Australian Indigenous Art Market Top 100 (AIAM100)

What is the AIAM100?

The Australian Indigenous Art Market Top 100 covers the careers of more than 200 of the most important artists of the Indigenous art movement. With over 5 years of preparation, this resource is intended to play a major role in underpinning the value and collectability of Aboriginal art both locally and Internationally. The Australian Indigenous Art Market Top 100 (AIAM100) provides professional advice on the Indigenous art market in line with other investment categories. It is designed to be an invaluable resource for art consultants, valuers, and industry professionals and in doing so it will serve the interests of artists, galleries, art centres and collectors. The site includes; information about the artists, each ranked with an annual AIAM100 Rating calculated on secondary market activity; who the artist worked with and how their art found its way into the market; detailed sales results presented graphically with analysis of the market’s preference for different styles and periods; and the ten highest results for each artist presented visually with details of the sales, dates and prices achieved. In what is a unique innovation for the Australian art market, the AIAM100 Index rates individual artist’s careers, and the entire Indigenous art market, on a yearly and cumulative basis since 2000.

The site itself is easily and inexpensively accessible to galleries, art consultants, auction houses, libraries, collection managers and individual collectors. It is user friendly, with free registration, interactivity, and content that can be purchased in a downloadable format on a one by one basis or a yearly subscription. Subscribers can also follow the latest Indigenous art market news through regular articles that follow important market events. Regular updates will be announced via e-mail, facebook, twitter, and youtube. These will enable viewers to hear immediately of art prize results, important art events, institutional exhibitions, artist’s solo shows, emerging art styles, and much more.

It is user friendly, with free registration, interactivity, and content that can be purchased in a downloadable format on a one by one basis or a yearly subscription. Subscribers can also follow the latest Indigenous art market news through regular articles that follow important market events. Regular updates will be announced via facebook, twitter, and youtube. These will enable viewers to hear immediately of art prize results, important art events, institutional exhibitions, artist’s solo shows, emerging art styles, and much much more.

Who is behind this site?

AIAM100.com was compiled by Adrian Newstead in collaboration with the Australian Art Sales Digest.

Why should you create an account and how?

Creating an account is simple, easy and best of all free. This will allow you to navigate through the site and view the content. You will receive regular updates, information on events and the latest industry news via e-mail. To be able to purchase downloadable content you will need an account. The process is simple and easy to do. Simply visit www.aiam100.com and to the right of the screen you will see a black box asking for you name and email address. An automated email will be sent to your nominated email address with your password. Simply click on the link provided in this email and log in using this password and your email address. It is recommended that you change your password straight away. To do so, once logged in click on the ‘my account section to the right of the page and from here you can change all of your details.

What is credit and what is it used for?

Credit is used throughout the site in order to pay for downloadable content such as artists’ profiles and market analysis, and industry related articles. Credit can be purchased in values of 10, 25 or 50. $1 will buy you 1 credit. You can also request a yearly subscription which will allow you year long access to this information.

How is the AIAM100 index calculated?

The most successful 200 individual living and deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists are ranked annually according to secondary market performance indicators. Their AIAM Rating is calculated according to a formula devised by Adrian Newstead in consultation with John Furphy of the Australian Art Sales Digest.

An individual artist’s AIAM Rating is calculated on both a yearly basis as well as their entire career. It is based on the total value of all off their artworks sold at public auctions, their clearance rate (the number offered divided by the number sold), and their average price. Each of these factors is weighted according to the following formula:

AIAM Rating = Success Rate + Profligacy Index + Unit Value
Success Rate = Total Sales ($AUD) x Clearance Rate
Profligacy Index = Number of Works Offered / 100
Unit Value = Average Price / 10,000

Overcoming Anomalies:

These arise when artists have too few sales records or they have so many sales over such a long period that their low average prices skew results. For example: Arnhem Land artist Pankalyirri’s one and only work ever offered achieved a result of $94,500, giving him a huge average price and a 100% clearance rate. At the other end of the spectrum several Hermannsburg painters have had up to 800 works offered yet their average prices are well below $500. In order to overcome these distortions and flatten out the results statistically the following adjustments have been made. To be automatically eligible for inclusion in the top 100 artists

• an artist’s average price must be greater than a threshold. The threshold increases each year, based on the health of the market. This value was around $1000  in 2008
• the number of works offered must be equal to or exceed 20

The AIAM rating for artists with less than a minimum of 20 works offered is adjusted by a factor equal to the total number of works offered divided by 20. Similarly if the average price is lower than the threshold, it also is adjusted by a factor equal to the average price divided by the threshold, thus a gradual rise towards parity.

Due to the increase in the average price threshold each year an artist’s cumulative result may actually decrease. In these very rare cases, an artist’s AIAM rating may be negative during that year.