Canberra Art Sale Clears $8.5m, Sells 93% of Works

At the Canberra auction, buyers spent more than $8.5 million on 28 works of art. The sale moved 93 per cent of the works by volume and reached 96 per cent by value. The collection had been described as the most significant private collection to come to market in Australia for years and, work for work, probably the strongest.

The Sale Figures

The auction results offer two ways to measure what sold: the share of works by volume and the share of value. Buyers bought 93 per cent of the 28 works by volume, while the sale reached 96 per cent by value. In total, they spent more than $8.5 million.

Those figures describe the reported outcome for the auction. The article doesn’t give individual prices, estimates, or a breakdown of which works sold. It also doesn’t identify the buyers or say how the unsold works were distributed across the collection. So the reported totals cover the sale as a whole, not the result for any single work.

Before the auction, the collection’s description set a high bar. It was called the most significant private collection to come to market in Australia for years, and probably the strongest on a work-for-work basis. The article doesn’t name the person or people who used that description, and offers no further comparison with other collections.

A Different Feeling on the Night

Deutscher and Hackett director Damian Hackett said there had been strong interest before the sale, but distinguished the talk around the auction from the atmosphere on the night. “There was a lot of talk on the tom toms, a lot of interest and excitement about this auction,” he said, “but then, on the night ... it felt different.”

The account doesn’t explain what Hackett meant by “different” or tie his remark to a particular sale result. It gives no further statement from him about the 93 per cent volume result, the 96 per cent value result, or the more than $8.5 million buyers spent. His quote describes the contrast between pre-auction excitement and the evening itself.

The report’s headline used the phrase “Someone did a Ned Kelly on us” and described the art sale as “Highway robbery.” It includes that wording, but doesn’t identify who said it in the supplied text or specify what transaction, price, or work the phrase referred to. The report offers no further explanation of the headline’s characterization.

The available account focuses on an art auction and its reported sales figures. It identifies no government decision, international institution, migration policy, demographic change, or transfer of national authority. Nor does it name a nationalist or dissident response, or give information about institutional beneficiaries beyond identifying the auction with Deutscher and Hackett and naming its director, Damian Hackett. The stated facts are the collection’s description, the number of works offered, the sale percentages, the total buyers spent, and Hackett’s comment about the atmosphere.