Australian artist James Guppy explores the history of paint and value. Drawing on the Tulip hysteria in Holland during the early 1600s — regarded as the first modern economic bubble — and the trend in still life and Dutch flower paintings that followed, Guppy’s series plays with the relationship between art and commerce:

“There’s a business man in every one of these paintings because often when you look at art there is a small business man whispering in your ear. It seems you cannot look at art without the whisper of investment value… is it there… will it be there?”

See more images from “The Venal Garden” below.