Style Council Member Mr Timothy Klingender shares his daily routine.

If we want to know what someone gets up to in their downtime, there is Instagram. But when it comes to the mechanics of a working day, things are a little less transparent. And if you’ve devoted your life to a certain career – fulfilling though it may be – it is always tempting to wonder if the grass is greener on the other side.

In the past, we have quizzed everyone from a world-beating boxer to a fashion entrepreneur as part of our Working Day series. This week, we speak to an art specialist.

Based in Sydney, Style Council Member Mr Timothy Klingender is senior consultant of Australia art at Sotheby’s London, and director of Tim Klingender Fine Art. In 1996, he founded Sotheby’s Aboriginal art department and has become known for celebrating indigenous Australian art ever since. This weekend, he will oversee the third Aboriginal Art exhibition in Sotheby’s London, before an auction on 14 March. Before a gavel gets pounded, we booked time in his busy schedule to get a play by play account of his working life.

I live with my young family and have my office on the top two floors of an old heritage building called Oceanic Mansions overlooking Sydney’s Bondi Beach. Although my work often takes me to remote locations in Australia, as well as the world’s leading art market centres in Europe, US and Asia, I love my time working at home.

**I generally rise with the sun, and depending on the weather and waves, surf, run or take a long walk with my dog, Deadly (he’s an Affenpinscher). **On my return I help get my two young girls get ready for school, then shower and hit the office at 9.15am.

My office is in a 100-year-old room with press metal ceilings and bay windows. It overlooks the surf beach. It’s lined with bookshelves filled with my art library, indigenous paintings, artefacts, masks, headdresses and ceremonial sculptures.

Every day in the office is different. For the first couple of hours we respond to our overnight emails from Europe and the US, before getting down to whatever’s pressing. We may have clients coming in to inspect art, be carrying out valuations, researching or writing catalogues, dealing with media, speaking with collectors or planning exhibitions and art fairs. No day is ever the same. The only constant is lunch – which is often from the Sydney Fish Market.

Prior to setting up my own business in 2009, I was a director at Sotheby’s and head of the Aboriginal Art Department for more than a decade. Since 2015, my business has overseen Sotheby’s newly established Aboriginal art auctions in London as a consultancy. Although we remotely manage these sales from Australia, international travel is essential.

I’m currently in London as a specialist in charge of the forthcoming Sotheby’s Aboriginal Art sale. Sotheby’s is a sophisticated, multifaceted art selling machine, and every day is an adventure. Prior to the sale, a day may start with a meeting to inform senior management regarding the sale, followed by designing the exhibition’s hang using bespoke software, meeting with the Private Client Group to discuss interested collectors, and working with our in house media department.

Once the exhibition is up on the walls, long days are spent on the exhibition floor talking to collectors. I attend associated events such as breakfasts in the gallery, or lunches in the Sotheby’s boardroom, with collectors, museum directors, artists and dealers. The boardrooms are decorated with Damien Hirst’s butterfly paintings, a hangover from his legendary sale at Sotheby’s in 2008.

The day of the auction is another entire production. It is orchestrated by the formidable bid department and led by a seasoned auctioneer – with a table of telephones running the length of the room manned by Sotheby’s crew. In this day and age at Sotheby’s, virtually every sale is an extraordinary success.

See Mr Klingender’s Style Council profile here