EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE

In the early 1990s Emily Kngwarreye became the first Indigenous artist in Australia to break the $10,000 ceiling paid for paintings in the primary market. Paintings measuring up to 120 x 180 cm in size sold regularly in galleries for between $10,000 and $20,000 while those around 90 x 120 cm sold for $8,000-10,000.

Following her death in 1996 Emily’s prices surged, but stabilised during the late 1990s while curators and critics reappraised her work. A great deal of dealer enmity continued to exist around her career and oeuvre following the spate of adverse publicity that had characterised many works as either failures, fakes, or ‘School of Emily’ paintings i.e. those created by other clanswomen. This resulted in a highly sensitised market in which a significant proportion of collectors were willing only to purchase works with a very restricted range of provenance. Sotheby’s preference for works that were produced for CAAMA, and the Holts at Delmore Downs, for instance, prejudiced even the best of the paintings that came from other legitimate sources.

At the time of her death, and until the advent of the new millenium, they were the only auction house with specialist Aboriginal art sales. Prior to 2004, Sotheby’s dominated sales of Kngwarreye’s work and, as would be expected, had offered them for sale at all of their Aboriginal art sales since their first specialist sale in 1994. By 2006 only one non-Delmore work was ilisted amongst her tip ten results of which all but one had sold through Sotheby’s. In 2007, Lawson~Menzies sold Earth’s Creation 1995, for $1,056,000, more than double Kngwarreye’s previous record and, in doing so, set the new standard for a painting by any Indigenous artist.


This replaced the previous record for any individual Aboriginal artwork which was set at $778,750 in 2001 for Rover Thomas’s All That Big Rain Coming Down Topside 1991. It marked the first time an Indigenous Australian artwork had exceeded the $1 million dollar mark at a public sale and this stood as the highest price ever paid for a work of art by any Australian female until the same work sold in 2017 for $2,100,000, thereby doubling the former record. The second highest price paid for a work by this artist by the end of 2007 was the $463,000 for Spring Celebration 1991, which measured 130 x 230 cm, and had sold at Sotheby’s in 2003. This reflected the premium paid for major paintings from her early period.

A number of works have been offered for sale on numerous occasions. The best example’s are Kame Colour 1995, a truly luminous late career work in the meandering linear yam style, and Earth’s Creation II, a multipanel painting in predominantly blue tones that was produced during the same workshop as Earth’s Creation I. Though just 90 x 150 cm in size, when offered at Lawson Menzies in 2006 Kame Colour,1995, sold for $240,000. Reputedly purchased by a consortium of collectors put together by Rod Menzies it was reoffered through Deutscher~Menzies in 2008, just as the market began to go soft and sold for $216,000. Yet in what is a salutary tale, it was offered again in 2009 and sold for $159,000, and again in 2013 by which time its value had dropped to just $138,000. Why a painting of such quality would be sold publicly 5 times over within 7 years and drop in value by 40% is a story that may never be fully revealed, such are the intrigues of the auction market. Earth’s Creation II painted in 1995, holds three of her top ten highest results. When originally offered in 2007 through Lawson~Menzies the work sold for $336,000 then a year later it sold through Deutscher~Menzies for $360,000. In 2011 this same work was re-offered through Menzies and sold for only $226,727. A rare loss for one of Rod Menzies’ ‘notorious’ buyer groups.

Sales of Emily’s works slumped immediately following her death but grew steadily from the beginning of the new millennium. By 2004 total sales at auction reached $2,072,538 due to Christies, Lawson Menzies, Shapiro and Bonhams and Goodman all joining Sotheby’s with specialist auctions. By 2012, in spite of several minor downturns, her total sales for the year had reached $1,055,998. This grew to $2,118,652 in 2015 and a whopping $3,477,394 in 2017.

The prices of her better paintings have consistently risen since 2000 with the exception of 2005 when a glut of works were offered for sale at auction. Average prices rose from around $20,000 in 1997 to over $34,712 by the end of 2007 and, on the back of her Tokyo retrospective, to $35,381 by the end of the following year. It now sits at $43,971. Yet, of the 1272 individual paintings offered for sale through auction houses since her career began, the majority have been valued at between just $5,000 and $50,000. This has been due to both the large number of smaller works that she produced, and the premium paid for relatively rare major works created early in her career. Only 61% of all works by Emily have sold when offered, despite major auction houses vetting the works heavily and dismissing any other than the best works carrying preferred provenance.

In an encouraging sign, her success rate each year has been consistently above 60% in recent times. It was 67% in 2016,and though it fell to 60% in 2018 two new paintings entered her tip 10 results when Summer Awelye II sold at Sotheby’s in London for $547,641 in March and Earth’s Creation II achieved $294,545 at Menzies in November. She finished the year with average sales of $79,467 against her overall career average of $42,486. In 2019, 74% of all works sold for an average price of $99,254 on the back of two exceptional results at the first Sotheby’s auction in New York both of which entered her ten highest prices. Summer Celebration, a magnificent 121 x 302 cm palimpsest sold for $863,544.00 while an Untitled early Delmore work measuring 212 x 123 cm achieved $507,115.00.

It is now over twenty years since the artist’s death and enough time has elapsed for the story of her career and those who worked with her to have been thoroughly examined. There is no doubt that Emily Kngwarreye painted wonderful works for a variety of dealers. Most importantly works produced for Fred Torres with Dacou Gallery provenance and those produced for Christopher Hodges of Utopia art in Sydney have been greatly undervalued in the market. The best of these works would seem to represent fantastic value, as would good paintings from a number of additional sources. Overall the market for high quality works by the artist remains strong despite the emergence of equally gestural painters from the Eastern and far Western deserts, whose works sell at much lower prices. While early works will always fetch a premium over paintings of similar size from other periods, exceptional late career works are yet to be tested. These include the final series of 22 paintings completed immediately prior to her death. When these are finally released on to the market they will create a sensation.

Since Emily emerged as a major force in contemporary Aboriginal painting in the late 1980s, her international recognition and renown has shown no sign of abating. Her inclusion in the Venice Biennale and her retrospective exhibition have reinforced this since her death. Her reputation was further advanced during 2008 with the landmark exhibition curated by Margo Neale of the National Museum of Australia which toured Osaka and Tokyo. In that year Emily, finally drew level with Rover as the market’s leading artist. By the end of 2015 she drawn so far ahead that she is unlikely to be drawn back to the field during our lifetimes, if ever.

The importance of her international retrospective can not be overstated. It presented Emily Kngwarreye as one of the greatest international contemporary artists of the twentieth century. Her work, Earth Creaion I, was included in the Director’s exhibition at the Venice Bienalle and will be included in the major exhibition Women in Astraction at the Centre Pompidou in Paris during 2021. This alone should ensure that the value of Emily’s best works continue to be highly prized by Australian and international collectors and fetch premium prices far into the future.