auctions.