Australians are forgoing a weekend wander in the local art gallery; instead opting to purchase art online.
The sales have skyrocketed, fuelled by the growing number of online art marketplaces.
Selling direct
Bluethumb sells original art directly from Australian artists' studios to buyers. Founders Edward Hartley and George Hartley launched the site in 2012. The site sell $60,000 worth of art online each month, double the sales of three months ago. Many of the works for sale on the site are only a few hundred dollars each.
Bluethumb competes with other Australian sites such as Art Pharmacy, Art to Art and State of the Art, among others.
"We make it easier to be an artist," George Hartley says. "Along with the exposure that comes with the hundreds of thousands of hits we get a month, we remove distractions by marketing our artists and arranging deliveries, leaving our artists to do what they do best."
Growth in technological advances by some of the key players has also helped boost the online art market.
For example, Saatchi Art launched an app two years ago that allows you to use your phone's camera to view a specific work to scale on your wall in real time.
The app was nominated for a Webby Award in the Mobile Site and Apps Lifestyle category and was also featured in the Best New Apps section on iTunes for its app, which transforms the experience of buying art online by enabling users to virtually preview artwork on their walls before making a purchase.
High-profile casualties
Our reluctance to wander the galleries and instead buy art online has resulted in some high-profile casualties. Sales started plummeting during the global financial crisis, and galleries suffered financially.
Among many to close was .Greenhill Galleries in Adelaide. which stocked thousands of artworks, closing in 2013 after financial struggles.
The gallery director told the media that people simply aren't buying, adding that big galleries right across the eastern seaboard have shut up shop in recent years.
The biennial Melbourne Art Fair was also recently postponed until further notice. It was one of the world's longest running fairs, and was due to be held at the Royal Exhibition Building in August.
This turns an inefficient, expensive off-line marketplace, which is often a lazy monopoly, into an environment that makes it easy for people to transact.
Adam Schwab
According to a statement by the Melbourne Art Foundation, a number of key galleries withdrew their applications for exhibition spaces because they no longer felt able to make the required commitments to the 2016 fair.
"While the situation is deeply disappointing, the board understands the economic imperatives of commercial galleries, and the many shifts in the global contemporary art market," the statement read.
Changing habits
Bluethumb's Hartley says that although the news is disappointing, he's not shocked. Bluethumb represents more than 2000 Australia artists.
"It's sad to see a great art event being cancelled, but does show art buying habits are changing," Hartley says.
"People want the convenience of buying art online. Our strongest time for art sales is late on a Sunday night. People like to browse on their phones using our app at a time when galleries are closed. People were never able to buy art like that before."
And in a strong sign of things to come, co-founders of AussieCommerce Group Adam Schwab and Jeremy Same invested in Bluethumb last November. The pair have an impressive track record of investing in successful disrupter online marketplaces including Seek, Carsales and Menulog, the latter selling in June for $855 million.
"Online marketplaces are the ideal disrupter. They bring together a huge number of diverse buyers and sellers, nationally and globally, in an efficient manner," Schwab says.
"This turns an inefficient, expensive off-line marketplace, which is often a lazy monopoly, into an environment that makes it easy for people to transact," he says.
Online art sales are predicted to continue to grow, according to the Hiscox Online Art Trade Report 2015. It found almost half of this year's respondents said they had bought art online in the past 12 months, up from 38 per cent last year. And 52 per cent of online buyers said they were likely to buy more art online in the next 12 months, followed by 34 per cent who saidthey would buy the same amount.
The report found online art market platforms are providing options when it comes to how buyers engage with and ultimately buy art, with a physical gallery or auction house less important, though not redundant.
In terms of sales, the value of the global online art market has risen from $US1.57 billion in 2013 to an estimated $US2.64 billion in 2014. That figure is expected to rise to $US6.3 billion by 2019.
This shows significant progress towards mainstream adoption, with nearly half (45 per cent) of respondents saying they found the experience of buying art online less intimidating than purchasing from a physical gallery or action house, the report says.
The findings are based on a survey of 506 international art buyers on ArtTactic's client mailing list, Twitter and Facebook.
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