The late Sydney artist Bronwyn Oliver has broken the sales record for Australia sculpture, with her monumental 2000 work Tide fetching $1m at auction, or $1.25m with buyer’s premium, in Sydney on Wednesday evening.
The sale surpasses the record set by Joel Elenberg’s 1978 sculpture Mask 1, which sold for $925,000, or $1,156,250 including buyer’s premium in August 2023, against an estimate of $300,000-$450,000. It also bests Oliver’s previous sales record of $700,000, which was set in April this year with the sale of her smaller 2004 sculpture, Sun.
Before the sale, auction house Smith & Singer estimated Tide would fetch $1m to $1.5m, making it the most valuable Australian sculpture ever offered for auction in Australia.
Tide was put up for auction by the Fink family, who commissioned it for their high-end Sydney restaurant Quay.
The sinuous copper sculpture, measuring 4 metres, was a prominent feature of the restaurant for more than two decades and inspired its logo.
Announcing the sale in late October, Geoffrey Singer, chair of Smith & Singer predicted “a frenzy of bidding”, noting how rarely Oliver’s work came to auction.
“Oliver’s untimely death at the age of 47, combined with the restricted output of her work due to its complex and time-consuming production, has resulted in demand far outstripping supply,” Singer said.
Oliver is considered one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists, known for her innovative use of materials including fibreglass and metal, and for producing works of exceptional beauty, often inspired by natural forms such as plants, seed pods and shells.
Born in 1959 in Inverell, she became passionate about art as a child and enrolled at Sydney’s Alexander Mackie College, hoping to become a painter. She fell into sculpture by accident, after a computing error put her in the wrong class – but flourished under the college’s open-minded, experimental approach to the form.
Oliver was galvanised by the birth of the so-called “new British sculpture” movement, led by artists such as Antony Gormley and Anish Kapoor, while completing a master’s degree at the Chelsea School of Art in London in the early 80s. Returning to Australia inspired, she became one of the pre-eminent sculptors of her generation.
Oliver’s work was highly sought after during her lifetime, by private collectors and public institutions alike, with her exhibitions often selling out before they opened.
Since she died in 2006, her profile has grown, fuelled by exhibitions of her work – including a survey at TarraWarra Museum of Art in Victoria in 2016 – and ABC’s 2021 documentary Bronwyn Oliver: The Shadows Within.
Before the auction, Smith described Tide as “a magnum opus” within Oliver’s career. “This refined and spectacular composition shows the artist working at the height of her powers and it is appropriate that its appearance at auction represents a defining moment in the history of the Australian art market.”
