Phillips London Auction Achieves 95% Sell-Through Rate

On October 13, Phillips held its 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in London, featuring 46 lots primarily focused on contemporary works. The auction achieved a 95% sell-through rate by lot and 97% by value, totaling £18.3 million, just below the high estimate. Olivia Thornton, head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art Europe at Phillips, expressed pride in the strong result. The top lot was Banksy's 2011 work Forgive Us Our Trespassing, selling for £2.71 million, followed by Luc Tuymans' Rome (2007) from the Les Revenants series, achieving £1.5 million in its first auction appearance. Works by Cy Twombly, George Condo, and Anish Kapoor (who has a retrospective at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence) each sold for nearly £1 million, with Kapoor's Untitled (2012) reaching £825,500. The ultra-contemporary segment continued to drive sales, with works by Mohammed Sami (Childhood, 2018) and Emma Webster (Baptism, 2020) each selling for £228,600, and Michaela Yearwood-Dan's The Summit of Beauty and Love exceeding its low estimate of £80,000 to sell for £228,600. New auction records were set for Marina Perez Simão (Untitled, 2020, £95,250) and Francesca Mollet (Two Thistles, 2021, £254,000, surpassing her previous record of $48,260). Despite the low unsold rate, the market shows signs of change: strong bidding on lower estimates but sluggish activity on higher ones. The article notes upcoming auctions in Paris and New York in November amid a challenging geopolitical climate.