Jason Benjamin said it was “like a pub fight – everyone comes out to watch it”. John Olsen called it a “chook raffle”, while The Art Gallery of NSW describes it as Australia’s most extraordinary and prestigious art prize.
However you view it (for the record, Olsen echoed the Art Gallery’s sentiment in 2005, presumably as he had just won with the superb self-portrait entitled Janus), The Archibald Prize is sure, whether deliberate or not, to court controversy, perhaps not to the stratospheric levels that the Turner Prize does in London, but the Archie has had its fair share; William Dobell’s Joshua Smith, Adam Cullen’s Wenham, Craig Ruddy’s Gulpilil and Richard Bell’s In mob we trust, have all ensured that the Archibald’s significance has been coupled with a good dose of notoriety.
Winning the prize can be the catalyst to ensuring a long and illustrious career, or not. Take WB McInnes as an example. A seven-time winner of the prize, and although he has a solid auction record of $109,000 set in 2005, of the 495 trades at auction, 485 have been under $15,000 and the three recorded sales in 2012 barely scratched $5,000. Compared to the other extreme, Brett Whiteley, merely a two-time winner, he has an auction record of $3.48 million and 15 sales at auction in excess of $1 million.
A prize-winning artist
So what does the award mean for the 2012 winner Tim Storrier?
Storrier’s winning portrait The histrionic wayfarer (after Bosch) (self portrait) has been the subject of many a debate on not only the manner in which the winner is selected (by the trustees rather than a board of experts), but also on what constitutes a portrait. Whether one agrees with the result or not, what is not under debate is Storrier’s immense talent.
As a 19-year-old, Storrier became the youngest artist to be awarded the Sulman Prize (which along with the Wynne Prize, hangs with the Archibald). This was the market’s first real awakening to a young artist that had raw talent to burn. Over the ensuing years, Storrier became, and still is, recognised as one the finest draftsmen this country has ever produced. However, it was the development of his minimalist blazeline paintings in to hyper-realist surreal paintings and installations that really defined Storrier in the market.
People often tell me about how good Storrier’s oil paintings are. I wouldn’t know, as Storrier is a devotee to acrylic paint. Now there are those that are far more learned than I in fine art, however they will tell you, as I do, that acrylic and oil paints behave very differently. Storrier may well be one of Australia’s great draftsmen, however he is arguably one of the world’s great masters of acrylic paint. He has the ability to make acrylic look and behave in a similar fashion to oil paint, which is nothing short of technically brilliant. It is this ability, coupled with a unique take on the Australian landscape, that has seen his work collected widely in corporate and institutional collections in Australia and around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum (New York), The National Museum and Tate Museum (London) and The Louvre (Paris).
So, with a CV so strong, why bother entering the prize now? Storrier’s position in the context of Australian art seems to be well and truly determined. What is there to be gained?
Well, aside from the prestige of having the major prize on his long list of achievements, I believe we need to take a closer look at the secondary market activity for his work to find the answer.
Under the hammer
Storrier’s work went on a run in the auction market from 2002 to 2007. As auction results continued to strengthen so did the primary market prices. With a scarcity of works available on the primary market due to long waiting lists and an infrequent exhibition calendar, the pressure on pricing was evident. Storrier was one of the ‘must have’ artists at the peak of his creativity. And then we started to hear that investment bank Lehmann Brothers was in a spot of bother…
The impact of the global financial crisis (GFC) has been well documented, but it created a rather unusual set of circumstances for Storrier’s work. In 2009, a number of relatively recent Storrier works hit the market due to forced sale by distressed vendors. Major works were being picked up by those brave enough to be bidding at that time – they were few and far between, let me tell you – and Storrier’s cast iron prices softened quite considerably.
The catalyst for this was two-fold. The obvious first being that appetite to bid on fine art was generally compromised by the frequency and ferocity of margin calls and a lack of confidence in the broader markets.
The second, no doubt forced by the first, saw a seemingly large number of paintings hit the market in close succession at clearly knocked-down prices. Works still sold well – sometimes for over $100,000 – but well off the comparative prices of a few years ago. In some cases, prices softened in the secondary market by up to 40%. A belief that works are selling cheap coupled with there being a volume of work on the market has a stigmatism that over-shadows the context of these results in which they were set. This whole scenario became further compounded with a number of works trading on private treaty.
Return on investment
To put some of these results in to context – many of the works presented during this time were dated from the mid-1990s to early 2000s. A major work by Storrier in the mid-90s would have sold for around $30,000 to $40,000. By 2009, primary market works were consistently selling from about $150,000 up to as high as $400,000. So while selling well under gallery prices, these works still gave the owner a return on their initial investment. Moreover, these works were still assets that were saleable within an illiquid market – no small feat for an illiquid asset. So what we learn from this is that it’s important to look at results in context.
It took until late 2010 for Storrier’s prices at auction to find some familiar footing, which included a new auction record of $248,000 (inclusive of buyers premium) for Evening (2005). This in itself is interesting. With over 1,000 trades at auction now accumulated from etchings, to photographs, drawings to major paintings, we are now seeing works from a particular period attracting more attention than others in the same oeuvre painted at a different time. This is not unusual; Sidney Nolan’s 1950’s Ned Kelly works have a currency that is far beyond that of those painted in the 1970s, for example. If you are going to purchase Storrier’s Burning Rope, then, particularly for investment, there is a period to aim for. The same for Burning Logs, paper planes and now faceless portraits!
The bottom line
It is important to realise that not every work Storrier has created is going to be a great investment; this can be down to any number of reasons. However, it is pertinent to remind ourselves that of the top-30 prices realised for his works at auction since 2004, all have been over $100,000.
Is winning the Archibald going to have much of an impact on Storrier’s work? On prices, probably not a great deal in the short-term and certainly not the same impact that it would have had on Jeremy Kibel or Luke Cornish, for example, or that it did have for Del Kathryn Barton.
Winning the Sulman will have had more of an impact for Storrier than taking out the Archibald. What winning has done is remind us that Storrier is one of the major living Australian artists and as such, still warrants serious consideration as part of an investment portfolio or collection. Just remember though, the investment lies in the quality.
Important information: This content has been prepared without taking account of the objectives, financial situation or needs of any particular individual. It does not constitute formal advice. Anyone should, before acting, consider the appropriateness of the information in regards to their objectives, financial situation and needs and, if necessary, seek professional advice.
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