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lagos-auction The 7th Edition of the Lagos Art Auction, which is organized by TKMG Auction House, the brainchild of Terra Kulture and Mydrim Gallery will this year, present for sale to the highest bidders 90 exquisite pieces of art from the masters to the freshmen. At a media briefing organised in Terra Kulture, Victoria Island, the curator, TKMG Auction House, Ronke Akinyele revealed that the proceeds from the auction will go to charity. While outlining the scheduled activity for the auction, she said a preview of the works will commence at 5p.m on Sunday April 6 at the Intercontinental Hotel and will run till Thursday April 10, 2014. The auction will hold on Friday April 11. Partner, TKMG, Mrs. Sinmidele Ogunsanya explained why the practice of auction should not be regarded as gambling. “It is not gambling. The auction helps to know how the work of a Nigerian artist is valued. At any auction, it is what the highest bidder gives that is considered as its value. Sometimes, you don’t even get the actual value of the work. Sometimes you get lower; sometimes you get higher value for the works. That is why it is not a gallery sale. She continued, “At the gallery, we have a fixed price that you negotiate. That is the normal sale. But at the auction, the buyers try to outbid one another. The buyer determines the price so there is really no balance. The auction creates awareness about the art works and it gets all the people who desire a particular art work in a room. It is a game of, I want it more than you do’’, she concluded. Founder, Terra Kulture and Partner, TKMG, Mrs. Bolanle Austen-Peters spoke on the significance of the auction which has now become a tradition. “Auction is more popular in the western world. Having an auction here in Nigeria shows that Nigeria is becoming increasingly international. There are international buyers for Nigerian art works now. As people in the industry, we have to create a platform for visual arts. When we started, people were convinced that it was a flash- in- the- pan; that we would do it once and be done with it.” She continued, “We are beginning to create a platform whereby pricing is being ascertained. Before now, an artist could come to this gallery and say he wants to put a million naira on his work and you’d wonder what basis he has for that. But since we started this auction, another industry started from there. We should not see it as child’s play. We should see it as something very significant and one hundred years from now, people will look back and say those were the people who started the business in Nigeria. Are we making profit from the works? Not necessarily. But what we are doing is that we are giving this industry a face. We are making it open to the world. We are challenging the artists to participate. She explained further, “The auction also aims at documentation. Now we can present a catalog of Nigerian works. We were talking to some people in Switzerland at the moment and what they were asking for is what we have done. We simply showed them the catalog and they were surprised to find out how much Nigeria has.” The auction will have a live bidding system online, by telephone alongside bidders who will be physically present at the auction.

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This article was first published on 31st March 2014

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