PDF catalogue

Welcome to A+O’s final Important Paintings and Contemporary Art
catalogue of 2012. This catalogue comes in the aftermath of the most
successful art auction in New Zealand history, The Les and Milly
Paris Collection offered in September of this year was in effect a half
century love affair with contemporary New Zealand art. Whilst the
auction results were quite extraordinary and included new records for
numerous New Zealand artists, the overriding theme of the collection
and the contribution made by Les and Milly Paris to New Zealand’s
visual arts discourse revealed the vital role that committed collectors
can play within this conversation.
Over the course of the pre-auction exhibitions held by ART+OBJECT in
Wellington and Auckland the A+O team met literally thousands of New
Zealanders who are passionate about the art of this country. So many
visitors recalled their own personal connection to individual works in
the Les and Milly Paris Collection, many of which had been exhibited
over the years in public galleries – testimony to the generosity of the
Paris family in sharing their collection with the nation.
The new owners of works from the Paris Collection now share a direct
link to the tradition of contemporary art collecting that in large measure
Les and Milly helped to establish in New Zealand.
ART+OBJECT
3 Abbey Street
Newton
Auckland
PO Box 68 345
Newton
Auckland 1145
Telephone: +64 9 354 4646
Freephone: 0 800 80 60 01
Facsimile: +64 9 354 4645
info@artandobject.co.nz
www.artandobject.co.nz
Front & back covers:
Tony Fomison
From the Theodore A. Xaras Cover of
“Time” Magazine, Issue for 18. 1. 71
oil on hessian on wood, 1973
lot ∆52
This catalogue includes numerous significant works that reveal the
strength and diversity of the art of Aotearoa. It is our hope that these
works may form the beginnings of fascinating collections that will move
this conversation forward in new and interesting directions.
The A+O team would like to thank all our clients and friends for their
support in 2012 – our most successful year to date. In the introduction
section of the catalogue you will see some of the exciting 2013
catalogues we have planned. Over the course of the viewing for this
catalogue we hope to see you and perhaps enjoy a glass of Seresin
wine to toast the artists and collectors that enrich our lives.
2
Phantom Coupé
What will your inspiration be?
Inspired by pioneer aviator and co-founder of Rolls-Royce
Motor Cars, Charles Stewart Rolls, the Phantom Coupé Aviator
Collection uses specially commissioned paintwork, saddle leather
footmats and an aviation grade Thommen clock to epitomise
the golden age of flight. From the smallest detail to the boldest
statement, there really is no limit to what can be achieved with
Rolls-Royce Bespoke.
Choose your inspiration. Experience a car with endless
possibilities; a car bespoke to you.
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Auckland, 11-15 Great South Road, PO Box 9718, Newmarket, Auckland
Tel: +64 9 969 3350 Fax: +64 9 969 3354
www.rolls-roycemotorcars-auckland.com
© Copyright Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Limited 2012. The Rolls-Royce name and logo are registered trademarks.
119% sold by value
91% sold by volume
Sale total $4 650 000
THE LES
AND
MILLY
PARIS
COLLECTION
Intergenerational art ownership is just one of
many challenges you may need to address. Is
that something you should plan for now, or later?
Covisory Partners offers independent generational succession advice.
We work closely with you to put the necessary structures in place so
you can exit your family business, or hand over your family trust with
confidence when the time is right.
CONSULTING +
PRIVATE CLIENTÈLE
Ph
0800 898 181
www.covisory.com
Maori and
Oceanic Art,
Rare Books and
Photographs
6 December 2012
The Maori and Oceanic Art catalogue features a collection
of cloaks and kete, fishhooks, toki, Solomon Island pieces,
superior folk art and a pair of large and important Tene
Waitere carved figural boards formerly from the collection
of the Buried Village, Te Wairoa in Rotorua.
The Rare Books catalogue includes a fine selection of early
colonial photography including albums of 19th century
Whanganui River and Maori scenes, a Burton Bros. album of
19th century Auckland images and a grouping of Clutha River
gold dredge photographs by W. Esquilant. Also a first edition
of Cook’s Second Voyage and early New Zealand maps inc.
a very rare and fine example of the Bayly’s chart dated 1772.
The Balneavis Archive
Lieut. Colonel Henry Colin Balneavis (1818 – 1876).
H. C. Balneavis arrived in New Zealand as an officer
of the 58th Regiment shortly after the sack of
Kororareka in 1845. He was present at the assault
on Ruapekapeka in 1846 where he commanded the
advance picket. His personal archive and journal
includes original artworks by John Gilfillan, Joseph
Jenner Merrett and Cuthbert Clarke as well as
extremely rare plans of the Ruapekapeka fighting
Pa and important documents relating to the
Whanganui conflict in 1847.
John Gilfillan
War Dance
graphite on paper
title inscribed, signed
and dated 1847
160 x 305mm
New Collectors Art
21 February 2013
Entries invited until January 25th
Contact:
Leigh Melville
leigh@artandobject.co.nz
09 354 4646
021 406 676
20th Century Design
March 2013
Further entries invited
Contact:
Paul Kafka (Australia 1907 – 1972)
James Parkinson
james@artandobject.co.nz
09 354 4646
021 222 8184
A fi ne mid-century marquetry sideboard in
pear wood and fi ddle back maple.
W.2700mm
$10 000 – $15 000
Robin White
Harbour Cone from Hooper’s Inlet
screenprint, 8/75
title inscribed and signed
460 x 460mm
Provenance: Private collection, Central Otago.
$6000 – $8000
Asian & Decorative Arts
March 2013
The sale will be our most important to date and
will feature the Solan Chan collection of Chinese
ceramics and furniture, a large private collection
of Peking glass and the largest collection of
Chinese export ware and ceramics to be offered
in NZ. The catalogue will also include fine
Japanese pieces including the Ann Matheson
collection and a superb collection of Japanese
boxes from the Rex Jennings collection. Further entries invited.
Contact:
James Parkinson
james@artandobject.co.nz
09 354 4646
021 222 8184
Giulia Rodighiero
Asian Art Specialist
giulia@artandobject.co.nz
09 354 4646
A famille rose green
ground oval shaped tea
tray seal mark and period
of Jiaqing (1797)
Provenance: From the
collection of Rex Jennings
$4000 – $8000
R58 – Italian for beautiful espresso
find out more
therocket.co.nz
Important Paintings
and Contemporary Art
Auction
Tuesday 27 November 2012 at 6.30pm
ART+OBJECT, 3 Abbey Street, Newton, Auckland
Opening Preview
Wednesday 21 November 2012 from 6.00 – 8.00pm
Viewing
Thursday 22 November
9.00am – 5.30pm
Friday 23 November
9.00am – 5.30pm
Saturday 24 November
11.00am – 4.00pm
Sunday 25 November
11.00am – 4.00pm
Monday 26 November
9.00am – 5.30pm
Tuesday 27 November
9.00am – 1.00pm
1
2
Bill Hammond
Let’s Twist Again like We Did Last
Summer
mixed media and found objects
title inscribed
385 x 120 x 113mm
Provenance: Private collection,
Australia.
Bill Hammond
Untitled – Rocking Horse
wood, two parts
252 x 270 x 62mm
Provenance: Private collection,
Australia.
$1500 – $2500
3
Glen Hayward
If the world were an orange it would be
too small
acrylic and pine, 2004
70 x 77 x 77mm
Provenance: Purchased by the current
owner from COCA, Christchurch in 2004.
$1000 – $2000
3a
et al.
Studies for Apology 1 – 8
ink, acrylic, cellophane and nails on 7 found books
title inscribed and variously inscribed
155 x 95 x 22mm: each
155 x 965 x 22mm: installation size variable
Provenance: from the estate of Bill Cocker.
$5000 – $8000
$2500 – $4000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
14
4
5
6
Allen Maddox
Lozenge
Peter Madden
Dear Rose
Julian Dashper
66/99 A Painting in Three Parts
oil on canvas
title inscribed, signed and dated ’96 verso
910 x 910mm
found images and objects, acrylic and wood
signed and dated 2005
520 x 400 x 350mm
acrylic on canvas in three found frames
signed and dated 1990 and inscribed 66/99 verso
1055 x 2040mm: installation size variable
Provenance: Private collection, Dunedin.
$6000 – $8000
Provenance: Private collection, Wellington.
Purchased from Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington.
$13 000 – $18 000
$6500 – $9500
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
15
7
Gordon Walters
Kapiti
screenprint, 48/75
title inscribed, signed and dated ‘84
540 x 406mm
Illustrated: William McAloon, Gordon
Walters: Prints + Design (Wellington,
2004), p. 34.
$6500 – $8500
8
Gordon Walters
Untitled
screenprint, 10/25
signed and dated 18.10.1995
550 x 412mm
Provenance: Private collection,
Australia.
Illustrated: William McAloon,
Gordon Walters: Prints + Design
(Wellington, 2004), p. 35.
$2500 – $4000
9
Pat Hanly
Torso G
screenprint, 3/20
title inscribed, signed and dated ’85
695 x 592mm
$3000 – $5000
10
Peter Stichbury
Heather Traymont
giclee print, edition of 50
signed and dated ’05
578 x 480mm
$3500 – $5000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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11
12
Barry Lett
Dog
Paul Dibble
Soft Geometric Study Curled
cast bronze, 1/10
signed and dated ’03
600 x 600 x 185mm
cast bronze, 2/3
signed and dated 2008
480 x 520 x 220mm
$7000 – $10 000
$10 000 – $15 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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13
14
15
Toss Woollaston
Erua
Toss Woollaston
Harley Road, Tasman
Bill Hammond
Fish Finder I, II, III
ink and wash on paper, circa 1966
signed with artist’s monogram
598 x 773mm
watercolour
signed and dated ’75;
title inscribed verso
253 x 350mm
set of three lithographs, 14/45
title inscribed, signed and dated 2002
570 x 455mm: each
570 x 1365mm: overall
$4000 – $6000
$10 000 – $15 000
$6000 – $8000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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16
17
18
Emily Siddell
Starlight Lei
Guy Ngan
No. 113
Guy Ngan
Untitled
glass
630 x 450 x 100mm
cast bronze on stone plinth
signed and dated 1980
100 x 75 x 75mm
cast bronze on stone plinth
signed and dated 1984
200 x 200 x 215mm
$2000 – $4000
$15 000 – $25 000
Provenance: Purchased by the current
owner from F. H. E Galleries, Auckland.
$3500 – $5000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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19
Colin McCahon
Rosegarden
synthetic polymer paint on card, circa 1974
original signed letter of provenance from the
second owner affixed verso
210 x 156mm
Reference:
Gordon H. Brown, Colin McCahon: Artist
(Wellington, 1984), pp. 178 – 181.
Provenance:
Gifted by the artist to Rodney Kennedy,
Dunedin in late 1974.
Gifted by Rodney Kennedy to the previous
owner in June 1985.
Private collection, Dunedin.
$20 000 – $30 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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20
Gretchen Albrecht
Red Cloud over Land and Sea
acrylic on canvas
signed and dated ’74; title inscribed,
signed and dated verso
1472 x 1170mm
Provenance: Private collection,
Hawkes Bay.
$30 000 – $40 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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21
A. Lois White
Untitled – The Bathers
watercolour
certificate of authenticity signed
by the artist’s niece, Alison
Disbrowe affixed verso
255 x 203mm
$8000 – $12 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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22
A. Lois White
The Pied Piper of Hamlyn
varnished watercolour on card
accompanied by letter of authenticity from Nicola Green, author of By the
Waters of Babylon: The Art of A. Lois White (Auckland Art Gallery, 1993)
520 x 825mm
Provenance: Gifted by the artist to the current owner’s grandmother and
thence passed by descent to the current owner.
$25 000 – $35 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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23
Michael Smither
French Farm, Banks Peninsula
oil on board
title inscribed, signed and dated June/July/August 1972 and
signed and dated by Peter McLeavey, 19/10/72 verso
542 x 612mm
Provenance: Private collection, Wellington.
$25 000 – $40 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
24
24
Ann Robinson
Puka Vase
cast glass
signed and dated 1997 and inscribed 1/1
635 x 170 x 170mm
$22 000 – $28 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
25
25
Peter Siddell
Untitled – Auckland Landscape
oil on board
signed and dated 1974
1363 x 980mm
Provenance: Private collection, Wellington.
$65 000 – $85 000
The term realism has always proved to be one of the most elastic in the context of discussing art
and in particular the work of Peter Siddell (1935-2011). His highly detailed paintings of the inner
suburbanscape of Auckland are most frequently described as realist on account of their highly
accurate renderings of the architecture, streetscapes and topography of a place that can be
articulated geographically as residing within the suburbs of Mt.Eden, Mt.Albert, One Tree Hill,
Ponsonby and environs. Siddell’s depictions of the villas and gardens of these green and pleasant
locales are most often described as ‘realist’.
It is a realism dripping, however, with layers of memory and the filters of nostalgia; at best it is a
‘fond’ realism. Siddell’s remembrances of things past evoke the post-colonial, post Edwardian,
post-depression era of the artist’s 1940s childhood. As a paperboy tearing about the empty
streets of early morning Auckland the young Siddell accumulated literally thousands of visual
references that emerged decades later in works such as Untitled – Auckland Landscape.
Siddell’s work at its best reflects the conflation of the past with the present: today is tomorrow’s
yesterday and so on. The Auckland of the past in the artist’s hands is as much a land of fantasy
as the future; our hopes, dreams and fears have equal licence to be expressed in both realms.
Although almost always emptied of people, human emotions curl about and inform every
balcony, cypress and pathway of a Siddell painting: the endless variations on the theme of the
suburban villa symbolize our human diversity and the tensions between the individual and
community.
Siddell’s early 1970s works such as Girl at Gate dated 1971 in fact featured emblematic figures
in the foreground. He soon however began to remove these figures as he felt they added an
implied set of relationships and narratives at odds with his desire to reach his images into a more
ambiguous time and space. By clearing the people out of his paintings Siddell lets the viewer
into this world. As a city obsessed with real estate Auckland becomes in his hands one great
‘open home’. We can venture unchecked – cross the threshold into the ‘private’ property of our
neighbours front lawn and hallway. Our communal experiences of these spaces are understood
as a kind of ‘public’ property. It is this essential humanity that sits at the heart of Siddell’s
work, articulated via a shared architectural consciousness. The intersection of these private/
public realms evokes the strong sensation of burnished memories at once deeply personal
and universal in a world-famous in New Zealand fashion that gives a work such as Untitled –
Auckland Landscape a far deeper and long lasting resonance than that afforded by a realist
depiction.
Few New Zealand artists have managed to hit this sweetspot. By focussing on where we live and
who we are Siddell engages with an artistic whakapapa that includes John Kinder, the Burton
Bros, Felix Kelly and Rita Angus. Untitled – Auckland Landscape is an exemplar of Siddell’s rare
ability to communicate that the passage of time is perhaps the greatest mystery of all.
Hamish Coney
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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26
Ralph Hotere
The Middle East Connection
acrylic on canvas in original frame
signed and dated Port Chalmers
IX ’90; title inscribed, signed and
dated verso
905 x 804mm: including frame
710 x 608mm: excluding frame
$45 000 – $65 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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The proceeds from the sale of this painting are
being donated by the artist to Cure Kids, Child Health
Research Foundation (www.curekids.org.nz).
Over the last 30 years Cure Kids has dedicated
millions of dollars to funding medical research for
children with life-threatening illnesses.
This painting is donated with the support of the Cotton
family, Michael Lett and Art+Object.
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
27
Shane Cotton
Land of the Long White Cloud
acrylic on canvas
title inscribed, signed and dated 2012
1000 x 1500mm
$45 000 – $65 000
29
28
Ralph Hotere
Painting ’77 – Koputai
acrylic and lacquer on board
title inscribed, signed and dated
Port Chalmers ’77 and inscribed B.
L. G Cat No. 14 verso
2400 x 1200mm
Provenance: Private collection,
Auckland.
$130 000 – $180 000
The impact of Ralph Hotere’s move south to live and work in the small
settlement of Port Chalmers on the Otago Peninsula was a profound
one. Those fortunate enough to be in close contact with the artist’s
works after his Frances Hodgkins fellowship in 1969 will know just
how many are inscribed, alongside the date, ‘Port Chalmers’, as if
the place in which they were created is of equal weight to the time
in which they were produced. His small but incredibly sophisticated
early 1970s ‘Port Chalmers’ series made the subject of his art of this
period even more explicit.
Koputai is the Maori name for Port Chalmers and is stenciled boldly
across the bottom left hand side of the exquisitely lacquered and
highly-polished surface of this painting. The name is purported to
have come from an incident in the area in which the tide rose unduly
and beached canoes were set adrift. Conceived in the same year as
the Godwit/Kuaka mural, currently on view at Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tāmaki, Koputai shares many of the same concerns with the
major mural. Foremost among these is the lofty attempt to create
an experience beyond just the merely optical, to evoke in a painting
associations and feelings beyond the aesthetic to include literature,
music and dance as well as historical and socio-political concerns,
all of which the artist was becoming increasingly more engaged with
as a result of his fellowship at the University of Otago and growing
familiarity with the local region and its history.
Koputai is the site in which Hotere in subsequent decades from
his 1969 shift south consistently rummaged, dredged, mined,
refined, extrapolated and brought darkness into light through an
extraordinary body of painting. Unlike so much high modernism
however, Hotere’s paintings gain their ongoing heft not through
being recondite and hermetic, but rather through their generosity. By
their very nature, the highly-reflective and alluring surface of Koputai
incorporates the viewer into the work, capturing and recording
their movements and gaze and thereby making them central to any
message, meaning and reading of the painting.
Ben Plumbly
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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29
30
Michael Parekowhai
Portait of Elmer Keith No. 1
Gavin Hipkins
The Romance: Totaranui (Boat)
type C print, edition of 10 (2004)
original Michael Lett label affixed verso
1250 x 1012mm
type C print, edition of 3 (2006)
1600 x 1000mm
Provenance: Private collection, Dunedin.
Provenance: Purchased by the current owner
from Starkwhite, Auckland in 2007.
$12 000 – $18 000
$6000 – $9000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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31
32
Laurence Aberhart
Aparima Estuary, Riverton, Southland, 25 February 1999.
gold and selenium-toned gelatin silver print
title inscribed, signed and dated 1999 and inscribed No. 1
210 x 275mm
Laurence Aberhart
Taranaki from Oeo Road under
Moonlight, 27 – 28 September 1999
33
Michael Parekowhai
Pat Covert, Elmer Keith, Ed Brown (from the Beverley Hills Gun Club)
Provenance: Private collection, Australia.
gold and selenium-toned gelatin
silver print
175 x 245mm
type C prints, triptych (each print 10/10)
original Michael Lett labels affixed verso
440 x 540mm: each print
440 x 1620mm: overall
$3500 – $5500
$4500 – $7000
$10 000 – $15 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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34
Michael Smither
Hapuka Head on Plate
oil on board
signed with artist’s initials M. D. S
and dated ’79; original GovettBrewster Gallery, ‘Michael
Smither – The Wonder Years’,
Janne Land Gallery, and John
Leech Gallery labels all affixed
verso
A+O
Provenance:
From the collection of Les and Milly Paris.
Exhibited:
‘Michael Smither – An Introduction’, GovettBrewster Gallery, New Plymouth, 1984.
‘Michael Smither – The Wonder Years’, Auckland
Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, 19 February – 6 June
2006.
$45 000 – $65 000
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
34
35
Philip Clairmont
Kimono in a Wardrobe
oil and collage on hessian on
board
signed with artist’s initials P. C. T
and dated ’76; original Janne Land
blindstamp applied verso
1740 x 915mm
$28 000 – $37 000
36
Pat Hanly
Pacific Condition
enamel on board
title inscribed, signed
and dated ’76
445 x 445mm
$15 000 – $22 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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37
Bill Hammond
Untitled
ink and wash and bodycolour
on paper
signed and dated 1990
645 x 500mm
$12 000 – $16 000
38
Shane Cotton
Hopa 1:7
acrylic on canvas
title inscribed, signed and dated 1997
380 x 760mm
Provenance: Private collection, Wellington.
$20 000 – $30 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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39
40
Brett Whiteley (Australia, 1939 – 1992)
Drawing a Man Drinking from the Christie Murder series
Jeffrey Harris
Inside a Church
mixed media and collage on paper
title inscribed and dated 18 June ’65 and inscribed this could be whiter
547 x 438mm
oilpastel, gouache and oil on paper
signed and dated 3 – 1 – 70; title
inscribed, signed and dated verso
432 x 690mm
Provenance: From the estate of Bill Cocker. Originally gifted by the artist to his
mother Beryl Whitley who, in turn, gifted it to Bill Cocker, circa 1980.
$3000 – $5000
$8000 – $12 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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41
42
Mervyn Williams
Like Fire
Roy Good
Octagon – Ring
acrylic on canvas
title inscribed, signed and
dated ’95 verso
980 x 830mm
acrylic on shaped canvas
title inscribed, signed and dated
1972/09 verso
1200 x 1200mm
$8000 – $12 000
$6000 – $8000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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43
Allen Maddox
Self Portrait with Crook
oil on canvas
title inscribed, signed and
dated ’94 verso
1825 x 1218mm
Provenance: Private
collection, Auckland.
$25 000 – $35 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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44
Dick Frizzell
Pascoid Tiki No. 3
oil on canvas
title inscribed, signed and dated 1/9/2000
603 x 603mm
Illustrated: Dick Frizzell: The Painter
(Random House, 2009), p. 215.
Provenance: Private collection, Australia.
$25 000 – $35 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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45
Bill Hammond
Modern Day
acrylic on canvas
title inscribed, signed and dated 1991
700 x 1000mm
Provenance: Private collection, Auckland.
$45 000 – $65 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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46
Gordon Walters
Untitled
acrylic on canvas
signed and dated1991 verso
510 x 407mm
Provenance: Private collection, Christchurch.
$30 000 – $40 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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47
Allen Maddox
Untitled
oil on unstretched canvas, circa
1976
1000 x 960mm
Provenance:
From the artist’s estate.
Purchased by the current owner
from Gow Langsford Gallery,
Auckland.
$20 000 – $30 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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48
49
Allen Maddox
Untitled – Grid
Allen Maddox
Untitled
oil on paper
signed with artist’s initials A. M and dated 15. 7. 76
820 x 895mm
oil on cotton laid onto canvas
430 x 430mm
$6000 – $9000
$8000 – $12 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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50
Peter Stichbury
Liberty
acrylic on linen
title inscribed, signed and dated 2001 and
inscribed (The Hip Squad) verso
607 x 506mm
Provenance:
Private collection, Australia.
Exhibited:
‘The Young Pleasure Seekers’, Anna Bibby
Gallery, Auckland, 2001.
‘The Alumni: Peter Stichbury’, Te Tuhi
Centre for the Arts, Auckland, 12 July –
21 September, 2008, and Dunedin Public
Art Gallery, Dunedin, 29 November –
22 February, 2009.
Illustrated:
Emma Bugden and Hilary Stichbury (eds),
Peter Stichbury: The Alumni (Auckland, 2010),
p. 71.
Art News New Zealand, Spring, 2008, cover.
Art World, October – November 2008, p.55.
$35 000 – $50 000
I recall several visits to the Anna Bibby Gallery in 2000 to visit the exhibition from
which Liberty was purchased. Peter Stichbury had quickly established himself
as an artist to watch and all the works from the exhibition entitled The Hip Squad
quickly found themselves new homes. At that time, portraiture seemed a brave and
surprising step for the artist to take. New Zealand collectors have not traditionally
embraced the portrait as a subject, especially not when the sitter is unknown or in
fact, fictional.
Whilst the characters that inhabit Stichbury’s portraits may be fictional, they
frequently remind us of someone or something. Liberty brings to mind the
quintessential British ‘It Girl’, complete with delicate porcelain skin, fine features
and perfectly groomed blonde hair. With a name like that, she will surely be smiling
benignly at us from the pages of Bystander in the next issue of Tatler magazine,
champagne glass in hand as she scouts the room for a hedge fund trader to call
her own.
With all that perfection in front of us, Stichbury seems to encourage the viewer to
question what lurks beneath the surface of his exquisitely formed paintings. While
some examples exhibit characteristics that are obviously disquieting; a black eye,
a facial scratch, ill-fitting glasses or crooked teeth, the glamour portraits leave it
to us to question … is beauty really only skin deep and how good will our It girl
heroine look tomorrow without all that makeup on?
Perhaps what has captured the attention of collectors are the references to
‘our time’. The portraits are like a snapshot of what is considered beautiful and
acceptable by a generation that have embraced perfection like no other. Plastic
surgery, personal trainers and cosmetic dentistry are just a few of the myriad
of options available to consumers in their quest for acceptance and the mark of
success. Stichbury’s glamour portraits reflect how some might like to be seen. For
others they may be a reminder of a time that thankfully has passed, when ‘heroine
chic’ ruled the catwalks and fashion was only for the under 20’s.
Image aside, the greatest achievement of the artist may be in creating paintings
that are beautifully rendered, with a life much longer than the fashionable attitudes
they represent.
Leigh Melville
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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51
Don Binney
Under Moehau II
acrylic and oil on canvas
signed and dated 2002 – 2003
1100 x 1570mm
Provenance:
Private collection, Auckland.
Exhibited:
‘Don Binney: ’96 – ‘06’, Artis
Gallery, Auckland, 7 March –
1 April 2007.
$70 000 – $100 000
Looking across the waters of the Hauraki Gulf towards the Coromandel, Moehau stretches
across the skyline like a distant mountain range—silver-blue and mysterious, treading water far
out beyond the the inner islands, Great and Little Barrier. It invites layers of mythology: Moehau
is the sleeping giant Te Moengahau-o-Tamatekapua, or the windy sleeping place of the Te Arawa
Canoe helmsman Tamatekapua.
How often have we gazed across an iconic body of New Zealand water towards a thin sliver
of landscape on the horizon and felt comfort from the familiarity of that sliver? Moehau stands
distant across the Hauraki; so too Rangitoto stands across the Hauraki; Harbour Cone stands
across Otago Harbour; Anchor Island graces the entrance to Dusky Sound. On the Hauraki, to
stare out into the middle distance is to invite a slow time where past and future interlock in the
present moment. This is more than a comfort zone. It is a timelessness that captures us, calling
on how History was actioned there. In an instant, land and culture become intertwined in an
ongoing understanding of the mythologies of a past Maori life.
Don Binney’s Moehau rises to the music of the snake charmer, shimmering, larger than
life, larger than optical perspective should allow—just like Rangitoto or Harbour Cone, it is
imprinted on our New Zealand identities. This large oil is tellingly titled Under Moehau II, so
that all the territory that lies beneath this shimmering sliver is being referred to: the iconic New
Zealandness; the Maori mythology and its direct symbiosis with place; the longing gaze across
the water; and the suspension of time in the present moment.
Binney builds his painting on this timelessness. Where the wind is upbeat, the waters of the
Hauraki glisten with an oily texture that befalls to calm in the middle distance. He renders
passages of high and low texture making the surface of the painting luscious and beguiling.
Always, the water is reflecting a sky full of light where the form of the clouds is elusive,
unassuming, yet poised with a beautiful simplicity. This is the heat of his art: he paints the
simple lines of understanding of a committed conservationist, of one who cares deeply for the
landscape and its creatures. (Don Binney was a patron of Hauturu, the Little Barrier Supporters
Trust caring for the island’s endangered species and the sustainability of its natural communities.)
That Binney segues beauty, mythology, sustainability into a tactile landscape painting is
testament to his acute observation of the environment and his unique vision as an artist. Yes, in
Under Moehau II, he paints the silver of the distant Timelord’s dream, but the attendant islands
are foregrounded in dense scrub rises, and falls of cleared land, glittering and defined in the
Hauraki’s light. His eye has tracked this skyline for many decades. He knows these islands. This
is the New Zealand that he famously peopled with birds. Moehau is a landscape that will go on,
sustained, unbroken, as a living testament to New Zealand identity.
Peter James Smith
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Michael Parekowhai
Seldom is Herd (doe)
fibreglass and automotive paint,
edition of 4 (2009)
1150 x 1100 x 80mm
Exhibited:
‘The Moment of Cubism’,
Michael Lett, Auckland, 27
November 2009 – 23 January
2010.
Provenance:
Purchased by the current owner
from Michael Lett, Auckland in
January 2010.
Private collection, South Island.
$35 000 – $45 000
One of the distinguishing aspects of Michael
Parekowhai’s practice for over twenty years has been
the deployment of animals as metaphor. Rabbits,
sparrows, seals, elephants, chickens and at this year’s
Venice Biennale the vast cast bronze bulls of his work
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer advance a
thesis in which the role of human conceptual thinking
can be best interpreted by our animal brethren.
Recently Parekowhai was in the news in Australia
where his mammoth bronze sculptural installation The
World Turns was awarded the Premier of Queensland’s
Sculpture Commission to mark the fifth anniversary of
the opening of the Gallery of Modern Art in December
2011 and 20 years of the Asia Pacific Triennal of
Contemporary Art in 2012.
The World Turns consists of a vast upended elephant
terrified by a native Kuril water rat. As trumpets of
protest echoed across the Tasman – at the cost of the
work and the selection of New Zealand artist as winner
of the commission Parekowhai elegantly summed
up his reasoning for the work, “The Kuril is the real
elephant in the room. It is the Kuril who is the caretaker
and who is responsible for upending this elephant with
its cultural and intellectual weight.”
The elephant in this case takes the form of an upended
bookend albeit at lifesize. Seldom is Herd from 2009
also utilizes the bookend at scale - an elegant milkywhite doe. The reference to quaint ceramic bookends
in this work operates on a similar metaphoric plane to
its elephantine cousin: the unshackling of acculturated
control of knowledge.
In freeing up the bookend from the books and
untethering the animal from its domesticated position
on the bookshelf or library Parekowhai playfully lets the
animals loose to play a more dynamic role and assume
their natural scale.
To produce these works Parekowhai enrols a raft of
production technologies to reproduce the pristine
surfaces and presentation of the original base
models. Seldom is Herd has all the silky smoothness
of perfectly glazed decorative porcelain. Such items
were popular from the 1920s to the 1950s and are
still collectable to this day. At over a metre in height
Parekowhai’s gentle doe speaks to ideas explored
by a number of contemporary artists, namely the
fetish of the consumer object. In this beguiling space
Parekowhai shares kinship with high profile artists such
as Jeff Koons and his chromed balloon figures and
Takashi Murakami’s lifesize toys and figurines.
All these artists present their sculptures as ‘perfect’
doppelgangers of existing forms, mostly from the
mayfly lifespan of pop-culture ephemera. Koons helium
balloon sculptures and Murakami’s Anime figures seek
to memorialize the nano-second lifecycle of trash icons
plucked from the obscurity of fast moving consumer
culture. Parekowhai finds his forms from middlebrow
domestic sculpture such as bookends, kitset models
and Mattel-era action figures.
All share the deadpan collegiality of the massproduced and soon to be obsolete. These plastic
actors began life to satisfy a price-point and a
consumer niche. In the case of Koons and Murakami
that niche is pretty banal: toyshop and fairground
product. Parekowhai’s ‘found’ objects hail from from
an earlier and pre-internet bric-a-brac era and their
lost/found in translation transformation brings more
to the table than $2 shop tat. Artists such as Koons,
Murakami and Damien Hirst create gold-plated or
chromed whoppers specifically aimed at a market of
hedge-fund warriors, oil sheiks and Russian oligarchs.
Art for football team owners. Not so much a critique of
consumerism as an homage.
Where Parekowhai departs company from such
drollery is in the conceptual base that underpins works
such as Seldom is Herd. His use of animal actors
be they in taxidermy or bookend form sits inside a
conversation about diversity in the animal kingdom,
within which we are but a player. Their use as metaphor
facilitates a revitalized and at times puckish dialogue
about identity and freedom and asks us to throw off the
yokes of cultural, ethnic and economic determinism.
Hamish Coney
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Tony Fomison
From the Theodore A. Xaras
Cover of “Time” Magazine, Issue
for 18. 1. 71
oil on hessian on wood in artist’s
original frame
title inscribed, signed and dated
4. 2. 73 – 14. 2. 73 and inscribed
Second Version; title inscribed,
signed and dated verso
377 x 368mm
Provenance:
Private collection, Auckland.
Reference:
Ian Wedde (ed), Fomison: What
Shall We Tell Them? (City Gallery,
Wellington, 1994), Catalogue No.
140.
$55 000 – $75 000
The Time issue for 18 January 1971 featured a grim cover illustration by Philadelphia
painter Theodore A. Xaras, commissioned to accompany an article on the U.S. prison
system. Xaras’ image, in subdued tones, showed a prisoner’s face with drawn, hauntedlooking features, peering resignedly from behind a grid of flat metal bars, studded with
peculiar pyramidal bosses. The fingers of one hand appeared at the bottom right of Xaras’
image, grasping the bars and protruding into the extreme foreground in a profoundly
emblematic gesture. Xaras’ treatment was very much in the Caravaggesque vein, and
would have appealed greatly to Fomison who was working in very similar territory
himself, both stylistically and thematically. Fomison made a series of images relating
to imprisonment in the 1970s. He painted Xaras’ Time image at least twice. This, the
second version, was exhibited in the quite extraordinary Christchurch Group Show at the
Canterbury Society of Arts in 1973, along with a closely related ‘Rueful Prisoner, Second
Version’ 1973. In all Fomison contributed nine works to the ’73 Group Show, including
a Resurrection after Bellini 1967; a From Fra Angelico, Icon, First Version 1973; and a
Second Copy of Messina’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ 1972. These titles and their grouping in the
show give a sense of Fomison’s intense engagement with art history at this important
point in his development. Especially interesting in these works is the way Fomison
edited his sources, with the objective of intensifying an essence or effect that he found
particularly compelling in the original. In the case of this study after Xaras, Fomison has
quite radically cropped the original image, excising most of the protruding fingers and
reducing the prisoner’s face to such an obscured, shadowy presence that almost all that
remains is the haunted expression in the eyes. At the same time he has restored Xaras’
Time magazine-sized illustration to a full-scale painting, giving the image back much of
what it must have lost in translation from original painting to printed cover. Xaras was
relatively fresh out of art school himself when he received the Time commission. He went
on to paint an epic series of historical American Railroad images, generally known as ‘The
Age of Steam’, which have been reproduced almost ad infinitum in popular prints and
collectible ceramic plates. Xaras’ talent for painting the look and feel of metal, and his fairly
heavy-handed approach, were qualities that suited him well to painting a prison image.
These qualities have been carefully absorbed and amplified to a remarkable pitch of
brooding intensity in Fomison’s version. Fomison has used a very heavy grade of hessian
for the support, on which the thickly applied oil paint has congealed like ordure or blood.
Yet the surface is beautifully sealed, giving a sense of hermetic isolation to the image fixed
in the sticky pigment. The finishing touch is the marvelous demolition timber frame, with
corners abutted rather than mitred, made by Fomison himself.
Oliver Stead
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Michael Smither
Harry and Sarah at Breakfast
with Jam Pot
oil on board
signed and inscribed reworked
from 1965 version – signed M. D
Smither ’65 under M. D Smither
’74 in case of confusion verso;
title printed on artist’s original
catalogue label affixed verso
911 x 660mm
Provenance: Private collection,
Auckland.
$100 000 – $150 000
This is a painting of light as much as it is a painting of a mother and child. In a beautiful
synthesis of execution and content Smither creates a very classical image in which
references and allusions to the highest achievements of European painting abound. Yet
the really magical aspect of the work is the almost forensic realisation of the brilliant
sunlight, entering through the unseen kitchen window, as it picks out the details of this
amusing domestic scene. The light has a definite presence and personality of its own
in the image, because its behaviour and character have been so carefully documented
by the artist. We can observe this loving attention in so many little details – for example
the slight reflections of the bowls on the bench behind the figures, the translucency of
the large empty bottle which finds its subtle rhyme in the mother’s translucent chemise
revealing the suggestion of perfect breasts; the way the shadows cast by the kitchen
things soften the further away they are from the light source - from the hard lines thrown
across the tablecloth by the jam jar to the more smudgy shadows cast by the plate and
open book. The effect of this strong natural light is to both reveal and simplify forms,
removing some details and revealing others, enabling the artist to concentrate attention
on the essential geometry of the objects in a charming combination of still life and
portraiture. Ironically, despite the wealth of intensely naturalistic observations contained
in the work, there are also several pronounced anti-naturalistic features, for example
the exaggeration of curves and angles in the mother’s arms and hands, suggesting the
multiple movements required to complete the simple breakfast routine. Highlighted in
this way the busy attitude of her arms, and the long extension of her thumb over the
piece of toast, are at odds with the rather blankly disengaged, far-away look in her eyes,
suggestive of tiredness or ennui. In turn, the mother’s glazed expression is contrasted
with the look of ruthlessly focused intent on the face of the child as it fixes its gaze on the
expected food, its little hands, claw-like, digging with impatient, sharply outlined fingers
into the white table cloth, making creases which reveal the soft texture of the material.
Here we can see the forensic nature of Smither’s vision at work, exploring and precisely
calculating the reflective qualities of a variety of materials and surfaces. Another example
of this ‘science’ is the amazing rendering of the mother’s hair, right down to individual
strands. A further twist of irony is concealed in the work’s title: ‘Harry’ is in fact the
painter’s wife, poet Elizabeth Smither, née Harrington; Sarah is their daughter.
Smither’s domestic paintings of the 1960s established him as a master of figurative
painting, a virtuoso both fluent and inventive. In bringing an acute awareness of the
classical tradition to very mundane and highly localized depictions of New Zealand
family life he was far ahead of most of his contemporaries who embraced the need for a
localized imagery but lacked his knowledge, comprehension, and fluency in practice. The
fact that he returned to rework this image in 1974, nearly a decade after its initial painting,
tells us it was of special importance to him.
Oliver Stead
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Bill Hammond
The Strength to Carry On
acrylic on linen canvas
title inscribed, signed and dated 1985
1925 x 1827mm
Provenance: Private collection,
Canterbury.
$80 000 – $120 000
The to-ings and fro-ings of the Protestant Reformation
and Catholic counter-reformation in the 16th century
are the stuff of both legend and history, but the
tensions inherent in the two sides of the same coin
argument that consumed our Christian forefathers are
the yin and yang of Bill Hammond’s Strength to Carry
On from 1985.
Much of the most potent Reformation inspired art
depicts the flesh tested and the torment that inevitably
awaits the errant sinner. Artists such as Matthias
Grunewald, Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Breughel
created vast canvases on the theme of temptation and
the damnations due to those whose transgressions
warranted a fiery end.
No scene on the subject from this period is complete
without armies of vile anthropomorphic bandits hybrids of man and animal - who in their diabolic
fury seek drag the poor unfortunates into limbo and
beyond. The point of these works is instructional
– huge altarpieces designed to whip the cowering
masses into God-fearing obedience.
Bill Hammond’s paintings of the 1980s plug into this
same sense of the maelstrom that can afflict the
unwary. The context is not of course the faith based
battle for the hearts and minds that raged across 16th
century Europe, but the Godless era of the Yuppie –
the Wall Street ‘Greed is Good’ eighties that can be
regarded as a counter reformation of sorts. It should
be remembered that Hammond, born in 1947, grew
to maturity in the late sixties and early seventies. This
Woodstock, Nambassa, Sweetwaters hippy era of
communal experimentation was dropkicked into touch
in no uncertain terms by the rise of the Me generation,
Thatcherism - and in New Zealand the rise of neoliberal ‘Rogernomics’ ushered in by of all people the
Labour party.
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Furthermore the sense of the world going to hell in a
handcart began with the flour bombing of Eden Park in
1981. The ill- fated Springbok rugby tour quite literally
rent the country asunder.
The contemporary music scene at this time, a source
of so much inspiration for Hammond’s works of the
80s, was also in high ferment with punk, disco, new
wave, rockabilly and those arch-yuppie New Romantics
all fighting it out in the charts and on the streets with
skinheads, boot boys and proto Rastas. Hammond’s
great 1986 acrylic on board The Look of Love plus the
Sound of Music uses the ‘music wars’ of this period
to illustrate the anxieties and the ‘humours’ (in a
Chaucerian sense) of these conflicts as the old order
gave way to a new, thrustingly ambitious reality.
The Strength to Carry On is a classic work from this
time. Hammond’s transmogrified band of pogo-ing
revellers is assaulted from all sides by ‘Scary Monsters’.
With bad shirts, bad hair (check out that strange
bone-carrying dude with the Hitler comb over) and bad
attitude, Hammond’s Krazy Krew gain their strength
from their desire to rock out in the darkness – dancing
till they drop.
These works have all the energy, humour and pathos of
an air-guitar championship to Iggy Pop’s anthem for the
ages, ‘New Values’, … “I’m looking for one new value,
but nothing comes my way”
Hamish Coney
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John Pule
High School Thought
acrylic and ink on canvas
title inscribed, signed and dated
2002
2000 x 1800mm
$35 000 – $50 000
The Polynesian concept of the Pacific Ocean as a continuous world of
interconnections maintained over great distances is wonderfully evoked in John
Pule’s large canvases. Pule was born in Niue and was brought to New Zealand
as an infant; nevertheless his ties with Niue remain firm and this provides the
essential allegory which his works are built on and around. We can see the idea of
ties clearly illustrated in the long cords that link each ‘island’ of images, connecting
episodes of both pre-Christian and post-Christian narrative themes. The cords
themselves are characteristically maritime: they look indelibly like things of the
ocean, simultaneously resembling sailing ropes or sheets for rigging oceangoing vessels, the trailing tentacles of jellyfish or the Portuguese man-o-war,
or strands of seaweed. While the resemblance to these things is exaggerated
by Pule to suggest the wider frame of reference, their precise allusion is to the
dangling flower stems of the Pacific cordyline, ti-mata-alea, a relative of the New
Zealand cabbage tree which grows throughout the Pacific, and is an important
food and symbol of cultural identity. In Niue the flowering stems are linked with
genealogy through a tradition that human life sprang from the tree, and through
the visual analogy of a chain of generations neatly provided by the chains of flowers
suspended on the trailing stems.
Many of Pule’s images involve rights of passage encountered in both Niue and
New Zealand cultural settings, and the title High School Thought suggests that
this work deals with Pule’s experiences as a Niue youth growing up in Auckland
at a time when migration from the islands was actively resented by many New
Zealanders. The titles to songs by Jimi Hendrix are particularly resonant in this
work. Born in 1962, Pule would have been only seven years old when Hendrix died,
but as he is the youngest of 17 children it’s easy to imagine that he would have
been saturated with Hendrix’s music and lyrics from birth, and that his interest
in Hendrix would have lasted through his high school years and beyond. There
is no doubt that Hendrix is especially beloved in New Zealand, not only because
his mixed African American and Native American genetic heritage lent him a
remarkable resemblance to Pasifica peoples, but also because, as a native of
Seattle, he too was from the Pacific – the sea is an important emblem in Hendrix’s
work. As a prolific and highly accomplished writer we can also assume that Pule
would have been sensitive to the remarkable poetry of Hendrix’s lyrics from an
early age. Painted in 2002, when Pule was in his 40th year, it is fascinating to see in
this work the artist revisiting the imaginative world of his youth.
Oliver Stead
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Milan Mrkusich
Painting IV Purple
acrylic-vinyl on canvas
title inscribed, signed and dated
2000 verso
1220 x 915mm
Provenance:
Private collection, Auckland.
Exhibited:
‘Milan Mrkusich, New Paintings:
Six Works 2000/01’, Sue
Crockford Gallery, Auckland, 27
May – 21 June, 2004.
Illustrated:
Alan Wright and Edward
Hanfling, Mrkusich: The Art
of Transformation (Auckland
University Press, 2009), pl. 89.
$55 000 – $75 000
There’s a small installation shot of the Sue Crockford Gallery featuring Milan
Mrkusich’s Painting IV Purple in the long-overdue and essential recent monograph
on the artist by Alan Wright and Ed Hanfling. There is nothing extraordinary about
this small and dark exhibition image. Rather, it appears almost funereal in manner
with Painting IV Purple standing alongside its kin completely mute, the works
appearing like beacons to the artist’s unwavering commitment to the recondite
language of advanced abstraction. These are definitely paintings designed to be
seen and not heard.
Painted in 2000, Painting IV Purple is indicative of Mrkusich’s late career turn
towards an increasingly refined and sustained study of colour and form. Well
into his seventies by this stage, the artist’s works appear increasingly refined,
offering viewers little in the way of ‘content’ or a message. Long vanished are
the arcs, corners, circles and symbols, replaced by an unrelenting symmetry and
stability provided through the four sided rectangle and square. These increasingly
concentrated studies of colour and form provide viewers with little easy point
of entry and there is little to distract from the artist’s on-going investigation into
colour as pure sensation. Also gone is the impressive scale of previous works
replaced instead by a modesty of scale and means, bought on perhaps, as much as
anything by the realities of advancing years.
Featuring the artist’s trademark delicately feathered brushwork, Mrkusich,
unusually in this country at least, has never been an abstract painter overly
focussed on surface or surface effects. Rather, he consistently investigates and
extrapolates aesthetic sensation out of colour effects, attending to the manner in
which colours recede, chime, intensify, vibrate, contrast and correspond when they
appearing in varying painterly relationships.
As Hanfling and Wright mention in their book, it is “difficult to think of a NZ painter
who has shown less interest in his surroundings, his immediate society, culture or
environment” than Milan Mrkusich. Painting IV Purple typifies the challenge that
the artist has continued to set for himself and for his audience; namely, a near lifelong investigation into the possibilities and limits of colour and colour relations.
Ben Plumbly
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Tony Fomison
No. 186
oil on canvas mounted to wood
title inscribed; title inscribed
and inscribed No. 38 on original
Dowse Art Gallery, ‘Fomison: a
survey exhibition’ label affixed
verso
463 x 416mm
Provenance:
Collection of Jeffrey Harris,
Melbourne.
Private collection, Otago.
Reference:
Ian Wedde (ed), Fomison:
What Shall We Tell Them?
(City Gallery, Wellington, 1994),
Catalogue No. 543.
$42 000 – $55 000
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Tony Fomison
Hine te Uira, Kupe’s daughter who discovered greenstone
in the South Island
oil on canvasboard
title inscribed, signed and dated 10 – 15. 9. 93 and
inscribed Upolu, Western Samoa, Not for Sale verso
305 x 228mm
Shane Cotton
Whakakitenga III
oil on canvas
signed with artist’s initials S.
W. C and dated 1998
505 x 605mm
$10 000 – $15 000
Provenance: Private collection, Auckland.
$16 000 – $24 000
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Colin McCahon
Northland
ink and wash on paper
signed with artist’s initials C
McC and dated 1960
550 x 445mm
Provenance:
Collection of Rodney Kennedy,
Dunedin.
Private collection, Dunedin
$30 000 – $40 000
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Milan Mrkusich
Painting No. II
Ralph Hotere
Drawing for Ian Wedde’s Pathway to the Sea
oil on canvas
title inscribed, signed and dated ’69 – ’70 verso
915 x 710mm
watercolour and acrylic on paper
title inscribed, signed and dated ’75
557 x 755mm
Provenance: Private collection, Waikato.
Provenance: Private collection, Otago.
$20 000 – $30 000
$20 000 – $30 000
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Ralph Hotere
Test Piece: Nau Mai
enamel on board
inscribed Nau Mai; title
inscribed, signed and dated
Port Chalmers ’77 and inscribed
BLG Cat No. 1 verso
530 x 400mm: excluding frame
780 x 578mm: including frame
$35 000 – $50 000
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Richard Killeen
Peoples Medal
dulon acrylic lacquer on
aluminium
title inscribed, signed and dated
March 1978 verso
900 x 900mm
Provenance: Private collection,
Australia.
$15 000 – $20 000
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Colin McCahon
Van Gogh Poems by John Caselberg
set of four lithographs together with original cover sheet
title inscribed, signed and dated September 1957 on the plate
332 x 240mm: each
1000 x 525mm: overall
$13 000 – $20 000
67
Richard Killeen
Joaquin’s fish
acrylic and collage on canvas,
5 panels
title inscribed, signed and
dated Aug 1 1989; artist’s
original catalogue label affixed
each panel verso
390 x 580mm: each panel
390 x 2900: overall
$14 000 – $20 000
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Neil Dawson
Escape II
stainless steel, custom wood,
fibreglass mesh and acrylic, 4/5
title inscribed, signed and dated
1981 on original accompanying box
340 x 340 x 95mm
Provenance: Private collection,
Wellington.
$8000 – $12 000
69
Neil Dawson
Norwest Arch
painted steel and metal mesh
title inscribed, signed and
dated 1996 on artist’s original
accompanying crate
910 x 1220mm
Provenance: Private collection,
Wellington.
$6000 – $8000
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Dick Frizzell
Big Guy
enamel on board
title inscribed, signed and
dated 14/2/82
1003 x 1003mm
$25 000 – $35 000
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Max Gimblett
2 Stroke Bowl – For Vietnam
black bole clay, moon gold, polyurethane and
acrylic on board
title inscribed, signed and dated 2000 verso;
original Gow Langsford Gallery, Sydney label
affixed verso
762 x 1524mm
$30 000 – $40 000
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73
Terry Stringer
Living Memory
Terry Stringer
Still Life with Fern
oil on aluminium and bronze
signed and dated ’88
1360 x 1160 x 230mm
oil on tin
signed and dated ’87
340 x 515 x 300mm
Provenance:
Private collection, Wellington.
Private collection, Auckland.
Provenance: Private collection,
Australia.
$4000 – $6000
$20 000 – $30 000
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Don Binney
Swoop of the Kotare, Waimanu
Michael Harrison
Inner Light
screenprint, 53/175
title inscribed, signed and dated 1980
660 x 480mm
acrylic and pencil on paper
title inscribed and signed 1994 verso; original Vavasour Godkin
label affixed verso; original Artspace label affixed verso
200 x 145mm
$3000 – $5000
Exhibited: ‘On Reason and Emotion’, The 14th Biennale of Sydney, 4
June – 15 August, 2004.
Illustrated: Nicole Bearman (ed), On Reason and Emotion: Biennale
of Sydney, 2004 (Perth, Australia, 2004), p. 107.
$3000 – $4000
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77
Dick Frizzell
Still Life with Felix the Cat Cut Out and Statuette
Seraphine Pick
Looking Like Someone Nos. 2, 4, 15, 22, 23, 36
enamel on board
title inscribed, signed and dated ’82
600 x 538mm
oil on canvas, six panels
title inscribed, signed and dated 1997 each panel verso
2000 x 1800mm
$14 000 – $18 000
$12 000 – $18 000
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Artist’s note:
78
Martin Popplewell
Craptown Salon Style
oil on linen
title inscribed, signed and dated 2008;
title inscribed, signed and dated verso
1370 x 1680mm
Exhibited: ‘craptownsalonstyle’ Black
Barn Gallery, Hawkes Bay, 2008.
$12 000 – $16 000
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I think that the exhibition opened on around the 9/10 September
and on the opening night the art dealer had managed to sell all the
paintings. However the following day it was dawning that a financial
collapse had ensued in america and the previous evening’s sales
evaporated. This particular work was one of the last ‘frankenstein
patchwork’ studies that is made to feel as if it is falling to pieces as it
is being constructed. It is directly concerned with an aesthetic state
of entropy, and takes a multiple view as in simultaneous plan and
elevation. The language knits its way across the surfaces using notes
taken from personal plumbing details and among other things a black
man seeking work in a white house. Not much has changed.
75
79
Richard Killeen
‘Full entry into society is marked by access
to language’.
watercolour on rag paper
signed and dated 5. 5. 84 and inscribed Old
Mistresses.
758 x 585mm
$3500 – $5000
80
Peter Stichbury
Untitled
graphite on paper
signed and dated ’03
558 x 410mm
Provenance: Private collection, Auckland.
$4000 – $6000
81
Gordon Walters
Untitled
acrylic on paper
signed and dated 11 – 2 –90
296 x 240mm
Provenance: Private collection, Auckland.
$7000 – $10 000
82
Darryn George
Arawhata No. 4
oil on canvas
title inscribed, signed and dated 2007 verso
710 x 505mm
$2500 – $3500
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
76
83
84
Tony Lane
A Single Tear
oil and gold leaf on gesso panel
title inscribed, signed and dated
1999 verso
948 x 948mm
Peter McIntyre
Looking toward Clyde with the Old Man Range from
above Alexandra.
Provenance: Private collection,
Auckland.
oil on board
signed; original John Leech Gallery label affixed verso;
title inscribed and inscribed Alexandra Railway Station is
on left verso
695 x 897mm
$6000 – $9000
Provenance: Private collection, Auckland.
$15 000 – $25 000
A+O
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
77
Conditions of sale
Please note: it is assumed that all bidders at auction have read and agreed to the conditions described on this page.
ART+OBJECT directors are available during the auction viewing to clarify any questions you may have.
1.
Registration: Only registered bidders
may bid at auction. You are required to
complete a bidding card or absentee
bidding form prior to the auction
giving your correct name, address and
telephone contact + supplementary
information such as email addresses that
you may wish to supply to ART+OBJECT
2.
Bidding: The highest bidder will be the
purchaser subject to the auctioneer
accepting the winning bid and any
vendor’s reserve having been reached.
The auctioneer has the right to refuse any
bid. If this takes place or in the event of a
dispute the auctioneer may call for bids
at the previous lowest bid and proceed
from this point. Bids advance at sums
decreed by the auctioneer unless signaled
otherwise by the auctioneer. No bids may
be retracted. The auctioneer retains the
right to bid on behalf of the vendor up to
the reserve figure.
3.
Reserve: Lots are offered and sold
subject to the vendor’s reserve price
being met.
4.
Lots offered and sold as described and
viewed: ART+OBJECT makes all attempts
to accurately describe and catalogue
lots offered for sale. Notwithstanding
this neither the vendor nor ART+OBJECT
accepts any liability for errors of
description or faults and imperfections
whether described in writing or verbally.
This applies to questions of authenticity
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thoroughly and proceed on their own
judgment. The act of bidding is agreed by
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satisfied on all counts regarding condition
and authenticity.
5.
Buyers premium: The purchaser by
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of a buyers premium of 15% + GST on
the premium to be added to the hammer
price in the event of a successful sale at
auction.
6.
ART+OBJECT is an agent for a vendor:
A+O has the right to conduct the sale of
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7.
Payment: Successful bidders are
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sale or the following day. If for any reason
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is required immediately and the balance
to 100% required within 3 working days
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Eftpos, bank cheque or cash. Cheques
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8.
Failure to make payment: If a purchaser
fails to make payment as outlined in point
7 above ART+OBJECT may without any
advice to the purchaser exercise its right
to: a) rescind or stop the sale, b) re offer
the lot for sale to an underbidder or at
auction. ART+OBJECT reserves the right
to pursue the purchaser for any difference
in sale proceeds if this course of action
is chosen, c) to pursue legal remedy for
breach of contract.
9.
Collection of goods: Purchased items
are to be removed from ART+OBJECT
premises immediately after payment or
clearance of cheques. Absentee bidders
must make provision for the uplifting of
purchased items (see instructions on the
facing page)
10.
Bidders obligations: The act of bidding
means all bidders acknowledge that they
are personally responsible for payment
if they are the successful bidder. This
includes all registered absentee or
telephone bidders. Bidders acting as an
agent for a third party must obtain written
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written instructions from any represented
party and their express commitment to
pay all funds relating to a successful bid
by their nominated agent.
11.
Bids under reserve & highest subject
bids: When the highest bid is below
the vendor’s reserve this work may
be announced by the auctioneer as
sold ‘subject to vendor’s authority’ or
some similar phrase. The effect of this
announcement is to signify that the
highest bidder will be the purchaser at
the bid price if the vendor accepts this
price. If this highest bid is accepted then
the purchaser has entered a contract to
purchase the item at the bid price plus any
relevant buyers premium.
Important advice for buyers
The following information does not form
part of the conditions of sale, however
buyers, particularly first time bidders are
recommended to read these notes.
A.
Bidding at auction: Please ensure
your instructions to the auctioneer are
clear and easily understood. It is well to
understand that during a busy sale with
multiple bidders the auctioneer may not
be able to see all bids at all times. It is
recommended that you raise your bidding
number clearly and without hesitation.
If your bid is made in error or you have
misunderstood the bidding level please
advise the auctioneer immediately of
your error – prior to the hammer falling.
Please note that if you have made a bid
and the hammer has fallen and you are
the highest bidder you have entered a
binding contract to purchase an item at
the bid price. New bidders in particular
are advised to make themselves known
to the sale auctioneer who will assist you
with any questions about the conduct of
the auction.
B.
Absentee bidding: ART+OBJECT
welcomes absentee bids once the
necessary authority has been completed
and lodged with ART+OBJECT. A+O will
do all it can to ensure bids are lodged
on your behalf but accepts no liability for
failure to carry out these bids. See the
Absentee bidding form in this catalogue
for information on lodging absentee bids.
These are accepted up to 2 hours prior to
the published auction commencement.
C.
Telephone bids: The same conditions
apply to telephone bids. It is highly
preferable to bid over a landline as the
vagaries of cellphone connections may
result in disappointment. You will be
telephoned prior to your indicated lot
arising in the catalogue order. If the phone
is engaged or connection impossible the
sale will proceed without your bidding.
At times during an auction the bidding
can be frenetic so you need to be sure
you give clear instructions to the person
executing your bids. The auctioneer will
endeavour to cater to the requirements
of phone bidders but cannot wait for a
phone bid so your prompt participation is
requested.
D.
New Zealand dollars: All estimates in
this catalogue are in New Zealand dollars.
The amount to be paid by successful
bidders on the payment date is the
New Zealand dollar amount stated on
the purchaser invoice. Exchange rate
variations are at the risk of the purchaser.
Absentee
bid form
This completed and signed form authorizes ART+OBJECT to bid on my behalf at the above mentioned auction for
the following lots up to prices indicated below. These bids are to be executed at the lowest price levels possible.
I understand that if successful I will purchase the lot or lots at or below the prices listed on this form and the
listed buyers premium for this sale (15%) and GST on the buyers premium. I warrant also that I have read and
understood and agree to comply with the conditions of sale as printed in the catalogue.
Auction No. 61
Lot no.
Description
Bid maximum (New Zealand dollars)
Important Paintings
and Contemporary Art
27 November, 2012
at 6.30pm
ART+OBJECT
3 Abbey Street
Newton
Auckland
PO Box 68 345
Newton
Auckland 1145
Telephone: +64 9 354 4646
Freephone: 0 800 80 60 01
Facsimile: +64 9 354 4645
info@artandobject.co.nz
www.artandobject.co.nz
Payment and Delivery ART+OBJECT will advise me as soon as is practical that I am the successful bidder of the lot or lots described above.
I agree to pay immediately on receipt of this advice. Payment will be by cash, cheque or bank transfer. I understand that cheques will need to
be cleared before goods can be uplifted or dispatched. I will arrange for collection or dispatch of my purchases. If ART+OBJECT is instructed
by me to arrange for packing and dispatch of goods I agree to pay any costs incurred by ART+OBJECT. Note: ART+OBJECT requests that
these arrangements are made prior to the auction date to ensure prompt delivery processing.
Please indicate as appropriate by ticking the box:
MR/MRS/MS:
PHONE BID
SURNAME:
POSTAL ADDRESS:
STREET ADDRESS:
BUSINESS PHONE:
MOBILE:
FAX:
EMAIL:
Signed as agreed:
To register for Absentee bidding this form must be lodged with ART+OBJECT
by 2pm on the day of the published sale time in one of three ways:
1. Fax this completed form to ART+OBJECT +64 9 354 4645
2. Email a printed, signed and scanned form to: info@artandobject.co.nz
3. Post to ART+OBJECT, PO Box 68 345 Newton, Auckland 1145, New Zealand
ABSENTEE BID
Artist’s Index
Aberhart, Laurence 31, 32
Lett, Barry 11
Albrecht, Gretchen 20
Madden, Peter 5
Binney, Don 51, 74
Maddox, Allen 4, 43, 47, 48, 49
Clairmont, Philip 35
McCahon, Colin 19, 61, 66
Cotton, Shane 27, 38, 60
McIntyre, Peter 84
Dashper, Julian 6
Mrkusich, Milan 57, 62
Dawson, Neil 68, 69
Ngan, Guy 17, 18
Dibble, Paul 12
Parekowhai, Michael 29, 33, 52
Fomison, Tony 53, 58, 59
Pick, Seraphine 77
Frizzell, Dick 44, 70, 76
Popplewell, Martin 78 George, Darren 82
Pule, John 56
Gimblett, Max 71
Robinson, Ann 24
Good, Roy 42
Siddell, Emily 16
Hammond, Bill 1,2, 15, 37, 45, 55
Siddell, Peter 25
Hanly, Pat 9, 36
Smither, Michael 23, 34, 54
Harris, Jeffrey 40
Stichbury, Peter 10, 50, 80
Harrison, Michael 75
Stringer, Terry 72, 73
Hayward, Glen 3
Walters, Gordon 7, 8, 46, 81
Hipkins, Gavin 30
White, A. Lois 21, 22
Hotere, Ralph 26, 28, 33, 63, 64
Whitley, Brett 39
Killeen, Richard 65, 67, 79
Williams, Mervyn 41
Lane, Tony 83
Woollaston, Toss 13, 14