Australian Art - Fraud

Fraud

Like the larger art markets in the northern hemisphere, fraud is a problem in Australian art. There is no public database of known fraudsters to date, although they are known to come from Australia and other areas ranging from Europe, China to southeast Asia. In addition to the growing number of faked paintings of artists including Minnie Pwerle, Charles Blackman and Robert Dickerson, sometimes galleries and art dealers are impersonated over the internet. The major commercial art magazines have websites with the correct links to their client's websites.

Shoddy auction practices are common, for instance low attention to provenance, pseudo collections where art market dross is implied to be part of a collector's personal effects, and ramping, where prices for artworks are manipulated (inflated at auction).