Page 58 - Tropic Magazine Issue 35

TROPIC • SPECIAL FEATURE

The business

of art

INVESTMENT
Tropic looks into the world of
art investment, from entering
the market as a collector to
recognising which works will
likely grow in value.

Words: Annabel Bowles 1
Art may be displayed to tell a story, lift the Fast forward to today, the global art Thirty years later, the work sold for almost
atmosphere of a space, or simply because market is worth tens of billions of dollars. $35 million – a record for Kahlo.
it’s beautiful to look at. But have you ever The value of the world’s leading artists’ Banksy is another artist to experience
thought about buying art purely as an works is continuing to increase huge growth in the secondary market.
investment? exponentially, even as more and more The English street artist’s Girl with Balloon
And before you ask, no – we’re not only collectors enter the market. For example, screenprint increased in value by 662
talking about NFTs. a small canvas work by Frida Kahlo titled per cent, from one re-sale in 2015 to the
According to Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Diego y yo sold at Sotheby’s in 1990 for next five years later. Closer to home, our
the 1960s marked the emergence of the $1.4 million. At the time, Frida Kahlo region’s annual Cairns Indigenous Art
idea of investing in art rather than stocks, became the first Latin American artist to Fair (CIAF) attracted a peak of $924,000
property and other luxury items. sell for over a million dollars at auction. total art sales in 2019, before the impact
of the pandemic saw this drop by about
two-thirds. CIAF is however returning to
a physical format this year, taking place
in its new home of the Cairns Convention
$12.4b Global sales of art and Centre this July. With the industry back
antiques $50.1 billion on an upwards trajectory, it’s a great time
to think about investing in art.

Online sales $12.4 billion Information sourced from Art Price.
$50.1b Double the value of the previous year
Source: Arts Economics, 2020

58 • Tropic • Issue 35