HYBRID ART AUCTION EARNS MILLIONS
By
Margaretta wa Gacheru
The 9th
Art Auction East Africa garnered a whopping Sh23.1 million last Tuesday night at
the new Radisson Blu Arboretum Hotel. That was in spite of COVID keeping a few
friends of the Auction away from the ‘real time’ event.
But not even
COVID could keep serious bidders from buying E.S Tingatinga’s Untitled ‘Rhino’
for Sh3.1698 million, Geoffrey Mukasa’s Untitled ‘Blue Beauties’ for Sh2.632
million, Salah El Mur’s “Iris Flower’ for Sh1.566 million, or even having a
bidding ‘war’ over Ehoodi Kichapi’s ‘Man against City’, the winner paying Sh1.5262
million for the oil on canvas Basquiat-like work created by Kichapi in 2008.
Other
notable sales included ‘’A Kiss’, the second Tingatinga painting created by the
late Tanzanian artist which went for Sh1.0566 million, Peterson Kamwathi’s ‘Monument
II’ for Sh798,320 and Cyrus Kabiru’s ‘Blue Mamba’ bicycle sculpture that sold
for Sh821,800 which will be donated to Kabiru’s Art Orodha Art Centre. Cyrus’s
was one of two donations made by artists together with Circle Art Gallery. The
other one was by the Ethiopian artist, Tamrat Gezahegne whose painting,
‘Adorned Body’ sold for Sh493,080, all of which will be donated to the African
Arts Trust. And lastly, the other donated item that got auctioned off last
night was a rare bottle of 26-year-old Glenfiddich whiskey which went for
Sh50,000.
In fact,
this year’s art auction was a hybrid affair, meaning bidders were not only able
to vie for their favorite art pieces in person with paddle in hand. They could
also call in by phone, although that method has mostly been used by
international bidders. They could even bid online through the popular art
auction platform, Invaluable.
“That’s what
we did last October,” Danda Jaroljmek told BDLIFE a day before the auction. “It
was the first time we put the auction online and it worked very well,” added
the founder-curator and executive director of both Circle Art and the Art
Auction East Africa.
The October
auction was an experiment of sorts, given the lockdown was still on. But it
proved that art lovers and prospective buyers didn’t need to be on hand to
physically witness Kenyan auctioneer Chilson Wamoja handle all the lots of East
African art (60 last Tuesday night) to take part in it from the comfort of
their own living room or bedroom.
Like so many
businesses that had found COVID to be both a curse and a blessing in disguise,
Danda and her team had to learn lessons and new ways of working during the
pandemic.
“We were
heading in that direction [of online auctioning] anyway, having seen how all
the major auction houses, from Bonham’s to Sotheby’s, have been holding their
auctions online for quite some time,” she observed.
Nonetheless,
October was a revelation that opened eyes to the immense possibilities of
conducting last Tuesday night’s hybrid auction.
“We now have
more bids coming in from all over the world,” said Chilson who’s been
conducting the auction for the last six or seven years. “We’ve always had
international bidders, but the numbers have increased in the last couple of
years,” he added.
Putting the
Art Auction East Africa on the Invaluable online platform is one factor that’s
widened global awareness of East African art. It also allowed anyone who’d
registered with Invaluable to watch the entire auction last Tuesday and place
their bids online in ‘real time’.
“We’ll have
Don [Handa, Circle Art’s gallery manager] at the website watching the bids come
up at Invaluable,” explained Danda. “He’s the one who’ll pass the online bids
onto Chilson who will also have to watch the phone lines as well as the bidders
in the room [at Radisson Blu].”
But Chilson
didn’t complain. He merely mused on the probability that if they’d gone online
with Invaluable sooner, so many more art lovers might have switched onto East
African art.
Danda also
said she’d seen a steady increase of interest in East African art since the
auction took off back in 2013. That interest has increasingly come from all
over the world.
“Let’s see,
we’ve heard from Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa as well as
from Switzerland, France, Germany, UK, US, and Australia, and also Qatar and
Dubai,” Danda recounted.
When asked
by BDLife what she thought had caused the exponential increase of interest in
regional art and the auction, she said there were many factors. One was signing
on with Invaluable since many serious art collectors and investors are aware of
website and follow it closely. “We also signed on with Artsy [another leading
art news online platform],” she added
Another
factor, she said was social media, and the other big issue was the global trend
of increasing interest in African art.
“There is
little doubt that [art lovers] are following global trends in contemporary
art,” she said. “Previously, it was Chinese art, then came Indian art, and now,
there’s new interest in African art. It’s definitely had an impact on our
work,” she added.
According to
the local art collector and investor Tony Wainaina, Africa has gained greater
attention in the global art world because it’s accurately seen as “the last
frontier” for exploring contemporary art.
Noting that
not a week goes by without calls coming in from new voices expressing interest
in East African art, Danda added that art fairs have also had an impact in
raising awareness that East African art exists.
In the last
few years, she [often with her assistant Don Handa] has attended a score of art
fairs, raising the profile of contemporary East African art in the process.
“Right now, we have a presence in art fairs in Paris and Dubai. And we just
finished another one in London where works by Dickson Otieno, Shabu Mwangi,
Tahir Karmali, Jackie Karuti as well as several Ugandans and Sudanese all did
well,” she said, noting that all of Otieno’s wire-weave sculptures were sold.
The only
problem with Tuesday night’s art auction was that the room at Radisson Blu
Arboretum Hotel wasn’t nearly as big as the Upper Hill RB ballroom which had
been shut down months ago due to the pandemic.
“The room
could only hold 29 of the 60 lots that can be found in the auction’s [elegant
full-color] catalogue,” said Don Handa who had an ‘army’ of young Kenyan
volunteers to work with on Tuesday night, assisting as ushers and caretakers of
the art.
“We knew in
advance that the room size would be comparatively small, which is why we’d
encouraged everyone who was interested to come see the [auction] preview at the
gallery,” Danda added.
But then,
everyone who signed up with Invaluable was able to see all of the artworks as
Chilson conducts the bidding “in real time.” And even those who attended the
event in person, were able to see all 60 lots flashed on three white walls as
he auctioned off carefully curated works of both paintings and sculptures.
SECONDARY
MARKET
Circle Art’s
AAEA catalogues is full of detailed information about the art and the artist.
It also mentions who has the provenance or prior ownership of a work and
whether it has come from a private collection or directly from the artist him
or herself. Danda said nearly two-thirds of the works auctioned Tuesday night
came as part of the secondary market.
“Technically,
most art auctions only include works from the secondary market,” says Danda,
who from the beginning has included original works coming from the artists
themselves. Among them were several well-known local artists, including Sane
Wadu, Cyrus Kabiru, Edward Njenga, Kaafiri Kariuki, Tabitha wa Thuku. Ehoodi
Kichapi’s ‘Man against City’ came to Circle as part of the secondary. But
either way, his painting surpassed all expectation in sales and elicited one of
several dramatic bidding battles between those physically at the auction and
those who were either online or on the phone.
But for
Danda, including art that comes from the artist is meant to nurture local
talents as well as to cultivate a secondary market. “One way to promote the
idea of art as a valuable investment is to cultivate a dynamic secondary market
where collectors can come sell their art and make a profit,” she explained.
For Tony
Wainaina, more nurturing of the artists is needed to develop the local art
scene further. “We need more art dealers, agents, and first-class galleries,”
he notes.
But his
other concern is the fact that there are many moneyed Kenyans who could easily
be investing in East African art who don’t. ‘These are people who still hang
calendars on their walls is if they are works of art,” he said in a phone
interview shortly before the auction.
“They need
to learn there are other things to invest in besides land and shares,” said
Wainaina.
That may be
the case, but Danda says she has seen many more Africans, including Kenyans,
buy art now than in the past. One reason for this is the internet and social media
which has roused more interest among both local and more Pan-African audiences.
Tony
concedes that young Kenyans who have been abroad and gotten exposed to the
international art world are more likely to attend an art auction and fill their
walls at home with African art. But the older, more moneyed elites still need
to be awakened to what they are missing.
Like Danda,
he noted that international auction houses have done their bit to rouse public
interest in contemporary African art. However, he added that Bonham’s has been
the best at conducting auctions focused on East African art while Sotheby’s is
still obsessed with South African and West African art.
Still, both
houses took the lead in putting African art auctions online and proving there’s
indeed a market for the art. Last Tuesday, Circle’s art auction further proved
that interest in East African art is growing by leaps and bounds. It’s also
proved how quickly its organizers can adapt to the new circumstances and do so
effectively.
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