As the end credits of this feature rolls we watch on as canvases are being moved from some random location, into a moving truck, scanned and catalogued and eventually to a storage facility. This is Art.

We, you reading this and myself writing this, have a weird relationship with art. We spend an inordinate amount of time thinking and pondering the world of art; at the very least in relation to film if not other forms. At the same time, we barely skim over the question of what that art is fiscally worth. That is unless we’re talking about production figures or domestic gross at the box office. To us it’s just worth the meagre ticket price we pay for entry, or the digital rental fee. However, in the world of “fine” art where paintings are one of a kind valuations skyrockets at the drop of a hat. Who determines these values?

This film wants to ask how this market works. We sit down with artists, art dealers and collectors who enable and engage in this market actively.

The collectors are either too wealthy to care about the millions they are spending on each piece or have it as an asset to be liquidated later. The dealers are just happy to be selling even higher than they did before. The artists are baffled because in most cases when the art is valued that highly it’s usually upon it’s third reselling and none of that money is going to them.

The world of art is marketed entirely on the pretence that if it’s “good” it’s valuable, and if it’s “valuable” it’s expensive, and if it’s “expensive” it’s good. The circle of life that in any other market would be called a fraud. Here however it’s allowed to continue on because what else is it going to do?

The film feels like one that already knows its own answer from the start. In the opening we hear a voice talk about the idea that if a piece of art isn’t valuable it’s not safeguarded from being lost to time. At the same time if the art is safeguarded it in itself will be seen as valuable and its price will rise. So we ask the question of what is value; but the film leaves us with fewer answers than questions.