Cash Up
Sunday, April 05, 2009
By David Brits and Linda Stupart
We wandered around the fair (pretty listlessly after last nights party) asking all the stalls how their sales have been going this year, and generally reports are pretty unenthused. ArtHeat's source close to the fair's organisers, Artlogic, has told us that galleries have not sold as much this year as last, quite possibly because that recession thing we've been hearing about. Although our source reports that the older, established galleries have done well, South Africa's art-buying public are apparently unsurprisingly conservative.
Baylon Sandri of SMAC Gallery put it succinctly when he told me "it's the people who are almost dead that they want," in a lamentation of the buyers' disinterest in his contemporary works. As well as those nearing corpse-status, the general trend seems to lean toward the safe and rock-like, although there are exceptions like whatiftheworld's successes in selling edgy new work by young artists.
Having done particularly well this year, the Everard Read has flogged off plenty of their fire-place paintings and rock men garden sculptures. We did follow up on a rumour that the gallery has a habit of placing red stickers on pieces that have not yet sold, however I got an unequivocal NO from the burly man with the clipboard, hearing his nervous chuckle to his assistant as we turned around and left.
On the other end of the scale, however, Bisi Silva, of the CCA Lagos reported that the gallery's first time at the art fair has been a bittersweet affair. Sweet, in the respect that the CCA has received great critical feedback for what they have achieved as a Nigerian public art institution, here at the fair to generate much-needed funds. And bitter, in that they have only sold one artwork, and haven't nearly covered costs. Sadly the CCA will have to review income-generating strategies such as this.
Generally, preferences follow the usual trend, with prints and photographs doing particularly well, with cool kids like Liam Lynch and Zander Blom selling nicely at the Rooke gallery, as well as the usual pseudo-documentary cash cows. All in all, the galleries are doing okay. Kind of. A lot of very bad work has sold to very rich people, and galleries from elsewhere in the continent are doing disappointingly badly.
As for the big El Anatsui (priced at 6.5 million dollars); it was apparently purchased by the Royal Family of Abu Dhabi, and is alleged to hang in the lobby of their nice new hotel.
We wandered around the fair (pretty listlessly after last nights party) asking all the stalls how their sales have been going this year, and generally reports are pretty unenthused. ArtHeat's source close to the fair's organisers, Artlogic, has told us that galleries have not sold as much this year as last, quite possibly because that recession thing we've been hearing about. Although our source reports that the older, established galleries have done well, South Africa's art-buying public are apparently unsurprisingly conservative.
Baylon Sandri of SMAC Gallery put it succinctly when he told me "it's the people who are almost dead that they want," in a lamentation of the buyers' disinterest in his contemporary works. As well as those nearing corpse-status, the general trend seems to lean toward the safe and rock-like, although there are exceptions like whatiftheworld's successes in selling edgy new work by young artists.
Having done particularly well this year, the Everard Read has flogged off plenty of their fire-place paintings and rock men garden sculptures. We did follow up on a rumour that the gallery has a habit of placing red stickers on pieces that have not yet sold, however I got an unequivocal NO from the burly man with the clipboard, hearing his nervous chuckle to his assistant as we turned around and left.
On the other end of the scale, however, Bisi Silva, of the CCA Lagos reported that the gallery's first time at the art fair has been a bittersweet affair. Sweet, in the respect that the CCA has received great critical feedback for what they have achieved as a Nigerian public art institution, here at the fair to generate much-needed funds. And bitter, in that they have only sold one artwork, and haven't nearly covered costs. Sadly the CCA will have to review income-generating strategies such as this.
Generally, preferences follow the usual trend, with prints and photographs doing particularly well, with cool kids like Liam Lynch and Zander Blom selling nicely at the Rooke gallery, as well as the usual pseudo-documentary cash cows. All in all, the galleries are doing okay. Kind of. A lot of very bad work has sold to very rich people, and galleries from elsewhere in the continent are doing disappointingly badly.
As for the big El Anatsui (priced at 6.5 million dollars); it was apparently purchased by the Royal Family of Abu Dhabi, and is alleged to hang in the lobby of their nice new hotel.
posted by Robert Sloon at 11:45 AM
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