BLAST #24a | Sonia Boyce – From Margin to Mainstream

Sonia Boyce, From Someone Else’s Fear Fantasy (A Case of Mistaken Identity? Well This Is No Bed Of Roses) To Metamorphosis, 1987. Unsold at Christie’s, acquired by National Portrait Gallery. © Sonia Boyce. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2025. Photograph by Tim Bowditch. Purchased with kind support from the Bukhman Foundation as part of Collecting the Now, formerly in the collection of British artist Sutapa Biswas. Courtesy National Portrait Gallery.

There is an old adage in the auction business that once a work has been offered but unsold in public it has been ‘burned’ i.e., damaged, so hard to sell again. There are, of course, exceptions, the outstanding example currently being a work by Dame Sonia Boyce OBE, the first woman of colour to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2022. In an intriguing double turn around, a work by Boyce that was unsold at Christie’s five months ago, seemingly unwanted, has just been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery. The acquisition also underlines how the artist has moved from the margins, when the work was done in 1987, to the mainstream.

First, some background. Last October, in the run up to the Frieze week auctions, I picked out some highlights with notable owners, not all of whom were designated in the sale catalogues, for a market scoop article, ‘Consignors Revealed’, in Artnet News. They included Eric Clapton, Damien Hirst, Wall Street executive Frank Gallipoli, and Australian billionaire Naomi Milgrom. But the most interesting sale in my book had been consigned by the lesser known but significant British-Indian conceptual artist Sutapa Biswas.

The work by Boyce which Biswas had been given by the artist, and was selling, was a quartet of painted photo booth style selfies entitled From Someone Else’s Fear Fantasy (A Case of Mistaken Identity? Well This Is No Bed Of Roses) To Metamorphosis, made in 1987 when Boyce was emerging as a figure of note in the Black Arts Movement in Britain. In it, Boyce portrays herself, eyes closed as if in a dream, surrounded by racially offensive imagery  - a King Kong gorilla and a ‘Golliwog’ character bearing fruit.

In 1989 the work had been included in the landmark exhibition “The Other Story” curated by the London based Pakistani activist artist, Rasheed Araeen, at the Hayward Gallery. As the title of the show suggested, the artists, all with backgrounds from Africa, Asia or Latin America, had been considered of marginal importance in the developing role of British culture, but needed to be recognised. Boyce used photographs of herself specifically because she felt she needed to be seen. Looking back, we can see the work as emblematic of a key moment in the struggle by Black artists for recognition in Great Britain.   

When Biswas submitted the work to Christie’s 36 years later, despite her Venice nomination, Boyce’s market profile was low. Nothing by her had ever made as much as £20,000 at auction. But there were signs that this would change. A year earlier she had been signed up by Hauser & Wirth, a wealthy and influential international gallery with branches in London, New York and Los Angeles, Paris, Hong Kong, Switzerland and Menorca, which represents rising young artist like Flora Yukhnovich and Michaela Yearwood-Dan as well as the estates of historically significant artists Henry Moore, Louise Bourgeois and Jack Whitten (the subject of a major retrospective just opened at The Museum of Modern Art in New York). All this would have had a bearing on Christie’s eye-opening estimate of £120,000-180,000 for the Boyce self-portrait. However, the market was not prepared for this new price scale, and the work went unsold.

Step up the National Portrait Gallery, which is launching Collecting the Now, a new £1 million fund provided by the Bukhman Foundation, a recently formed body created by Anastasia and Igor Bukhman, leading figures in the hospitality and online gaming industries. Earlier this year, the Foundation announced it would be supporting Tate’s Art Now exhibition programme in its 30th year, followed this week by Collecting the Now which will allow the NPG to keep up with the latest developments in the visual arts on behalf of its public.

It is not being revealed how much the Boyce work has cost, but it is likely to be somewhere just below the £120,000 price Christe’s estimated the work at. (Christie’s told BLAST it played no part in negotiating the sale; the NPG’s new director, Victoria Siddall, who once worked in Christie’s proposals department, was not available for interview). At the same time, the NPG will also benefit from the acquisition of a work by Guyana educated Hew Locke, enabled by the Bukhman Foundation. Created only last year, Souvenir 17 (Albert Prince of Wales), is a 19th century porcelain bust of the future King Edward VII garlanded with carnivalesque regalia - a satirical comment on the relationship between Royalty and Empire. Locke’s work has become increasingly collectible of late and sells through his gallery, Hales in London and New York, in the £40,000–120,000 range.

Hew Locke, Souvenir 17 (Albert Edward, Prince of Wales), 2024, Mixed media on antique Parian ware. Image courtesy the Artist, Hales London and New York © Hew Locke. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2025. Purchased with kind support from the Bukhman Foundation as part of Collecting the Now. Courtesy National Portrait Gallery.