Elizabeth Fortescue

Sydney

Arts Journalist and Writer at Freelance

Saleroom writer at Australian Financial Review

Australian art writer and arts journalist. My Saleroom column on the art market is in every Thursday's Australian Financial Review. Posting personal views only.

Articles

paintings by Brett Whiteley and Emily Kame Kngwarreye fetch high prices

1 week ago | afr.com | Elizabeth Fortescue

A “very wealthy Melbourne entrepreneur” is the new owner of an early career abstract painting by Brett Whiteley that topped the price rankings at last week’s Menzies auction in Sydney. Untitled Red Painting III, 1961, previewed by Saleroom on March 26, looked glamorous under the spotlight on auction night at Menzies’ Kensington premises. Auctioneer Martin Farrah took a long sip of water before opening the bidding on the picture. Loading... Follow the topics, people and companies that matter to you.
A record-setting photo and a $2.5m number plate

2 weeks ago | afr.com | Elizabeth Fortescue

Apr 9, 2025 – 4.40pm or Subscribe to save articleSubscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? A career-defining work by a photographer who died when she was only 30 years old set a record for Australian photography at what was easily the biggest art sale of the year so far in Sydney this week.
Foreign buyers swoop as Indigenous art takes off

3 weeks ago | afr.com | Elizabeth Fortescue

Apr 2, 2025 – 5.33pm or Subscribe to save articleSubscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? The late, great Emily Kam Kngwarreye was the prime mover behind the most financially successful Indigenous art auction in this country since 2007, with a much-travelled work once owned by a leading corporate identity becoming the artist’s second most expensive painting under the hammer.
‘Brain’ of late composer lives on in show at the Art Gallery of Western Australia

4 weeks ago | theartnewspaper.com | Elizabeth Fortescue

Can an artist’s creative essence persist beyond death? In probing this question, a team of Australian artists and biological innovators has engineered a human “mini-brain” that composes a musical score in real time as audiences watch and listen. The installation, titled Revivification, goes on view at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) from 29 March. Revivification consists of an incubator housing a lab-grown “in-vitro brain”.
Art auction prices Australia: Early Brett Whiteley paintings emerge with a rich backstory before Menzies’ auction of Important Australian and International Art in Sydney on April 9.

4 weeks ago | afr.com | Lap Phan |Elizabeth Fortescue

Mar 26, 2025 – 10.32am or Subscribe to save articleSubscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? Two richly coloured abstract paintings by Australian artist Brett Whiteley have emerged into the public realm for the first time since a young woman pounced on them in London and took them home to the US, where she treasured them for life.
130 years on, Arthur Streeton’s Sirius Cove comes out of the woodwork

1 month ago | afr.com | Elizabeth Fortescue

Mar 19, 2025 – 4.05pm or Subscribe to save articleSubscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? An Arthur Streeton painting depicting a hallowed location in the history of Australian art, and a canvas that rocketed a 21-year-old Brett Whiteley towards his eventual fame, have both come out of the woodwork for a major art auction to be held in Sydney on April 8.
A Canadian estate sale bargain is about to deliver a 200 times return

1 month ago | afr.com | Elizabeth Fortescue

Mar 12, 2025 – 2.41pm or Subscribe to save articleSubscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? A wood carving snapped up at an estate clearance in Canada for the price of lunch is poised to deliver a whopping return to the bargain hunter who sent it to Australia for auction in the country of its making. Alec Mingelmanganu’s Double Wanjina, c.
Roy Lichtenstein delivers $2m payday for John Kaldor

1 month ago | afr.com | Elizabeth Fortescue

Mar 5, 2025 – 4.09pm or Subscribe to save articleSubscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? Australian art collector John Kaldor, who has given millions of dollars worth of art to public institutions, this week sold one of his earliest art purchases for a handsome sum, with more of his personal collection going on the auction block tonight.
‘All about grief and mourning’: Sydney museum repatriates human remains to Papua New Guinea

1 month ago | theartnewspaper.com | Elizabeth Fortescue |Garry Shaw

Colourful ceremonies featuring song and dance, petal-strewn pathways and the roasting of specially-selected pigs accompanied the emotional repatriation of 16 human skulls to Papua New Guinea last week. The ancestral remains were returned to the inhabitants of six villages including Gorendu and Bilibil in Madang province, having been transported home from Sydney University’s Chau Chak Wing Museum in Australia.
Australia faces ‘international shame’ over removal of Khaled Sabsabi from Venice Biennale, senators told

1 month ago | theartnewspaper.com | Elizabeth Fortescue

The powers behind the dumping of Khaled Sabsabi as Australia’s artist in next year’s Venice Biennale were grilled at an Australian Senate estimates committee in Canberra yesterday. Under questioning, chief executive officer of Creative Australia, Adrian Collette, conceded that Sabsabi had not been afforded the chance to have his say to the organisation’s board before it unanimously overturned his selection for the biennale earlier this month.