Kutuwulumi Purawarrumpatu (Kitty Kantilla)
Kitty Kantilla
BIOGRAPHY
Kitty Kantilla’s art is informed by the ornate body painting of the Pukumani ceremony. What makes the art of Kitty Kantilla and those of her generation so inherently important is that the meaning of these designs, characterised by abstract patterns of dots and lines, has been largely lost since the missionary era. She was among the very last artists to inherit these designs intact from her father. In her own words, “I watched him as a young girl and I’ve still got the design in my head” (Ryan 2004: 394).
In the early period of Kantilla’s works on paper and canvas, her style consisted of white, red, and yellow dots against a black background. The fields of dots were punctuated solely by bands of solid colour or geometric shapes. By 1997 she began painting on a white background, thereby reversing the colour dynamics and energy of her works. Her style varied once more in 2002, when she began to employ large blocks of textured colour, punctuated by small segments of dots and lines on both black and white underlay.
Art critic Sebastian Smee most aptly described Kitty Kantilla as “a poet of small scale contrasts” (2000: 22).
Kitty Kantilla was born circa 1928 at Yimpinari on the eastern side of Melville Island. She lived a traditional life as a child, only exchanging the paperbark roof of her youth for mission life in adulthood. The mission settlement, located on the eastern coast of Bathurst Island approximately 100 kilometres north of Darwin, was established in 1911. Those who worked at the mission received rations such as beef, flour, honey, and tea to supplement their bush tucker.
In 1970, Kitty, along with a number of other countrywomen, established a small outstation in her mother’s country at Paru on Melville Island, just across the Aspley Strait and within sight of the growing township of Nguiu. It was here that Kitty first began working as an artist, alongside a group of widowed women who became renowned in the early 1980s for their ironwood sculptures of ancestor figures drawn from the Purukapali legend.
By the late 1970s, the pottery established in Darwin at the Bagot Reserve by Eddy Puruntatamerri and others had been re-established in Nguiu. This was joined in 1978 by Tiwi Pima Art, which encouraged the production of traditional arts including wood carving, bark painting, and weaving. In the early 1980s, a fabric printing facility, Tiwi Design, was established, and by 1985 all three enterprises came under the same management.
The Paru women sold their work through this facility on Bathurst Island until, by the early 1990s, most of them had passed away. Without their support and friendship, Kitty moved to Milikapiti (Snake Bay), where Jilamara Arts and Crafts had grown from an Adult Education centre into a hub supporting artists living closer to their own country. As she grew older, she moved away from sculpture and began working primarily on canvas and paper.
The roots of Kitty Kantilla’s art, regardless of medium, were always tied to the fundamental Tiwi creation story. This classic morality tale is the equivalent in Tiwi culture to the Ramayana or Mahabharata in Asia and India, or the story of Adam and Eve in Christian tradition. In the Tiwi version of creation, Bima, the wife of Purukapali, makes love to her brother-in-law while her son Jinani, left lying under a tree in the sun, dies of exposure. Enraged, Purukapali transforms his wife into a night curlew and performs an elaborate mourning ceremony for his son. This was the first Pukumani (mortuary) ceremony and marks the origin of death in the Tiwi Islands. It remains central to Tiwi culture today, serving “as a nucleus for the entire Tiwi world-view” (McDonald 2003).
This subtle mastery of abstraction, anchored in the essence of her culture, and the trembling impression of her marks in the later stages of her life evoke the movement of participants singing and dancing during ceremony. In her final years, though frail, Kitty imbued her works with mixed feelings about the passing of old ways and uncertainty about the new.
Her art practice and reputation during the last decade of her life were greatly enhanced by her close relationship with Gabriella Roy, who promoted her as an artist of renown through regular solo exhibitions at the Aboriginal and Pacific Gallery in Sydney. In 2000, Kitty participated in the Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art, and in 2002 she won the Works on Paper Award at the 19th Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Awards in Darwin.
Kitty Kantilla was honoured with a posthumous retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, which opened in 2007 and toured nationally.
In the early period of Kantilla’s works on paper and canvas, her style consisted of white, red, and yellow dots against a black background. The fields of dots were punctuated solely by bands of solid colour or geometric shapes. By 1997 she began painting on a white background, thereby reversing the colour dynamics and energy of her works. Her style varied once more in 2002, when she began to employ large blocks of textured colour, punctuated by small segments of dots and lines on both black and white underlay.
Art critic Sebastian Smee most aptly described Kitty Kantilla as “a poet of small scale contrasts” (2000: 22).
Kitty Kantilla was born circa 1928 at Yimpinari on the eastern side of Melville Island. She lived a traditional life as a child, only exchanging the paperbark roof of her youth for mission life in adulthood. The mission settlement, located on the eastern coast of Bathurst Island approximately 100 kilometres north of Darwin, was established in 1911. Those who worked at the mission received rations such as beef, flour, honey, and tea to supplement their bush tucker.
In 1970, Kitty, along with a number of other countrywomen, established a small outstation in her mother’s country at Paru on Melville Island, just across the Aspley Strait and within sight of the growing township of Nguiu. It was here that Kitty first began working as an artist, alongside a group of widowed women who became renowned in the early 1980s for their ironwood sculptures of ancestor figures drawn from the Purukapali legend.
By the late 1970s, the pottery established in Darwin at the Bagot Reserve by Eddy Puruntatamerri and others had been re-established in Nguiu. This was joined in 1978 by Tiwi Pima Art, which encouraged the production of traditional arts including wood carving, bark painting, and weaving. In the early 1980s, a fabric printing facility, Tiwi Design, was established, and by 1985 all three enterprises came under the same management.
The Paru women sold their work through this facility on Bathurst Island until, by the early 1990s, most of them had passed away. Without their support and friendship, Kitty moved to Milikapiti (Snake Bay), where Jilamara Arts and Crafts had grown from an Adult Education centre into a hub supporting artists living closer to their own country. As she grew older, she moved away from sculpture and began working primarily on canvas and paper.
The roots of Kitty Kantilla’s art, regardless of medium, were always tied to the fundamental Tiwi creation story. This classic morality tale is the equivalent in Tiwi culture to the Ramayana or Mahabharata in Asia and India, or the story of Adam and Eve in Christian tradition. In the Tiwi version of creation, Bima, the wife of Purukapali, makes love to her brother-in-law while her son Jinani, left lying under a tree in the sun, dies of exposure. Enraged, Purukapali transforms his wife into a night curlew and performs an elaborate mourning ceremony for his son. This was the first Pukumani (mortuary) ceremony and marks the origin of death in the Tiwi Islands. It remains central to Tiwi culture today, serving “as a nucleus for the entire Tiwi world-view” (McDonald 2003).
This subtle mastery of abstraction, anchored in the essence of her culture, and the trembling impression of her marks in the later stages of her life evoke the movement of participants singing and dancing during ceremony. In her final years, though frail, Kitty imbued her works with mixed feelings about the passing of old ways and uncertainty about the new.
Her art practice and reputation during the last decade of her life were greatly enhanced by her close relationship with Gabriella Roy, who promoted her as an artist of renown through regular solo exhibitions at the Aboriginal and Pacific Gallery in Sydney. In 2000, Kitty participated in the Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art, and in 2002 she won the Works on Paper Award at the 19th Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Awards in Darwin.
Kitty Kantilla was honoured with a posthumous retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, which opened in 2007 and toured nationally.
Awards
2002 - NATSIA Telstra Work on Paper Award
1993 - poster, image reproduced for Batchelor College, Batchelor, NT
1993 - poster, image reproduced for Batchelor College, Batchelor, NT
Exhibitions
2007 - Kitty Kantilla Retrospective, travelling exhibition from the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
2003 - Kitty Kantilla - Kutuwalumi Purawarrumpatu, Aboriginal & Pacific Art Gallery, Sydney
2001 - Aboriginal & Pacific Art Gallery, Surry Hills, Sydney
2000 - Aboriginal & Pacific Art Gallery, Surry Hills, Sydney
1999 - Aboriginal & Pacific Art Gallery, Surry Hills, Sydney
1998 - Aboriginal & Pacific Art Gallery, Surry Hills, Sydney
1997 - Aboriginal & South Pacific Gallery, Sydney
1995 - Aboriginal & South Pacific Gallery, Surry Hills, Sydney
1994 - Aboriginal & South Pacific Gallery, Surry Hills, Sydney
1993 - Aboriginal and South Pacific Gallery, Surry Hills, Sydney
2003 - Kitty Kantilla - Kutuwalumi Purawarrumpatu, Aboriginal & Pacific Art Gallery, Sydney
2001 - Aboriginal & Pacific Art Gallery, Surry Hills, Sydney
2000 - Aboriginal & Pacific Art Gallery, Surry Hills, Sydney
1999 - Aboriginal & Pacific Art Gallery, Surry Hills, Sydney
1998 - Aboriginal & Pacific Art Gallery, Surry Hills, Sydney
1997 - Aboriginal & South Pacific Gallery, Sydney
1995 - Aboriginal & South Pacific Gallery, Surry Hills, Sydney
1994 - Aboriginal & South Pacific Gallery, Surry Hills, Sydney
1993 - Aboriginal and South Pacific Gallery, Surry Hills, Sydney
Group Exhibitions
2022 - Know my name: Australian women artists 1900 - now, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
2020 - TIWI, Ian Potter Centre National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
2015 - Indigenous Art: Moving Backwards into the Future, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
2005 - Black Ink: Indigenous Prints from the Queensland Art Gallery Collection, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
2004 - North by North-West: Contemporary Indigenous Art from the Queensland Art Gallery Collection, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; EXPLAINED, A closer look at Aboriginal art, Aboriginal Art Museum, Utrecht, The Netherlands
2003 - Tactility: two centuries of Indigenous objects, textiles and fibre, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 7 June – 28 September, 2003; 2003 Clemenger Contemporary Art Award, participating finalists include: Robert Boynes, Pat Brassington, Peter Callas, Susan Cohn, Aleks Danko, Lesley Dumbrell, Gawirrin Gumana, TIm Johnson, Kitty Kantilla, Derek Kreckler, John Mawurndjul, Makinti Napanangka, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Stelarc, Margaret West at the NGV
2002 - The Redlands Westpac Art Prize, Mosman Art Gallery; Pwoja Jilamara, Raft Artspace, Darwin; Meridian Focus on contemporary Australian Art Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; 27th Annual Shell Fremantle Print Award, Fremantle Art Centre; 19th NATSIAA, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin; People in a Landscape, Australian Print Workshop touring exhibition, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, and Turkey
2001 - The 16th Asian International Art Exhibition Guangdong Museum of Art, China; Ochre Short Street Gallery, Broome; New Work from Jilamara, Redback Gallery, Brisbane; Lines of Descent Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, Brisbane; Jilamara, Jilamara Framed Gallery Darwin; Dreamtime: The Dark and the Light Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg, Austria; 26th Annual Shell Fremantle Print Award Fremantle Art Centre
2000 - People in a Landscape Contemporary Australian Prints, Australian Print Workshop; The National Gallery of Victoria Collection , Venice; From Mythology to the Present Wuerzburg, Germany; Exposition collective, Accents Australiens, Stephane Jacob Paris & Espace Adamski Designs, Paris; Exposition collective, Accents Australiens, Stephane Jacob Paris & Galeries Lafayette, Paris; Crossroads Millenium Portfolio of Australian Aboriginal Art (touring nationally and internationally); Beyond the Pale, Adelaide Biennale/Adelaide Festival, Art Gallery of South Australia; Across Canberra School of Art Gallery (Touring 2001-2); 17th NATSIAA, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory Darwin
1999 - Tiwi on Wood Alcaston House Gallery, Melbourne; New Paintings from Milikapiti Redback Gallery, Brisbane; Mapping The Country Customs House Sydney; Love Magic S.H.Ervin Gallery, Sydney; Group Exhibition Chapman Gallery, Canberra; Exposition collective, Australie – Art, Stephane Jacob Paris & J.L. Amsler, Bastille, Paris; Arukulunga WunitakThelma - Cyclone Thelma Australian Print Workshop; All About Art Alcaston House Gallery, Melbourne; International Art Fair Exhibition Buildings, Melbourne
1998 - The Old & The New Gallery Gondwana Alice Springs; Proof Positive: A selection of Prints from the Archive of the Australian Print Workshop Carnegie Gallery, Hobart City Council; One Thousand Journeys Tin Sheds Gallery and touring exhibition; NATSIAA, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin; Jilamara Indigenart, Perth; Group Exhibition Alcaston House Gallery, Melbourne; Gli Aborigeni Australiani Una Storia Forty Thousand Ani. Castello Sforenco, Milandeao Sale Viscontee, Italy; Exposition collective, L’Art des Aborigenes d’Australie, Stephane Jacob Paris & Espace Toyota, Avenue des Champs-Elysees, Paris; International Art Fair Exhibition Buildings, Melbourne.
1997 - Small Designs - Jewellery and Paintings Savode Gallery Brisbane; Old Patterns Framed Gallery, Darwin; NATSIAA, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory Darwin; Keeper of the Mimi Spirit, The October Gallery, London; Kartukuni Amintiya Jurra (Ironwood and Paper) Hogarth Gallery, Sydney; Exposition collective, L’Art des Aborigenes d’Australie, Stephane Jacob Paris & Galerie de Stassart, Brussels; Exposition collective, L’Art des Aborigenes d’Australie, Stephane Jacob Paris & Espace Paul Riquet, Beziers; Dreamings Spazio Pitti Arte Florence Italy
1996 - Tiwi People from Melville Island. Anima Gallery Adelaide; Tiwi People from Melville Island Anima Gallery Adelaide; National Aboriginal Heritage Award, Parliament House, Canberra ACT; Masterpieces from Milikapiti Savode Gallery Brisbane; Etchings & Lino blocks from Melville Island Australian Print Workshop Fitzroy Vic.
1995 - The Best Face Value for Autumn Wollongong City Art Gallery, NSW; NATSIAA, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin (and touring nationally 1996); Jilamara Kapi Yurruka Manimpurrua, (Designs on Long Canvas and Pukumani Poles). Alcaston House Gallery, Melbourne
1994-95 - Art of the Tiwi from the Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, an NGV Travelling Exhibition, touring Victoria, Tasmania, Adelaide
1994 – Power of the Land, Masterpieces of Aboriginal Art, National Gallery of Victoria; Creators and Inventors Australian Women's Art in the National Gallery of Victoria, NGV Melbourne
1993 - The Body Tiwi: Aboriginal Art from Melville and Bathurst Islands The University Gallery, University of Tasmania, Launceston; Nginingawula Tiwi Jilamara, All our Tiwi Designs, MAGNT, Darwin NT; NATSIAA, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin
1992 - Ngingingawula Jilamara Kapi Purunguparri (Our Designs on Bark), NGV, Melbourne.
1989 - Tiwi Aboriginal Woodcarvings, Meat Market Craft Centre, North Melbourne, Victoria; Paru Women Aboriginal Artists Gallery, Sydney
2020 - TIWI, Ian Potter Centre National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
2015 - Indigenous Art: Moving Backwards into the Future, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
2005 - Black Ink: Indigenous Prints from the Queensland Art Gallery Collection, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
2004 - North by North-West: Contemporary Indigenous Art from the Queensland Art Gallery Collection, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; EXPLAINED, A closer look at Aboriginal art, Aboriginal Art Museum, Utrecht, The Netherlands
2003 - Tactility: two centuries of Indigenous objects, textiles and fibre, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 7 June – 28 September, 2003; 2003 Clemenger Contemporary Art Award, participating finalists include: Robert Boynes, Pat Brassington, Peter Callas, Susan Cohn, Aleks Danko, Lesley Dumbrell, Gawirrin Gumana, TIm Johnson, Kitty Kantilla, Derek Kreckler, John Mawurndjul, Makinti Napanangka, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Stelarc, Margaret West at the NGV
2002 - The Redlands Westpac Art Prize, Mosman Art Gallery; Pwoja Jilamara, Raft Artspace, Darwin; Meridian Focus on contemporary Australian Art Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; 27th Annual Shell Fremantle Print Award, Fremantle Art Centre; 19th NATSIAA, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin; People in a Landscape, Australian Print Workshop touring exhibition, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, and Turkey
2001 - The 16th Asian International Art Exhibition Guangdong Museum of Art, China; Ochre Short Street Gallery, Broome; New Work from Jilamara, Redback Gallery, Brisbane; Lines of Descent Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, Brisbane; Jilamara, Jilamara Framed Gallery Darwin; Dreamtime: The Dark and the Light Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg, Austria; 26th Annual Shell Fremantle Print Award Fremantle Art Centre
2000 - People in a Landscape Contemporary Australian Prints, Australian Print Workshop; The National Gallery of Victoria Collection , Venice; From Mythology to the Present Wuerzburg, Germany; Exposition collective, Accents Australiens, Stephane Jacob Paris & Espace Adamski Designs, Paris; Exposition collective, Accents Australiens, Stephane Jacob Paris & Galeries Lafayette, Paris; Crossroads Millenium Portfolio of Australian Aboriginal Art (touring nationally and internationally); Beyond the Pale, Adelaide Biennale/Adelaide Festival, Art Gallery of South Australia; Across Canberra School of Art Gallery (Touring 2001-2); 17th NATSIAA, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory Darwin
1999 - Tiwi on Wood Alcaston House Gallery, Melbourne; New Paintings from Milikapiti Redback Gallery, Brisbane; Mapping The Country Customs House Sydney; Love Magic S.H.Ervin Gallery, Sydney; Group Exhibition Chapman Gallery, Canberra; Exposition collective, Australie – Art, Stephane Jacob Paris & J.L. Amsler, Bastille, Paris; Arukulunga WunitakThelma - Cyclone Thelma Australian Print Workshop; All About Art Alcaston House Gallery, Melbourne; International Art Fair Exhibition Buildings, Melbourne
1998 - The Old & The New Gallery Gondwana Alice Springs; Proof Positive: A selection of Prints from the Archive of the Australian Print Workshop Carnegie Gallery, Hobart City Council; One Thousand Journeys Tin Sheds Gallery and touring exhibition; NATSIAA, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin; Jilamara Indigenart, Perth; Group Exhibition Alcaston House Gallery, Melbourne; Gli Aborigeni Australiani Una Storia Forty Thousand Ani. Castello Sforenco, Milandeao Sale Viscontee, Italy; Exposition collective, L’Art des Aborigenes d’Australie, Stephane Jacob Paris & Espace Toyota, Avenue des Champs-Elysees, Paris; International Art Fair Exhibition Buildings, Melbourne.
1997 - Small Designs - Jewellery and Paintings Savode Gallery Brisbane; Old Patterns Framed Gallery, Darwin; NATSIAA, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory Darwin; Keeper of the Mimi Spirit, The October Gallery, London; Kartukuni Amintiya Jurra (Ironwood and Paper) Hogarth Gallery, Sydney; Exposition collective, L’Art des Aborigenes d’Australie, Stephane Jacob Paris & Galerie de Stassart, Brussels; Exposition collective, L’Art des Aborigenes d’Australie, Stephane Jacob Paris & Espace Paul Riquet, Beziers; Dreamings Spazio Pitti Arte Florence Italy
1996 - Tiwi People from Melville Island. Anima Gallery Adelaide; Tiwi People from Melville Island Anima Gallery Adelaide; National Aboriginal Heritage Award, Parliament House, Canberra ACT; Masterpieces from Milikapiti Savode Gallery Brisbane; Etchings & Lino blocks from Melville Island Australian Print Workshop Fitzroy Vic.
1995 - The Best Face Value for Autumn Wollongong City Art Gallery, NSW; NATSIAA, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin (and touring nationally 1996); Jilamara Kapi Yurruka Manimpurrua, (Designs on Long Canvas and Pukumani Poles). Alcaston House Gallery, Melbourne
1994-95 - Art of the Tiwi from the Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, an NGV Travelling Exhibition, touring Victoria, Tasmania, Adelaide
1994 – Power of the Land, Masterpieces of Aboriginal Art, National Gallery of Victoria; Creators and Inventors Australian Women's Art in the National Gallery of Victoria, NGV Melbourne
1993 - The Body Tiwi: Aboriginal Art from Melville and Bathurst Islands The University Gallery, University of Tasmania, Launceston; Nginingawula Tiwi Jilamara, All our Tiwi Designs, MAGNT, Darwin NT; NATSIAA, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin
1992 - Ngingingawula Jilamara Kapi Purunguparri (Our Designs on Bark), NGV, Melbourne.
1989 - Tiwi Aboriginal Woodcarvings, Meat Market Craft Centre, North Melbourne, Victoria; Paru Women Aboriginal Artists Gallery, Sydney
Collections
Aboriginal Art Museum, The Netherlands
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Artbank
Australian National Gallery, Canberra ACT
Chase Manhattan (J.P Morgan) Bank
Edith Cowan University Collection WA
Griffith University Collection, Queensland
Macquarie Bank Collection
Millennium Portfolio of Aboriginal Artists
Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, France
Museum and Art Gallery of the NT
Museum de Lyon, France
Museum of Victoria, Melbourne
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
National Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour, Sydney
NSW Art Gallery, Sydney
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Queensland University Of Technology Collection
Wollongong City Art Gallery, Wollongong
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Artbank
Australian National Gallery, Canberra ACT
Chase Manhattan (J.P Morgan) Bank
Edith Cowan University Collection WA
Griffith University Collection, Queensland
Macquarie Bank Collection
Millennium Portfolio of Aboriginal Artists
Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, France
Museum and Art Gallery of the NT
Museum de Lyon, France
Museum of Victoria, Melbourne
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
National Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour, Sydney
NSW Art Gallery, Sydney
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Queensland University Of Technology Collection
Wollongong City Art Gallery, Wollongong
Market Analysis
Kitty Kantilla holds a distinctive position within the Tiwi art market. While her auction results have not reached the highest levels achieved by some peers, she has received exceptional institutional and critical recognition, reflecting both her seniority and the consistency of her practice.
Her auction market has historically been selective rather than speculative. Since the 1970s, most sales have clustered between $2,500 and $25,000, with a smaller number of strong results extending into the $25,000–50,000 and $50,000–100,000 ranges. This distribution underscores a market that rewards quality, period and presentation rather than volume.
Following a reassessment of her market in the mid-2000s, prices strengthened, particularly around the time of her retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2007. Results between 2008 and 2011 were comparatively robust, though expectations softened in subsequent years. From 2016 onwards, annual totals have remained modest but steady, with occasional stronger years reflecting the appearance of higher-quality works rather than broader market momentum.
Recent results continue to show variability. While clearance rates fluctuate, individual years such as 2022 and 2025 demonstrate that well-resolved works can still achieve solid outcomes, even in thinner markets. Across this period, collectors have consistently shown a preference for works with lighter grounds and refined line work, while darker compositions tend to perform less strongly.
Works on paper generally achieve lower prices than canvases, despite representing some of Kantilla’s most expressive and resolved works. For informed collectors, these works offer a compelling opportunity to acquire significant examples of her practice at accessible price points, often with greater vitality than weaker works on canvas.
Her auction market has historically been selective rather than speculative. Since the 1970s, most sales have clustered between $2,500 and $25,000, with a smaller number of strong results extending into the $25,000–50,000 and $50,000–100,000 ranges. This distribution underscores a market that rewards quality, period and presentation rather than volume.
Following a reassessment of her market in the mid-2000s, prices strengthened, particularly around the time of her retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2007. Results between 2008 and 2011 were comparatively robust, though expectations softened in subsequent years. From 2016 onwards, annual totals have remained modest but steady, with occasional stronger years reflecting the appearance of higher-quality works rather than broader market momentum.
Recent results continue to show variability. While clearance rates fluctuate, individual years such as 2022 and 2025 demonstrate that well-resolved works can still achieve solid outcomes, even in thinner markets. Across this period, collectors have consistently shown a preference for works with lighter grounds and refined line work, while darker compositions tend to perform less strongly.
Works on paper generally achieve lower prices than canvases, despite representing some of Kantilla’s most expressive and resolved works. For informed collectors, these works offer a compelling opportunity to acquire significant examples of her practice at accessible price points, often with greater vitality than weaker works on canvas.
