The Australian Indigenous art market, like most art markets globally, has faced a period of genuine trial recently. And although Australian auction results, earlier in the year, have strengthened across secondary markets, buyer confidence has been tested by subsequent economic uncertainty, and the volume of transactions at the higher end has been put under pressure. These are not insignificant headwinds, and we don’t intend to paper over them.

And yet — step back far enough, and a different picture emerges.

When we took stock recently of the works we have had the privilege of placing over the past twelve months, our reaction was simply ‘far out’. Not as a marketing reflex, but as an honest response to the calibre of what this period quietly produced. The works that passed through our hands, and the collections and institutions they now call home, represent something worth pausing to acknowledge.

These are not incidental sales, they are definitive moments in the ongoing story of Australian Indigenous art — a story that, despite the headwinds, continues to gather extraordinary momentum — particularly internationally.

The challenges of the current market are real, but so is this: the very best works by the foundational artists of Australian Indigenous art continue to find precisely the right homes. Institutions of global standing are acquiring. Serious private collectors are stepping forward. And the scholarship, provenance, and connoisseurship that not only underpins our business philosophy, underpinning these placements are more important now than ever before — separating the significant from the merely available.

What follows is a celebration of the Top 5 works from our list of Top 20 Sold Works this past year which can viewed here. Each one reflects the three pillars that guide everything we do: connoisseurship, scholarship, and provenance.

Leading our highlights is this spectacular work by Australia’s most celebrated contemporary artist — and, increasingly, one of the most significant painters of the twentieth century by any measure, or any tradition.

Emily Kam Kngwarray, Wild Yam VI 1996, © Emily Kam Kngwarray/Copyright Agency 2026

Wild Yam VI was painted at Delmore Downs in 1996, during Kngwarray’s extraordinary late period, when her mark-making reached a pitch of intensity that few artists anywhere have matched. Interlacing lines of yellow, white, purple and rose sweep across a 150 x 240 cm field of linen with a freedom that is, upon close study, entirely purposeful — each passage a record of the artist’s intimate knowledge of Country and the underground pathways of the yam she tended throughout her life.

The work’s institutional biography is formidable. It was included in the landmark retrospective Emily Kam Kngwarray, which opened at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra in 2023 before travelling to the Tate Modern, London, in July 2025 — presented in collaboration with the NGA — and is currently on display at Fondation Opale. For collectors, this is precisely the kind of exhibition history that defines a generational work.

Among the early works in our highlights, Bush Plum Country occupies a singular position — both in Kngwarray’s development and in our own story this year.

Emily Kam Kngwarray, Bush Plum Country 1989, © Emily Kam Kngwarray/Copyright Agency 2026

Painted in 1989, the work belongs to the artist’s foundational early dot period, in which she mapped the seasonal rhythms of Alhalkere Country through the language of the arnwekety (bush plum). The plotted lines and densely packed forms in dusty pink, white and green trace the fruit’s growth and spread — carried by ankerr (emu) traversing Country — while the palette captures the colour shifts that follow the seasonal rains. It is custodial knowledge made visible, and it is magnificent.

Bush Plum Country was exhibited at our New York gallery as part of The Ian Hicks Collection, and we are immensely proud that this work has since been placed in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. The placement is not simply a sales achievement — it is an affirmation that Australian Indigenous art belongs among the most significant bodies of art in the world, housed alongside the greatest works of human civilisation.

Acquired directly from the men’s painting room at Papunya in 1972, Water Ceremony by Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula is a work of exceptional historical significance and spiritual gravity. The vendor recalled watching Tjupurrula begin the work — broad swishes of pigment applied with a rag, followed by the intricate layering of figures and ceremonial objects that emerged over time — before returning to acquire the painting.

Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, Water Ceremony 1972

The composition is thought to depict two Watermen ancestors seated on either side of a sacred board, surrounded by ceremonial objects, at a site likely to be Kalipinypa. A closely related work of the same dimensions is held in the Fannin Collection at the National Gallery of Australia. Water Ceremony had remained in only the second private collection from the time of its acquisition until its sale last year — a testament to the devotion it inspires — and has now entered another distinguished private Foundation collection. To have facilitated that passage was an honour.

Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi began painting in early 1972, during the seminal months of the Western Desert art movement at Papunya. He became one of the movement’s most distinctive voices — his compositions are architecturally considered, his palette severe and beautiful, his engagement with Dreaming narratives unwavering.

Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi, Man Dreaming 1971 – 1972

Man Dreaming was offered for sale for the first time in over forty years in the 2026 edition of SIGNIFICANT. Its exhibition biography is exceptional: the work was included in Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2011, then travelled to the Musée du quai Branly in Paris in 2012–2013. Since then, it had been on long-term loan to the Art Gallery of South Australia, where it remained on permanent display.

Works of this provenance and institutional standing rarely come to market. When they do, they move.

Sweers Island is — in every sense — a monumental work. At 200 x 600 cm, it commands space the way Country commands the imagination of those who belong to it. In Bruce Johnson McLean’s words: “It resonates with the love the ‘Bentinck Island Art Gang’ had for their Dulka, their Country, which the artists have expressed with full energy and colour.”

Bentinck Island Women’s Collaborative, Sweers Island 2008, © the artists / Copyright Agency 2026

Sally Gabori’s dominant contribution to this collaborative work captures the spine of the island — its contours, the tall hills and she-oak scrubs on its eastern side — with the immediacy and authority that defined her practice. The work is a record of belonging, and an act of cultural affirmation by women who waited a lifetime to return to their homelands.

Placing Sweers Island in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Australia was one of the defining moments of our year.

A Year Worth Celebrating
The full list of the top twenty highlights tells a story that goes well beyond individual sales. It includes masterworks by Alec Mingelmanganu, Rover Thomas Joolama, Paddy Bedford, Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, Ginger Riley Munduwalawala, George Tjungurrayi, Makinti Napanangka AM, Naata Nungurrayi — the latter two each achieving new record prices at Frieze Masters — alongside works by Doreen Reid Nakamarra, Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, Gunybi Ganambarr, and Daniel Walbidi.

What excites us most, looking across this body of sale results, is not simply the calibre of the work — it is the way in which so many of them found their new homes. Private Sales have been the defining growth story of this period for our gallery. Collector-to-institution placements, private foundation acquisitions, and discreet brokered transactions between serious collectors have become the dominant force for our most significant works.

This is a healthy and maturing market dynamic. It reflects growing confidence among sophisticated buyers and sellers who are seeking certainty, discretion, and curatorial guidance over the theatre of the auction room.

We go into the next six months energised by what this past year has demonstrated: that for the finest works, in the right hands, there has never been a better time to be active in this market.

I invite you to view the Top 20 Highlights here and to contact me if you have any questions about the market.

D’Lan Davidson