The cost of culture

The Age
The cost of culture
December 28, 2007

An article about the art world in 2007.

Quoted from the article:

The buying frenzy began to rev up in May when Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s Earth’s Creation (1995) became the first work by an Aboriginal artist to sell for more than $1 million. Tim Jennings from Alice Springs’ Mbantua Gallery paid $1.056 million for the work at the Lawson-Menzies Aboriginal Art Auction in Sydney. Two months later the record was superseded when the National Gallery of Australia paid $2. 4 million for Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri’s sprawling work Warlugulong (1977) at Sotheby’s in Melbourne.

The gaping chasm between the money to be made on the back of Aboriginal cultural endeavour and the reality of life in remote Aboriginal communities would also become achingly apparent during the year.