Colin Gleadell reports on the Saatchi Gallery show of Contemporary Turkish art that did solid business in advance of the Turkish Contemporary sales in London held by Sotheby’s and Bonhams. Buyers in the auctions hailed from all over, including Turkey, but the Saatchi sales all went to collectors who don’t live in Asia Minor:

It was a brave effort by Bonhams, which brought £1 million. But approximately two thirds of the lots, which were too familiar to collectors, went unsold.

Sotheby’s, which had lost its leading expert in the field, also struggled at points, but sold two thirds of the lots and roughly equalled the previous year’s total with a £2.3 million sale. […] Several artists in their exhibition were also included in the Sotheby’s sale, and collectors who sensed auction prices would go higher than in the gallery made their purchases before the auction – wisely, it would appear.

• A satin and embroidery work of the Pope engulfed by fire, The Sacred Fire of Faith, by 43 year-old Ramazan Bayracoglu was one of the first to go […] selling for £40,000 to a French collector. A similarly sized embroidery by Bayracoglu, estimated at £12,000, then sold at Sotheby’s for £61,250.
• A digitally manipulated photographic print, Guns of War, by 32-year-old Ansen Atilla, sold for £25,000. At Sotheby’s, a similar work by Ansen, estimated at £22,000, sold for a record £39,650. Treacherous Wolf, a bronze sculpture by Yasam Sazmazer, doubled its estimate at Sotheby’s to sell for almost £14,000.
• The original wood carving, theoretically worth much more after that, sold at the Saatchi Gallery before the auction for £20,000.

These Days We’re All Talking Turkey (Telegraph)