Art and money go together in some circles – but not for everyone. The arts for most people are not merely objects that could appreciate in financial value, but always have and always will be temporally bound moments to explore and experience life, history and our own minds.

Art is not something the rest of us hang on our walls – it’s something we practice in community centres, it’s what we wait for that weekend trip to the big city to go and visit, it’s what we cherish in books on the shelf or in the local library. So art does indeed have practical purposes: and different ones for different social groups. For some it performs a demonstration of social status, others look to it as a magic money machine like a house, as many did in 2008-09, when one of the only financial markets to grow was the art market. For others its purpose is ritual, intellectual or spiritual; visual worlds to enter mentally but never to own. And of course the artworks themselves operate within both these fields of purpose at once – a picture hanging on a wall in a public gallery or in someone’s home is at once a declaration of prestige, a potentially appreciating artefact and a site of intellectual and aesthetic exploration.