Vendors lift Emilys off walls for year’s first big Indigenous sale
Are Australian collectors ready to bid up the prices of top quality works by the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye, in light of her work’s recent accolades?
The answer will be revealed on March 25 when Deutscher and Hackett’s Important Australian Indigenous Art auction processes an anticipated $4.5 million worth of paintings, sculptures and photographs by Kngwarreye and 40-plus other sought-after names.
Thanks mainly to Kngwarreye’s retrospective exhibition, which ran until January at Tate Modern in London, Deutscher and Hackett have winkled no fewer than nine Kngwarreye artworks out of private collections and on to the walls of their viewing rooms.
Among the Northern Territory artist’s paintings are lot 21, Awelye I, II, III & IV, 1995, a work in four panels measuring an impressive 203 centimetres x 245 centimetres overall.
At $400,000 to $600,000, Awelye I, II, III & IV carries the highest estimate in the auction. Its present home is a private collection in Canberra.
Will bidding drive it past its higher estimate?
Owners’ expectations for their Kngwarreyes have certainly been stoked by the excitement surrounding the Tate show, according to Deutscher and Hackett’s head of Indigenous art Crispin Gutteridge.
At this week’s Sydney viewing of the 76 lots in the auction, Gutteridge told Saleroom that these expectations have translated, at most, into only slightly higher estimates for Kngwarreye’s works in the March 25 sale.
“We haven’t gone over the top,” Gutteridge said.
Indeed, in the company’s flagship Indigenous art auction in 2025, the highest estimate on a Kngwarreye was the same – $400,000 to $600,000. That work, Untitled (Awelye), 1992, fetched $1,196,591 in keen bidding.
Kngwarreye’s current record price at auction is $2.1 million including buyer’s premium for Earth’s Creation I, which sold in 2017 through Art Leven (formerly Cooee Art) in Sydney.
Awelye I, II, III & IV was painted in Alice Springs in October 1995 – the year before the elderly artist’s death – in brushed marks on canvas that echo the stripes of ochre painted on women’s bodies for awelye, or women’s ceremony, whose purpose is to transfer knowledge of caring for country from mother to daughter.
Another Kngwarreye, lot 25, is a small painting measuring 61cm x 51cm and featuring a calligraphic design in black on a light cream background. Untitled (Yam), 1995, is estimated at $50,000 to $70,000.
The other Kngwarreye works in the auction have been assigned various estimates within the range of $30,000 to $250,000.
The auction carries total estimates of $3,123,000 to $4,411,000. Deutscher and Hackett’s sister sale of Indigenous art in March 2025 had estimates ranging between $2,383,800 and $3,346,500, ultimately achieving $3,440,400 under the hammer, or $4,300,500 including 25 per cent buyer’s premium.
As Saleroom reported at the time, the 2025 auction was the most financially successful Indigenous art auction in Australia since 2007.
Public viewing of the Deutscher and Hackett sale, the biggest Australian art auction of the year thus far, continues in Sydney until Sunday. The Melbourne viewing will be held on March 19-24.
Other notable works in the sale catalogue include Milŋurr, 2021, a found aluminium road sign transformed into a beautiful object by Gunybi Ganambarr with an etching tool and aerosol paint.
Ganambarr lives in Yirrkala, Northern Territory, and pioneered the use of reclaimed industrial materials by artists in north-east Arnhem Land. Milŋurr is estimated at $20,000 to $30,000. Ganambarr also has a work in the 25th Sydney Biennale, which opens to the public on Saturday at various sites. Ganambarr’s work can be seen at White Bay Power Station.
Another Yirrkala artist, the late Wukun Wanambi, is in the catalogue with a work titled Bamurruŋu, 2014. The artist painted Bamurruŋu on aluminium foil industrial insulation – an inauspicious material which he used to spectacular effect, allowing the silver foil to glitter through his finely webbed brushstrokes.
The cover lot is Langurr (The Rainbow Serpent) Making the River, 1991, by the late Rover Thomas (Joolama) who, like Kngwarreye, has been represented in the Venice Biennale and is among Australia’s most celebrated Indigenous artists.
Langurr (The Rainbow Serpent) making the river carries an estimate of $250,000 to $350,000, the second highest in the March 25 catalogue.
At the lower end of the estimates spectrum, at $45,000 to $65,000, is a suite of eight photomontages under the collective title of Invasion, 2017, by the Indigenous commercial photographer and artist Michael Cook.
The tongue-in-cheek series of images imagines B-grade movie scenarios in which rogue Australian parrots dive bomb horror-stricken shoppers on the posh streets of London, or giant witchetty grubs cause panic on pebbly English beaches.
According to the catalogue, shooting Invasion required eight months of production. It was shot on location in London and required a cast of fifty actors.
Artists Sally Gabori, Paddy Jaminji, Noŋgirrŋa Marawili, Balang Nakurulk (Mr Mawurndjul), Makinti Napanangka, Ginger Riley Munduwalawala, Freddie Timms, Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri and Owen Yalandja are among other celebrated names in the catalogue.