Flipping isn't collecting

There’s a quiet crisis unfolding in the art world—one that rarely makes headlines, yet deeply affects the lives and careers of living artists. It’s called flipping.

Flipping refers to the practice of purchasing artworks—often from emerging or mid-career artists—only to resell them quickly at a profit. While the secondary market is nothing new, the speed and speculation now driving it are deeply harmful. What was once a slow, considered process of collecting and supporting artists has, in some corners, turned into a fast-paced hustle. And the consequences are far-reaching.

For many artists, creating is a sacred act. It takes years to develop a voice, refine a technique, and build a body of work. Each piece holds hours—sometimes months—of labour, care, and meaning. When a work is purchased with genuine connection, it becomes part of the artist’s story. But when it's bought as a pawn in a financial game, that bond is broken. The work becomes currency, and the artist becomes invisible.

More troubling is the way flipping can distort the market. Artists receive no share of resale profits, yet their names are tied to those figures forever. An artwork that once sold for £5,000 can be flipped for £50,000—without a penny reaching the creator. On paper, it looks like success. But in reality, it creates an illusion of demand that galleries may feel pressure to match. The artist, suddenly expected to perform at inflated prices, may feel rushed to produce or trapped by a false market narrative.

The careers of several promising artists have already been impacted by this cycle. Amoako Boafo, for instance, saw early works flipped at auction for triple their original price, triggering a frenzy that had little to do with his actual growth as an artist. Anna Weyant faced a similar fate, with a wave of speculative buying and selling that made her a household name—but also a cautionary tale. In both cases, the artists became symbols of market hype before they had time to evolve at their own pace.

This kind of volatility doesn’t build legacy—it jeopardizes it. Artists deserve time to explore, to fail, to shift direction. When the pressure to meet skyrocketing price expectations overrides that freedom, what we’re left with is not a thriving creative culture, but a distorted one.

True collectors know that supporting art isn’t about betting on the next big thing—it’s about investing in stories, relationships, and the long arc of creativity. It's about giving artists room to grow, not cashing in on their potential before it's even realised.

If we want a rich and diverse art world, we have to protect it from short-term thinking. That means calling out flipping for what it is: a practice that prioritizes profit over purpose—and one that ultimately hurts the very people we claim to champion.