important paintings & contemporary art

PERFORMANCE ARTArguably, the most emotionally stirring piece in this catalogue. Definitely the most moving. Visit your local Jaguar dealer to experience the F-TYPE Coupé in person.

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CLIENT: DATE: STUDIO: KERRY CREATIVE DIRECTOR

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CATALOGUE 393

129 - 139 Upcoming Auctions & Market Commentary

Webb’s Auction House. 18 Manukau Road, Newmarket, Auckland 1149, New Zealand

Ph: 09 524 6804 E: [email protected] www.webbs.co.nz

6 - 7 Webb’s is Moving

8 - 9 The New Zealand Scene

10 - 11 The World of Art

12 A2 Art – Forthcoming Sale

14 - 17 Spotlight on Mrkusich

18 - 23 Important Paintings & Contemporary Art – Highlights From This Sale

Foreword

26 - 128 Important Paintings & Contemporary Art

The Catalogue

Upcoming Auctions & Market Commentary

140 - 144 Webb’s Departments & People

147 The Last Word - Ben Ashley - Profile

Who to Talk to at Webb’s

145 Webb’s Terms & Conditions for Buying

146 Index of Artists

Terms & Conditions & Index of Artists

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IMPORTANT PAINTINGS &

CONTEMPORARY ARTSALE 393

TUESDAY 25 NOVEMBER 2014, 6:30PM

Buyer’s PremiumA buyer's premium of 15% will be charged on all items in this sale.

GST (15%) is payable on the buyer's premium only.

Tuesday 18 November 5:30pm - 7:30pm

Evening Preview

Wednesday 19 November 9:00am - 5:30pm

Thursday 20 November 9:00am - 5:30pm

Friday 21 November 9:00am - 5:30pm

Saturday 22 November 11:00am - 3:00pm

Sunday 23 November 11:00am - 3:00pm

Monday 24 November 9:00am - 5:30pm

Tuesday 25 November 9:00am - 12:00pm

Viewing

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WEBB’S IS MOVING

23-25 FALCON STREET PARNELL

AUCKLAND

FEBRUARY 2015

Michael Parekowhai, Portrait of Elmer Keith #1. Estimate $15,000 - $25,000

THE NEW ZEALAND SCENE. KARL MAUGHAN, A CLEAR DAY: PATAKA ART + MUSEUM

A solo exhibition of key works selected from throughout Karl Maughan’s career is on view at the Pataka Art + Museum in Porirua. The exhibition focuses on Maughan’s garden paintings, produced between 1986 and 2014, and borrows its title from a 1999 six-panel work on loan from Te Papa Tongarewa.

Where Pataka Art + Museum, PoriruaWhen 28 September–8 February 2015

Five works by Simon Denny have been acquired for the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York: Berlin Startup Case Mod: Rocket Internet (2014), 16.20 Family Strings (2013),16.40 Conversations (2013), 17.05 Break (2013), and All You Need is ... Data? (2013). This announcement follows Denny’s recent nomination as a finalist for the Walter’s Prize, as well the announcement that he will represent New Zealand at the Venice Binenale in 2014. Denny is also currently presenting an exhibition at the Adam Art Gallery in Wellington titled The Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom, which is on view until 19 December 2014.

Where Adam Art GalleryWhen 4 October–19 December 2014

Simon Denny, Berlin Startup Case Mod: Rocket Internet, collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York

LUKE WILLIS THOMPSON AWARDED THE 2014 WALTERS PRIZE

Auckland-based artist Luke Willis Thompson has been awarded the Walters Prize for the work inthisholeonthisislandwhereiam. Judge Charles Esche praised Thompson, stating that “his quite extraordinary intrusion of art into daily life cuts through the protocols of the exhibition system like a knife”. The Walters Prize is awarded to an outstanding work of contemporary art produced and exhibited during the past two years. inthisholeonthisislandwhereiam was first exhibited at Hopkinson Mossman (the Hopkinson Cundy) in 2012. Hopkinson Mossman will exhibit work by Thompson, as well as Fiona Amundsen and Peter Robinson, from 21 November 2014.

Where Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland When 21 November – 21 December 2014

Luke Willis-Thompson, inthisholeonthisislandwhereiam. Courtesy of Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland

MOMA ACQUIRES WORKS BY SIMON DENNY

IMPORTANT PAINTINGS AND CONTEMPORARY ART

8 CATALOGUE 393

City Gallery Wellington currently offers visitors the opportunity to view a seminal work by Egyptian-born Australian artist Hany Armanious. Described by curator Robert Leonard as “Middle Earth on drugs”, the installation, titled Selflok, is comprised of objects created with hotmelt, an easily melted, commercially produced synthetic latex, and is interspersed with found objects and fake-wood

polyester shelving. Armanious stated that his inspiration for the work occurred when he saw elves and dwarves in the swirling textures of wallpaper. Selflok has been exhibited at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

Where City Gallery WellingtonWhen 5 September – 30 November 2014

HANY ARMANIOUS, SELFLOKHany Armanious, Selflok, installation view, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. Image credit: Bryan James

RACHEL WHITEREAD, UNTITLED (PAIR)

A work by Turner Prize winner Rachel Whiteread is on view as part of the Auckland Art Gallery’s programme of temporary installations and sculptures: Untitled (Pair) is on long-term loan to the Auckland Art Gallery from Erika and Robin Congrieve and is sited on the East Terrace, overlooking Albert Park. Senior curator Ron Brownson has described the work, dating from 1999, as “a sleeping couple without the couple being present”. Previous commissions for the space include Kodachrome Presets by Mladen Bizumic and I’m Just Like a Pile of Leaves by, 2012 Walters Prize winner, Kate Newby. Also on view is Long Modified Bench Auckland by artist Jeppe Jein, which was commissioned by the gallery and will be exhibited until February 2015.

Where Auckland Art Gallery, Toi o TamakiWhen 12 November 2013–30 November 2015

Rachel Whiteread, Untitled (Pair), installation view, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki

MILAN MRKUSICH: CHROMATIC INVESTIGATIONS AND PAINTINGS FROM THE 90S

Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art and History (below) is currently displaying a major exhibition of work by Milan Mrkusich. Working from a 20-year-old artist’s proposal, exhibition curator Alice Hutchinson, along with Milan Mrkusich and his son Lewis, worked to create an environment specific to the artist’s concept. Visitors will also be able to view the artist’s Colour/Achromatic series, which includes Achromatic Primary, a work on loan for the exhibition from Te Papa Tongarewa.

Where Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art and HistoryWhen 24 October 2014 – 31 January 2015

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Researchers have recently determined that a series of cave paintings discovered in the 1950s on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi were created at least 40,000 years ago, making them the world’s oldest artworks ever discovered. Using uranium decay dating, the team concluded that the oldest artwork, a hand stencil, was created at least 2,000 years earlier than the oldest hand stencil found in Europe. The discovery displaces the previously held belief that, given that Europe was

home to the earliest examples of art, it must have been the primeval source from which all of human creativity was derived.

ARTfi 2014, the third edition of the annual Fine Art & Finance Conference, was held in Berlin this September to coincide with Berlin Art Week. Leading figures of the art world—collectors, dealers, curators, gallerists, artists and entrepreneurs—gathered to examine global trends in the art market. The most notable observations came from art economics specialist Clare McAndrew, who forecasted continued growth across the art market and confirmed the strength of sales in the United States, prompted in part by the newly enforced Artist Resale Right Directive in Europe, which entitles living artists to receive a royalty each time their work is sold in the United Kingdom by an art market professional.

THE WORLD OF ART.Webb’s New York correspondent, Sophie Wallace, provides commentary on the latest developments of the international art world.

Acclaimed Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has created seven site-specific installations for an exhibition on San Francisco’s Alcatraz Island. Exhibited at what was formerly one of the world’s most notorious prisons and is now a national park attracting 1.5 million visitors each year, Ai Weiwei’s work addresses the pressing themes of human rights and freedom of expression. Presented in collaboration with the FOR-SITE Foundation, the National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, @Large Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz will be exhibited until April 26, 2015. The presentation coincides with a retrospective of the artist’s work at England’s Blenheim Palace, which further examines the critical questions he has raised over the course of his three-decade career.

ANNUAL ARTFI CONFERENCE PREDICTS CONTINUED GROWTH ACROSS THE INTERNATIONAL ART MARKET

NEW RESEARCH SUCCESSFULLY DATES WORLD’S OLDEST ARTWORKS EVER DISCOVERED

THE FORMIDABLE COMBINATION OF ART AND ACTIVISM TO ADDRESS CRITICAL ISSUES

Ai Weiwei, With Wind, 2014. Photo: Jan Stürmann


10 CATALOGUE 393

The highly anticipated Turner Prize 2014 exhibition is now on display at London’s Tate Britain. Now in its 30th year, the Turner Prize is awarded annually to a British artist under fifty for an exhibition of his or her work. This year it will be awarded for an exhibition held in the twelve months preceding April 2014. Duncan Campbell, Ciara Phillips, James Richards and Tris Vonna-Michell comprise this year’s nominees, whose works have sparked the usual debates about the selection panel and the calibre of art it engenders. Europe’s most prestigious—and controversial—art award will be announced on December 1, 2014.

Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs exhibition, Tate Modern, London. Photo: Guy Bell/REX

Ciara Phillips’s Things Shared, 2014, at the Turner prize exhibition. Photograph: Graeme Robertson.

Towards the end of his lauded career in the early 1950s, Henri Matisse commenced a radical departure from his common artistic practice and employed, almost exclusively, cut paper as his primary medium. Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs, the largest-ever presentation of these works,

is on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York until February 8, 2015. Accompanied by extensive research, this ground-breaking examination of Matisse’s end-of-career methods and materials turns our attention once more to his mastery of colour, shape, inventiveness and form.

THE PRIZE THAT CONTINUES TO TURN HEADS IN ITS THIRTIETH YEAR

MATISSE: WHEN THE MASTER OF PAINT TURNED TO PAPER

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CONSIGN NOW2015

Bill

Ham

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CONTACT Charles Ninow [email protected] +64 9 529 5601 +64 29 770 4767

Simon Bowerbank [email protected] +64 9 524 6804 +64 21 045 1464

Milan Mrkusich, Studio, Auckland, 1987. From the series: Artists’ portraits. Image courtesy of Adrienne Martyn.


14 CATALOGUE 393

That he did this without proper art school training, and in a provincial environment as far as international abstraction is concerned, makes his unwavering commitment and success all the more astounding. From time to time, he has received accolades, which have become more frequent as he has grown older and is no longer a threat to rival artists and to those committed to various types of realism and regionalism that once challenged his legitimacy as a New Zealand artist. Those more popular rivals held the belief that an artwork could only be truly authentic if it contained local subject matter, even when the greatest modernists such as Mondrian aimed for a universal language, not an inflected vernacular.

If we look back to his beginnings in the 1940s, as we must, it seems miraculous that in a country where none of the modernist styles or ideas had been transplanted, except in a vapid way, Mrkusich could set out on his path to a rigorous form of abstraction dealing in colour and form rather than in illusionism and subject matter. At that time landscape painting ruled supreme and it was a brave person indeed who aspired to a career in painting without serving time in front of nature and its hackneyed scenic spots. The foremost art award in the late 1950s was the Kelliher Prize, which required landscape painting for entry. God forbid that

anyone could do anything else and call it real New Zealand art. So Mrkusich’s first claim to importance was that he challenged convention. He avoided conservative art training, and by being involved in design and architecture with the firm Brenner Associates, which he helped found in 1949, he came into contact with architectural magazines and ideas that were more contemporary in feel. Lacking a traditional art background meant he did not have to unlearn a representational style, as his near contemporary Gordon Walters had to do. From the start he was a modernist artist making images afresh, not trying to paint something else like a landscape or still life. Brenner Associates followed the Bauhaus principles of integrating art and life by trying to link housing, design and art into a unified whole. Mrkusich’s own house of 1951-52 provided the ideal complement to his paintings with its plain surfaces, box-like design and glass curtain walls. He also designed murals and windows for modernist buildings, taking his art out of the gallery and into the public arena.

Mrkusich was fortunate to live in Auckland in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Auckland Art Gallery, led by directors such as Eric Westbrook and Peter Tomory, became the centre for contemporary art in the country. Also, Colin McCahon joined the staff in 1953 and helped curate influential

Few New Zealand

painters have achieved

the wide esteem

and respect of Milan

Mrkusich, now nearly

ninety years old. He has

outlived most of his

contemporaries and out-

painted them as well. It

seems as if he has always

been a presence in all of

living memory, as well as

a benchmark of quality to

which others aspire but

never really attain.

MRKUSICHMICHAEL DUNN ASSESSES THE ARTIST’S CONTRIBUTION TO ABSTRACT PAINTING IN NEW ZEALAND

SPOTLIGHT ON:

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shows like Object & Image in 1954, in which Mrkusich’s paintings were displayed prominently alongside his own. Comparatively, McCahon’s paintings were more naturalistic with Cubist influences, whereas Mrkusich had built his abstract imagery from blocks of colour and brush strokes. Mrkusich’s works were selected for travelling shows and even sent overseas. This was a period when Mrkusich was seen as a leader of abstract painting whose work even influenced McCahon in his French Bay paintings despite their very different temperaments. Mrkusich had no interest in subject matter or themes that were indigenous to or characteristic of New Zealand. He celebrated the idea behind modernist abstraction, especially in its non-figurative form, that art transcended the everyday world and should be accessible to everyone in all countries. This often led him to choose neutral geometric forms like the circle and square as the basis for his compositions.

Some of his finest early works of the early 1960s are painted in a gestural or brushy style of abstraction affiliated with Abstract Expressionism, a movement very popular in the United States after the Second World War. In these works the direction and width and shape of the brush marks help us to take part in the creative process in an empathetic way. Abstraction allowed Mrkusich to free his colour from the usual constraints of representational art, and allowed his work to become both the vehicle of expression and the content. At this stage he was using oil paints on canvas, a traditional technique that later, in the late 1960s, gave way to the introduction of

water-based acrylics. These paintings already show that Mrkusich was a distinguished colourist, something rare among New Zealand painters, who often use a dark and limited palette, as is frequently the case in Colin McCahon and Tony Fomison. He painted over a white ground that can be seen emerging throughout these works in a daring way, unfamiliar to local art audiences. By 1962 he began to combine structured elements like circles and squares with loose amorphous brushwork to create contrast and interaction between defined and indefinite forms. In doing so he introduced a basic component of his mature artworks like the Emblems series of 1963-64

Abstraction allowed Mrkusich to free his colour from the usual constraints of representational art, and allowed his work to become both the vehicle of expression and the content.

Milan Mrkusich’s living room, Remuera. Image courtesy of Auckland Museum


16 CATALOGUE 393

and the famous Elements series of 1965-70. While his paintings do not tell stories or have specific meanings but rather are individual interactions between each viewer’s personal responses and the work, they do engage with well-known ideas of order and harmony and of balance and equilibrium between opposing forces or elements. The circle can be seen as harmonious, and the squared circle as a mandala-like form that encourages meditation and spiritual calm. The reading of horizontal lines as passive and vertical as active helps guide an interpretation of the artist’s intentions in the Elements series where these forces reach an equilibrium. But his works are not dependent on theory and always have an intuitive dimension to them. His imagery goes beyond language and verbalisation. In retrospect, it can be seen that the 1960s was an important period in Mrkusich’s development, when his creativity reached a new height and his work was inventive, colourful and masterly.

Mrkusich’s works do encourage a silent consideration of the painted image rather akin to a meditation. They are not works that release their significance immediately but rather over a period of time, maybe years. They are painted to repay

contemplation, to allow return visits, or, if you are lucky enough to own one, a daily interaction that never fails to deliver an emotional response. They always go well beyond the role of a decorative wall hanging to engage on a deeper if undefined level. The celebrated Corner series, begun in 1968, show Mrkusich at his most inventive and daring with its bold areas of amorphous floating colour held and activated by the triangular shapes in the corners of each work. Nothing like these paintings had been done before in New Zealand, and even today they are challenging in their originality and daring. From then on, Mrkusich continued to develop his works with important series like the Journey paintings of the 1980s, which are in multiple parts grouped together. His work often has an affiliation with architectural spaces and requires a sympathetic environment, as is the case with his Chromatic Investigations 1995-96 series, currently on display in Masterton.

Never one to seek publicity or place himself in the public eye, he has allowed his work to speak for him. His paintings seem truly timeless and are crafted to defy obsolescence and remain fresh and meaningful long into the future.

Staccato Ostinato. Estimate $45,000 - $55,000

Earth Emblem IV. Estimate $40,000 - $50,000

Brenners Contemporary Design Centre, Vulcan Lane. Image courtesy of Auckland Museum Untitled Dark. Estimate $35,000 - $45,000

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Important Paintings & Contemporary ArtHighlights from this sale


18 CATALOGUE 393

During 2014, no significant works by Bill Hammond were offered to the auction market. However, notably, our November sale will introduce a pair of major green paintings to the market, both of which belong to the artist’s pivotal mid-1990s period. Presented first, will be the profoundly important Searching for Ashburton, which incorporates the full gamut of imagery and signifiers that are synonymous with the period: luscious pools of green pigment, masterfully controlled paint-drips, tufts of vegetation distributed sparsely throughout a vast landscape, contorted horse-like creatures and the artist’s signature avian-headed figures.

Painted in 1996, Searching for Ashburton is akin to some of the most celebrated works of Hammond’s career. Further, it was during the period in which this work was created that the artist established the model that would move his career forward. Searching for Ashburton has not been seen by the public since it was originally exhibited, and it is the first major green painting from the mid-

1990s to be presented at auction in half a decade (the last was Fortified Gang Headquarters, which achieved a record price for a living New Zealand artist). Considering the scarcity of works of its nature, Searching for Ashburton is certainly among the most important paintings by Hammond ever to be made available to the auction market.

The second of these two works is Primeval Screen which was made between 1996 and 1997. As the title suggests, the work was executed on a folding six-panel wooden screen. Paintings of this format were a crucial aspect of the artist’s oeuvre during the 1990s; a work related to Primeval Screen, titled Land List (1996), is held in the collection of Te Papa Tongarewa. Again, painted in deep green, dripping paint, Primeval Screen is inhabited by 69 of the artist’s deftly executed avian figures perched atop branches in groupings of like-coloured creatures. Upturned branches were a key motif of Hammond’s practice in the 1990s and have been a major feature of many of his top-selling

Webb’s November sale–

the final sale to be held

at our current gallery

before moving to a new

space in 2015—will

serve as the finale of

one chapter in Webb’s

history and the beginning

of another. From Webb’s

inception in 1976, we

have specialised in

presenting exceptional

New Zealand artwork,

and this catalogue

certainly holds true

to this maxim.

Tony Fomison, Self portrait. Estimate $60,000 - $80,000

Shane Cotton, Daze. Estimate $150,000 - $200,000

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works at auction. Primeval Screen was purchased from the legendary Gregory Flint Gallery and has been held in a single collection since.

Tony Fomison, Philip Clairmont and Allan Maddox have each developed infamous personal reputations that, to this day, are almost as well-known as their artistic output. This sale includes notable works by all three of these artists. The works are not only exceptional instances of their artist’s practices but also serve as insights into their individual personas. Tony Fomison’s Self portrait is one of very few well-resolved paintings of its type ever produced by the artist. Rendered in Fomison’s trademark chiaroscuro paintwork, this work pictures the artist in front of an easel, wearing a red clown nose. Self portrait sees the artist examine and, indeed, poke fun at the societal role of the artist. Throughout 2014, exceptional works by Fomison have attracted a high level of interest and, accordingly, the availability of this work presents a formidable opportunity for

collectors of exemplary New Zealand modernism.

As its title suggests, Philip Clairmont’s The Resurrection of Lazarus from the Wardrobe references the Christian tale of Lazarus of Bethany (from the Gospel of John) in which Saint Lazarus is bought to life by Jesus Christ four days after his death. With a prominent skull in its upper half, the work’s narrative revolves around the colloquial notion of ‘skeletons in the closet’. With his allusion to Saint Lazarus, Clairmont is perhaps suggesting that while one’s personal history has the power to act as a shackle, it is also an integral aspect of one’s identity. In addition to this painting, the sale includes two works by Allen Maddox—a pulsating yellow and purple grid painting, dated 1978, and a loose, gestural work on cotton made in 1976.

Pat Hanly is another artist whose practice has recently seen a palpable increase in recognition from the auction market over the last 18 months, and accordingly, we are very

Rosalie Gascoigne, TAB. Estimate $80,000 - $100,000

Francis Hodgkins, Mother and Child. Estimate $30,000 - $40,000

Colin McCahon, Northland. Estimate $100,000 - $130,000

Bill Hammond, Primeval Screen. Estimate $160,000 - $200,000


20 CATALOGUE 393

pleased to have the opportunity to offer the late-career masterpiece Resourceful Redundancy, which was produced in 1989. Referencing many of Hanly’s key bodies of work, including the Figures in Light, Golden Age and Post-Rainbow Warrior series, this is a mature painting in which the artist both evaluates the legacy of his life’s work and examines the impact of the human footprint on planet Earth. With its bright, uncompromising colours and its balance of solid and gestural painterly markings, this is an example of Hanly at his very best.

A particularly special aspect of this catalogue is its strong contingent of critically celebrated abstract paintings. Included are four works by Milan Mrkusich—two from the 1960s, one from the 1970s and one from the 1980s—alongside works by Rosalie Gascoigne, Gordon Walters and Richard Killeen. Rosalie Gascoigne’s practice is represented by the consummate 1980s painting TAB. Assembled from found wood offcuts and reflective lettering, the work combines many of the

pictorial elements that are central to the artist’s practice. Study for Genealogy by Gordon Walters is, as the title suggests, a gouache on paper study related to the artist’s revered Genealogy series, which is defined by

its tightly stacked, grid-like use of the artist’s koru motif. Richard Killeen’s cut-out paintings have always veered to the edge of formal abstraction. While the legibility of their figurative content is important, so too is the

Pat Hanly, Resourceful Redundancy. Estimate $130,000 - $160,000 Colin McCahon, Kauri. Estimate $100,000 - $150,000

Shane Cotton, Recreation: 1.5M DROP. SKULL and COLOURED BIRDS against STONE FACE CLOUDS.Estimate $75,000 - $100,000

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Rita Angus, The Sawmill Site. Estimate $35,000 - $45,000

Gordon Walters, Study for Genealogy.Estimate $50,000 - $60,000

fact that they sometimes verge on being illegible. Maze No. 2 illustrates this principal superbly; its various pieces are all based on organic forms. However, the oblique manner in which these forms have been described draws one to also read them as man-made combinations of shape and colour.

Following a number of exceptional results achieved for the artist’s practice throughout 2014, our November catalogue will include a suite of paintings by Colin McCahon that shed light on a number of important moments within his career. Kauri, produced in 1965, was realised during the same period as the Waterfall and North Otago Landscape series. While most of the subject matter that McCahon explored during this time was intended to be the antithesis of the Kauri forests that had held the artist’s attention over the previous decade, Kauri reflects a fleeting moment when the artist cast his memory back to the pictorial content that he had long held dear. Northland was produced in the wake of McCahon’s seminal tour of the United States in 1958. It was during this trip that McCahon experienced the work of abstract expressionists

such as Rothko and Pollock first hand, who had a great impact on the artist upon his return to New Zealand. Also included in this sale is the iconic Moby Dick is Sighted off Muriwai Beach (1972). Made while the artist was based at his Muriwai studio, the painting’s imagery is based upon the landforms of Otakamiro Point. Prior to being acquired by the present owner, Moby Dick is Sighted off Muriwai Beach was held in the collection of a McCahon family member, and it was from this painting that the artist’s only ever photolithograph was produced.

Providing a counterpoint to the included modernist works from the 70s and 80s, the catalogue will also present some notable early forays into modern painting by New Zealand artists. The earliest is a watercolour, Mother and Child, by Frances Hodgkins, made between 1921 and 1922. Typical of the period, the work is the product of a smooth, rounded approach to figurativism. Considering the gravity of Rita Angus’s reputation, relatively few works by the artist have ever been offered at auction. It is an immense privilege to present her 1965 watercolour, The Sawmill Site, to the market. The work describes

Considering the scarcity of works of its nature, Searching for Ashburton is certainly among the most important paintings by Hammond ever to be made available to the auction market

Bill Hammond, Searching for Ashburton. Estimate $220,000 - $280,000


22 CATALOGUE 393

Allen Maddox, Untitled. Estimate $10,000 - $15,000.

Philip Clairmont, The Resurrection of Lazarus from the Wardrobe. Estimate $40,000 - $50,000

IMPORTANT PAINTINGS & CONTEMPORARY ART

When Thursday 25 November 6:30pmWhere Webb’s Auction House

Colin McCahon, Moby Dick is Sighted off Muriwai BeachEstimate $210,000 - $260,000

land close to the artist’s family farm in Hawkes Bay in her signature crystalline approach to realism.

Outside of major paintings by Hammond, the catalogue also contains significant works by a number of other artists who first rose to prominence during the 1990s. Shane Cotton’s career is surveyed by two paintings that encompass the gamut of his achievements as an artist. Daze (1994) is the prototypical example of his acclaimed ochre-toned paintings of the early 1990s, while Recreation is an accomplished example of the artist’s deftly executed practice of the late 2000s. Seraphine Pick, who, like Cotton, belongs to the school of late 1980s Ilam graduates—colloquially referred to as the ‘pencil-box painters’—is represented by the

major mature painting, Sea of Love, which is arguably the most important work by the artist ever presented at auction.

More recent contemporary New Zealand art is also prominently featured. Critically acclaimed painters such as Stephen Bambury, John Ward Knox, Rohan Wealleans, Andrew Barber, Andrew McLeod and Peter Madden are all represented by significant consignments. In addition, the sale includes some noteworthy examples of contemporary photography, such as a number of sought-after works by Fiona Pardington, an early work by Lawrence Aberhart and a large-scale photograph by Michael Parekowhai, from his Elmer Keith series.

Critically acclaimed painters such as Stephen Bambury, John Ward Knox, Rohan Wealleans, Andrew Barber, Andrew McLeod and Peter Madden are all represented by significant consignments.

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ConsignNow

Important Paintings and Contemporary ArtMarch 2015

Simon IngramPainting with a Ruler; Painting without a Metric Ruler; Painting with an Imperial Rulerenamel on plywood with rulers515mm x 515mm (each)Estimate: $6,000 - $8,000

CONTACT

Charles Ninow Fine Art Specialist [email protected] +64 9 529 5601+64 29 770 4767

Simon Bowerbank Fine Art SpecialistPhotography [email protected]+64 9 524 6804+64 210 451 464

Entries are now invited

for Webb’s first sale of

Important Paintings &

Contemporary Art for

2015. Including both

exceptional New Zealand

modernist paintings and

major works by

New Zealand’s pre-

eminent contemporary

artists, our March

auction promises to

be a highlight of the year.

Feel free to contact our

team of specialists for

a no-obligation appraisal.

IMPORTANT PAINTINGS &

CONTEMPORARY ART

Viewing from Wednesday 19 November

Evening preview

Tuesday 18 November, 5:30pm - 7:30pm

Please join us for the preview

Tuesday 25 November 2014, 6.30pm

28 CATALOGUE 393

1 Don Binney

Mad Tui Over Homestead, Te Henga

acrylic and oil stick laminate on arches paper

signed Binney and dated 2009 in brushpoint lower right

385mm x 250mm

Estimate $20,000 - $25,000

3 Peter Madden

The Sparrow’s Heart

found images, plastic beads and twigs on found European Beech chair

780mm x 440mm x 430mm

Estimate $4,000 - $5,000

2 Andrew McLeod

Untitled

acrylic on two canvas boards in artist’s selected frame

signed Amc in brushpoint lower right (right panel)

150mm x 210mm (overall, excluding frame)

Estimate $3,000 - $5,000

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4 Allen Maddox

Untitled

oil on canvas signed AM and dated 8. 11. 78

in brushpoint verso 585mm x 540mm

Estimate $10,000 - $15,000

5 Michael Parekowhai

Portrait of Elmer Keith #1

C-type print, edition of 10 signed Mike P on Michael Lett gallery

label affixed verso 1250mm x 1010mm

Estimate $15,000 - $25,000

31CATALOGUE 393

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6 Andrew McLeod

Parkscape 8

digital print, 2/3 signed Andrew McLeod, dated 2003

and inscribed ‘Parkscape 8’ in ink lower left

1000mm x 1255mm

ILLUSTRATED McLeod, Andrew, Largess, Auckland:

The Physics Room, 2005, p. 194

Estimate $5,000 - $8,000

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7 Richard Orjis

Suite of seven soil paintings

soil and water on paper signed Orjis and dated 2006 and

inscribed John in graphite verso; signed Orjis, dated 2006 and inscribed Joseph in graphite verso; signed Orjis, dated 2006 and inscribed Alastair in graphite verso; signed Orjis, dated 2006 and inscribed Woolfe in graphite verso; signed Orjis, dated 2006 and inscribed Ant in graphite verso; signed Orjis, dated 2006 and inscribed Brad in graphite verso; signed Orjis, dated 2006 and inscribed Steve in graphite verso

600mm x 420mm (each)

Estimate $6,000 - $9,000

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9 Rohan Wealleans

Jelly Baby Dreaming

acrylic on canvas blind signed Rohan Wealleans and dated

2008 in ink verso 1630mm x 1200mm

Estimate $15,000 - $18,000

8 Bill Hammond

Meanwhile Back in the Jungle

oil on aluminium signed W. Hammond and dated 1986

in brushpoint lower right and inscribed Meanwhile Back in the Jungle in brushpoint upper edge

480mmx 780mm

Estimate $20,000 - $30,000

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11 Andrew Barber

Study

oil on linen signed Andrew Barber, dated 2011 and inscribed Study (Monochrome Studs), restretched 2013 as Study for Y3K Monochrome, City Gallery, Wgtn in ink verso 405mm x 400mm

Estimate $2,000 - $3,000

10 Andrew Barber

Kilgour

oil on linen signed Andrew Barber, dated 2005 and inscribed ‘Kilgour’, oil on linen in ink verso 380mm x 505mm (widest points)

Estimate $2,000 - $3,000

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13 Fiona Pardington

Tui

C-type print, 1/5 490mm x 600mm

Estimate $6,500 - $8,500

12 Stephen Bambury

Ghost

silver leaf on aluminium, diptych signed S. Bambury and inscribed

Ghost (XIII) in ink verso (left panel); signed Stephen Bambury, dated 04 and inscribed Ghost (XIII), silver leaf and aluminium in ink verso (right panel) 170mm x 170mm (each) 170mm x 340mm (overall)

Estimate $5,000 - $7,000

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14 John Ward Knox

Still Life

oil on stretched calico signed with artist’s initials

and dated 2010 in graphite verso 595mm x 595mm

Estimate $2,800 - $3,800

15 Andrew McLeod

Henry Fuselli, Tribute 1

digital print, edition of 3 190mm x 840mm

Estimate $5,500 - $7,500

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16 David Trubridge

Spiral Island

hand frosted polycarbonate 600mm x 5600mm x 2000mm

Estimate $6,000 - $10,000

17 Hye Rim Lee

Candyland 7

C-type print Gow Langsford Gallery

label affixed verso 440mm diameter

Estimate $3,000 - $5,000

18 Hye Rim Lee

Candyland 14

C-type print Gow Langsford Gallery

label affixed verso 440mm diameter

Estimate $3,000 - $5,000

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19 Richard Killeen

ButterflyVault

digital pigment ink print on canvas signed Killeen, dated 2005 and

inscribed Butterfly Vault in ink lower right

1015mm x 1115mm

Estimate $20,000 - $30,000

For more than a decade, Richard Killeen has been using digital image - making technology to imbue his cutouts with a previously unavailable vitality. This 2005 example of Killeen’s unique digital work depicts the contents of some kind of inordinately large public warehouse. A flight of birds - swans, seagulls, skuas, parrots, ducks - circle its interior; a rabble of black butterfly cutouts decorate its exposed rafters. Figures in the foreground point and stride purposefully through the architecture as plumes of black smoke

billow from the chimneys of buildings that have been gathered inside the structure: multistorey apartment blocks, redbrick monoliths, and self-consciously futuristic pumice towers. In the top left corner, a heads - up display presents three icons to the viewer, the first of which - an illustration of a canoeing man familiar from Killeen’s earlier analogue cutouts-seems to be selected.

SIMON BOWERBANK

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20 Elizabeth Thomson

Aviatrix gesso on board with enamel on lost wax cast bronze signed Elizabeth Thomson, dated 2003 and inscribed Aviatrix in graphite verso 900mm x 1700mm Estimate $18,000 - $24,000

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21 Stephen Bambury

Necessary Correction

acrylic and resin on two aluminium panels signed Stephen Bambury, dated 1999 and inscribed Necessary Correction, Acrylic & Resin on 2x Aluminium panels in ink verso (left panel); signed Stephen Bambury, dated 1999 and inscribed Necessary Correction, Acrylic & Resin on 2x Aluminium panels in ink verso (right panel) 580mm x 860mm (each) 1160mm x 860mm (overall)

Estimate $28,000 - $36,000

22 Ralph Hotere

Requiem

watercolour and ink on paper signed Hotere, dated 7. 60 and

inscribed Requiem in ink lower edge 695mm x 500mm

Estimate $22,000 - $26,000

Marti Friedlander Circa 1976

Philip Clairmont / Tony FomisonCollection of Christchurch Art Gallery

Te Puna o Waiwhetu Reproduced courtesy of Marti Friedlander.

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23 Tony Fomison

Self-portrait

oil on canvasboard signed Fomison and dated 1981

in graphite verso 270mm x 375mm

PROVENANCE Acquired by the present owner from

Gow Langsford Gallery in 1993

EXHIBITED Fomison - What Shall We Tell Them?,

City Gallery, Wellington, 1994

ILLUSTRATED Wedde, Ian, ed., Fomison: What

Shall We Tell Them?, Wellington: City Gallery, 1994, p. 103

Estimate $60,000 - $80,000

While it is for his portraiture that Tony Fomison is most celebrated, the ‘self-portrait’ is something of a rarity within the artist’s ouvre. Although a number of such works are prominently featured in Fomison’s catalogue raisonné1,throughout the 51 years of his life, the artist, in fact, made only eight known painted self-portraits2. Indeed, even though Fomison’s signature, dimly lit images of masculine facial features do reveal a great deal about his psyche, it was during only a few fleeting moments that the artist actually turned his hand to his own image.

Self-portrait belongs to a small series of around six paintings made in 1980 in which Fomison explored the notion of ‘the clown’ as a cultural tradition. Like many of the artist’s most celebrated works of the late 1970s and early 1980s – which referenced fables such as Pinocchio, Humpty Dumpty and Jack and the Bean Stalk and mythical characters like Medusa – Fomison’s clown paintings ruminate upon the manner in which societal aspirations and anxieties are reflected in folk ritual. They adopt a well-known trope and exploit its traditional framework to critique the complexities of contemporary everyday living.

Appearing as both a clown and an artist, Fomison’s aim is to both emphasise the similarities between these two seemingly disparate cultural roles and, in turn, ‘poke fun’ at the notion of the career artist. Fomison’s coming of age was concurrent with the widespread societal embrace of rock and roll and, in this image, the artist’s description of his facial features – particularly his pouting lips, facial folds and feathered hair – lend him a Jagger-esque appearance. Fomison’s rendering of his appearance trivialises the popular notion of the artist as eccentric, flamboyant and non-conformant.

Even prior to the artist’s death in 1990, his public persona weighed heavily on the way in which his paintings were interpreted. Like his contemporaries Philip Clairmont and Allen Maddox, Fomison’s dramatic personal narrative – in which substance abuse is a central theme – is almost as well-known as his artistic output. In the 1960s, particularly during his 20s, Fomison’s drug use resulted in institutionalisation on number of occasions. During his time living in London (1965–1967), the artist spent time in hospital for addiction treatment. Furthermore, shortly after his subsequent return to Christchurch, he served a short custodial sentence at Paparua Prison.

Fomison’s style of painting was a significant departure from the manner in which other New Zealand artists approached the medium during the 1960s and 1970s. Translating their influence on to inexpensive substrates with modern-day materials, the artist’s heavily chiaroscuroed imagery knowingly borrowed from old masters such as Holbein, Bellinni and Carravagio. Likewise, the artist’s bohemian lifestyle played to cultural idioms that were popularised during his youth. Painted at the age of 41, this self-portrait is somewhat of a personal admission that perhaps Fomison himself had spent a lifetime enamoured with the popular notion of the ‘artist’ as outsider, provocateur and performer.

CHARLES NINOW

1. Wedde, Ian (Ed). Fomison: What shall we tell them? Wellington: City Gallery, 1994. 2. Of these works, one is held in the collection of a family member and only one is held in a museum collection (Waikato Museum of Art and History).

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Like many of the artist’s most celebrated works of the late 1970s and early 1980s...Fomison’s clown paintings ruminate upon the manner in which societal aspirations and anxieties are reflected in folk ritual.

IMAGE: Lloyd Godman, Bill Hammond among the Rata Forest at night, Auckland Islands, 1989. Image courtesy of the artist and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki.

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24 Bill Hammond

Searching for Ashburton

acrylic on paper laid onto canvassigned W. D. Hammond, dated 1996 and inscribed Searching For Ashburton in brushpoint lower edge1340mm x 1765mm

Estimate $220,000 - $280,000

Every artist continues to grow and develop throughout his or her career. Starting with a set of raw ideas, the path to creating exceptional, historically significant artwork is a process of ongoing refinement in which an artist’s central concerns are progressively crystallised into imagery free from any superfluous content. At the time of its occurrence, it is often difficult to determine the instant when an artist achieves absolute synergy between idea and agency. However, when viewed in retrospect, this axis is often easier to distinguish. Bill Hammond reached the ideal marriage between concept and execution in 1996, some 20 years after holding his first solo exhibition. It was during this year, and with works such as Searching for Ashburton, that the artist pioneered his use of viridian-tinged greens and metallic pigments to create works that resembled relics from a long-forgotten and once-prospering civilisation.

Hammond’s 1990 visit to the Auckland Islands to undertake a residency has developed an almost mythical status amongst those who follow his practice, as during this trip the artist had the revelations that served as a catalyst for his developments of the mid-1990s. The remote islands are essentially devoid of any human or mammalian life, and the native bird population has resultantly prospered, unchallenged by any natural predators. Prior to the visit, Hammond’s paintings had been primarily concerned with the eccentricities of urban living. However, the Auckland Islands experience prompted him to ruminate on this unique existence where humans had no influence on the natural world.

With a frame of reference set in the mid-1800s, when the town of Ashburton was founded in the Canterbury region, Searching for Ashburton is a masterwork with which Bill Hammond comments on

New Zealand’s cultural and social history and the broader premise of European settlement, colonisation and natural resource management. In presenting the featured birdlife with simian-like features, the artist proposes an alternate evolutionary history for avian life forms in which they have developed as the dominant species in a realm untouched by the advent of the human hand. While Hammond had previously engaged with narratives drawn from New Zealand’s colonial history and the ecological footprint of the human race, it was in 1996 that he melded these wide-reaching reference points into a subtle critique of modern-day society.

At its heart, Searching for Ashburton is a depiction of Darwin’s concept of ‘the struggle for existence’, the view that all living beings must compete for resources in order to survive. While the work imagines a world without human habitation, it does so to evaluate the destructive tendencies of the real-world human population. In presenting his imagined race of avian humaniforms in a manner that echoes the practices of European settlers who colonised New Zealand in the 1800s, Hammond is asserting that any dominant life form will eventually develop into a destructive force if allowed to flourish unchecked. Furthermore, the manner in which the artist has costumed his imagined race – draped in delicate patterns derived from native flora – suggests that, for intelligent life forms, power is something of an enigma. This population’s shimmering gold textiles are a commodification of the environment that has made way for their development; the outfitting is a celebration of their ascendance from beings subservient to natural law to a prevailing life form.

CHARLES NINOW

Please fold out for larger illustration

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The skilfully executed gouache-on-paper Study for Genealogy 13/12 forms part of a series of paintings that Gordon Walters commenced in 1968 – two years after his first exhibition of paintings using koru-derived motifs at the New Vision Gallery – and concluded in 1974. Although in using circular forms, horizontal bands and a binary interplay between fields of tone the Genealogy compositions were based on the same ‘tool kit’ as the artist’s other late-1960s and early-1970s works that explored the koru form, they were also a distinct departure. Prior to the Genealogy series, Walters essentially constructed ‘images’ from his reduced koru motifs, compositions that were aware of the edges of the picture plane and contrasted areas of dense activity with fields of uninterrupted colour bands. These paintings subscribed to established compositional frameworks such as the rule of thirds and the golden section, and avoided placing emphasis on the koru’s symbolic potential.

The Genealogy series saw Walters step away from the conventions of abstract painting previously practised in New Zealand. Even cornerstone figures such as Colin McCahon and Milan Mrkusich, who pioneered non-representational painting in our nation during the 1950s and 1960s, produced paintings with breaks, pauses and intended points of focus. In McCahon’s practice, every part of the image had an intended purpose, and in Mrkusich’s early work his images functioned almost as musical compositions, which in turn grew louder, then softer, then sharper and then slowed to an atmospheric hum. In contrast, the Genealogy paintings, which

took their lead from the interconnected, carved rauponga patterns of Maori decorative art, lacked prescribed beginnings or ends. The manner in which the koru motif cascades seamlessly across the surface of Study for Genealogy 13/12 insinuates that, if the exterior boundaries of the picture plane were removed, the pattern would replicate and continue forever.

Study for Genealogy 13/12 is one of the few works from the series to have been presented at auction. The base tone, a crisp and immediate coral red, intentionally references the ochre reds and siennas used to paint the carved panelling of Maori architecture, while the secondary colour resonates between dark graphite grey and subdued blue. The colours share a common weighting, thus denying the dominance of either. Like the interlocking koru, the colour scheme speaks quietly to the co-dependent nature of binary positions, which is a dominant theme in the artist’s practice. While much of the critical discourse related to Walters’ practice has emphasised the artist’s neutrality regarding his appropriation of Maori symbols, a work like Study for Genealogy 13/12 reveals that a subtle, implied narrative was perhaps inherent in his use of the koru. In its traditional usage, the koru serves as a symbol of new life and growth; in Study for Genealogy 13/12, its interlocking repetition illustrates the law that governs human life and the natural world, namely that every life form is dependent on another for its survival and perpetuation.

CHARLES NINOW

25 Gordon Walters

Study for Genealogy, 13/12

gouache on papersigned Gordon Walters, dated 71 and inscribed Study for Genealogy 13/12 in graphite upper edge330mm x 230mm

PROVENANCEAcquired by the present owner from Sue Crockford Gallery

Estimate $50,000 - $60,000

“My work is an investigation of positive/negative relationships within a deliberately limited range of forms; the forms I use have no descriptive value in themselves and are used solely to demonstrate relations.” GORDON WALTERS

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26 Colin McCahon

Kauri

acrylic on board signed McCahon, dated 14.9.65

and inscribed Kauri in brushpoint lower left

760mm x 500mm

PROVENANCE Originally purchased from Barry

Lett Gallery. Held in the collection of Geoff Tune, artist and student of Colin McCahon, untill this day.

Estimate $100,000 - $150,000

Conceived with the utmost economy in white on black, Kauri (1965) is an elegant and minimalist rendering of a subject Colin McCahon loved and had often depicted when he lived in Titirangi. Painted after he moved into the city, away from the motif, this kauri is stripped of colour and stripped of ornament. McCahon has reduced it to the platonic idea of a kauri, with two white brush stripes making a trunk, one scroll-like brushstroke forming a branch, and a hand-drawn circle indicating the crown with its foliage. This is not a specific tree; rather, it stands as a symbol of many kauri, and gains majesty from its skeletal form standing out against the darkness of the background. A scumble of grey paint in the lower left corner indicates perhaps the surrounding bush and vegetation lying below the height of this forest giant. Here McCahon, with the most frugal means, delivers the most memorable impact.

As one of three versions, Kauri is comparable to other small landscapes painted quickly in water-based pigment on board during 1965. The paint allows McCahon to achieve a flat, unmodulated background on which the image of the kauri stands out in almost neon brightness.

The surface of the board appears flat and devoid of the conventional picture space that is found in landscapes such as McCahon’s own Titirangi works of ten years or so earlier. Rather, Kauri can be compared to McCahon’s Dark Landscapes of 1965-66, painted small and almost entirely in black and grey. These almost

abstract works recall Ad Reinhardt’s black paintings, as Gordon Brown has noted, and also have affinities with Ralph Hotere. McCahon kept in touch with developments in American painting through magazines and the reproductions of artwork found in the Art Gallery and Art School libraries.

The white form of the kauri against the dark background has an affinity with another motif of that period as well: the waterfall found in paintings from 1964-65 that was loosely based on the works of William Hodges, then on loan to the Auckland Art Gallery from the Admiralty in London. McCahon saw the waterfall as symbolic, evoking the spiritual enlightenment of Christianity piercing the darkness of a sinful world and giving hope of salvation. His conservationist concerns from around this period, when he painted his Keep New Zealand Green series, allow speculation that Kauri, too, has a symbolic meaning in referencing the native trees and forest under threat from urbanisation and commerce. The brightly lit tree has an almost spectral form which is conducive to a reading that goes beyond formal painterly values and draws attention to the plight of the kauri and its need for protection in a hostile climate.

Kauri is a work that reveals many of McCahon’s concerns and shows his artistic evolution at this important time when he was teaching at Elam. In beautiful condition, it is a painting of high quality that appears to have been effortlessly and spontaneously created.

MICHAEL DUNN

The surface of the board appears flat and devoid of the conventional picture space that is found in landscapes such as McCahon’s own Titirangi works of ten years or so earlier... These almost abstract works recall Ad Reinhardt’s black paintings, as Gordon Brown has noted.

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27 Philip Clairmont

The Resurrection of Lazarus from the Wardrobe

oil on jute canvas on hardboard with applied crocheted lace

1400mm x 980mm

EXHIBITED Philip Clairmont, War/Drobe, Elva

Bett Gallery, Wellington, 10 – 21 May, 1976.

PROVENANCE Originally purchased from the

above exhibition at Elva Bett Gallery in 1976. Purchased by current owner from Webb’s in 2001.

Estimate $40,000 - $50,000

Philip Clairmont’s career spanned an inordinately short period of time—he held his first solo exhibition in 1970 at the age of 21 and his last, just thirteen years later, at the age of 34. Accordingly, while for some artists, an entire decade might constitute a specific ‘period’, those who know Clairmont’s practice well tend to consider his paintings of each respective year to be distinct bodies of work with their own unique attributes. Painted in 1976, The Resurrection of Lazarus from the Wardrobe is somewhat typical of the period, in that it is composed of well-defined ribbons of colour and enlivened by the prominent use of strong red tones. Further, the ‘wardrobe’ was central to an important body of works produced within that year.

In 1976, Clairmont held three solo exhibitions, two in Auckland at New Vision and Peter Webb galleries and one in Wellington at the Elva Bett Gallery. Titled War/Drobe, the show consisted almost solely of paintings that depicted wardrobes. It was in this exhibition that The Resurrection of Lazarus was originally exhibited and from which it was purchased. In the catalogue for the War/Drobe exhibition, Clairmont explained his impetus for focussing on this one specific piece of furniture: “WARDROBES have (to me) many associations including coffins, confession booths and implications which are fairly obvious—confinement and lack of communication. I have tried to heighten the element—surprise”.1

Clairmont’s biographer, Martin Edmond, explains that the paintings of this exhibition allowed the artist to explore many ‘preoccupations’ and accordingly, the works depicted subject matter such as ‘a Breughel crucifixion, Gruenwald’s Isenheim altarpiece, a burning Buddhist

monk, a coat from Trieste, a mutilated man, dead chickens hanging’2 and, as we see in this case, the biblical tale of Lazarus of Bethany from the New Testament. The central axis of the biblical narrative of Lazarus is his death and subsequent miracle resurrection by Jesus Christ four days later. In addition to the word LAZARUS, which adorns the work’s upper edge, in the style of a band poster (helping the viewer decipher the artist’s colourful flourishes of paint), the painting includes one piece of readily recognisable content, a white skull in its upper-centre region. While the skull obviously belongs to Lazarus, it also consciously references the colloquial adage ‘skeletons in the closet’.

Clairmont’s intention is rarely to provide the viewer with wry commentary; rather, his primary concern is to explore his

subject-matter, whether drawn from physical objects or from history books, from every possible angle. Clairmont’s paintings have a raw power to deconstruct their chosen subjects and to examine both their forms and wider implications. In The Resurrection of Lazarus, this entropic approach is certainly at play. However, in juxtaposing biblical references to Lazarus’s resurrection against the notion of ‘skeletons in the closet’, the artist has assembled a subtle poetic message. This combination of reference points suggests that while one’s personal history has the power to act as shackle, it is also an integral aspect of one’s identity.

CHARLES NINOW

1. Cited in Edmond, Martin. The Resurrection of Philip Clairmont, Auckland: Auckland University Press: 1999, p. 149. 2. Ibid.

Wardrobes have (to me) many associations including: Coffins, Confessions Booths and implications that are fairly obvious – confinement and lack of communication. I have tried to heighten the element – surprise. “…However complex, however lawless and ART may claim to be – even the art of Van Gogh or a Rimbaud – it stands for unity as against the chaos of appearances and when time has passed and it has borne fruit, this becomes apparent” (The Voices of Silence, Andre Malraux). (sic)PHILIP CLAIRMONT, QUOTED FROM THE CATALOGUE WHICH ACCOMPANIED THE WAR/DROBE EXHIBITION

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Ralph Hotere’s Song Cycle paintings were conceived originally as a stage design for Sound Movement Theatre’s Song Cycle performance;1 however, as the artist’s concept for production changed, the loose-hanging banners developed into an independent series of paintings that are now widely regarded as one of the artist’s most important bodies of work. The paintings were exhibited in 1976: first at Auckland’s Barry Lett Galleries in June and then later at Dunedin’s Bosshard Galleries (it was from this exhibition that Love Poem was purchased). In his review of the exhibition in Art New Zealand, Rodney Wilson described the installation of banners as “like lines of giant forest trees enclosing one as eye and mind feasted upon both visual and literary imagery”.2 These exhibitions were the first of the expansive installations – such as Godwit/Kuaka (1977), originally conceived as a mural for Auckland Airport3, Black Phoenix (1984–1988)4 and the collaborations with Bill Culbert (made throughout the 1990s) – that would form an important part of Hotere’s oeuvre.

Each work in the Song Cycle series is based upon a poem by Bill Manhire and, as a whole, the poems that were selected conjure tactile, sensual imagery and refer to reciprocity between independent beings. In Love Poem, the central narrative is a recollection of physical interaction between two lovers and the text refers to physical sensations (bending spines and lover’s tongue) and uses carnal words like embrace and touch. Hotere’s use of Manhire’s poetry is motivated not just by a personal affinity with the verse but also by the intent that, in each case, the text should mirror the methodology that informed the work’s making. The works are a union of Hotere and Manhire’s individual practices and, like a personal moment between two lovers, the contribution of one author is not intended to be more important than that of the other.

The visual imagery employed in Love Poem is grounded in Ralph Hotere’s abstract painting practice of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Concerned with concrete imagery’s propensity to function in the

same way as does musical notation, the works are nuanced compositions of linear geometric form and primary and secondary colour set against sonorous black backgrounds. With its affronting physical proportions and strong vertical lines, Love Poem clearly espouses Hotere’s belief that non-objective imagery can have a tangible emotional effect and, as the tight controls exercised in his early practice were abandoned in favour of a more expressive approach, it could be said that the Song Cycle series advances the cause even further. In keeping with his new approach that favoured chance-markings, Hotere exposed the works to the elements (notably rain), for up to two weeks at a time. The Song Cycle banners are modern in the truest sense; they explore the very nature of the materials with which they are made and invite the viewer to do the same.

Aside perhaps from the practice of Colin McCahon – with his Northland Panels (1958)5 – the degree to which Ralph Hotere explored the physicality of his materials in the Song Cycle series was unprecedented in New Zealand. Not only did he manipulate paint and canvas in unorthodox ways, he explored the notion of the aesthetic experience on a conceptual level. In generating image from text and text from image, Hotere broke down the distinction between the two methods of relaying information; he gave words a pictorial immediacy and treated painterly marks as literary devices. Born out of an interdisciplinary project, Love Poem is about the communicative potential of the creative act; it is a visual poem that addresses the connection between a work and its source of inspiration and the relationship between a painting and its audience.

CHARLES NINOW1 Sound Movement Theatre was a touring production that originated from Dunedin and consisted of two performances: Anatomy of Dance and Song Cycle. The performances were grounded in choreographed dance and the latter featured poetry by Bill Manhire and stage design by Ralph Hotere.2 Wilson, Rodney. “Ralph Hotere’s Song Cycle Banners”, Art New Zealand, Issue 2, 1976, pp. 9–10.3 Chartwell Collection, acquired 1997.4 Collection of Te Papa Tongarewa, acquired 1988.5 Collection of Te Papa Tongarewa, acquired 1978.

28 Ralph Hotere

Love Poem

acrylic and dye on unstretched canvas signed Hotere, dated 76 Port Chalmers and inscribed Poems Bill Manhire Music Barry Morgan Jack Body Dance John Casserly Char Hummel in brushpoint lower edge and inscribed LOVE POEM in brushpoint upper left

3300mm x 880mm

INSCRIBED There is no question

of choice but it takes a long time.

Love’s vacancies the eye & cavity, track back to embraces where the spine bends & quietens like some in the earth.

Your tongue, touching on song darkens all songs. Your touch is almost a signature.

PROVENANCE Acquired by the present owner

from Bosshard Galleries in 1976

EXHIBITED Hotere - Out the Black Window,

City Gallery, Wellington, 1997 This work was loaned for the grand opening of the newly renovated premises of the New Zealand Embassy, Washington D.C. in 1980, where it was exhibited for several months

ILLUSTRATED Baker, Kriselle and Vincent O’Sullivan.

Hotere, Ron Sang Publications, 2008, p. 140. ; O’Brien, Gregory. Hotere: Out the Black Window, Ralph Hotere’s work with New Zealand Poems, Auckland: Godwit Publishing Ltd, 1997, p. 63

NOTE This work is accompanied by the

custom made travel crate, used to transport the work for the exhibition, Hotere - Out the Black Window in 1997

Estimate $140,000 - $160,000

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29 Séraphine Pick

Sea of Love

oil on canvas signed Séraphine Pick and dated

2009 in brushpoint lower right; signed SP and inscribed Sea of Love in graphite verso

1120mm x 1530mm

Estimate $40,000 - $60,000

As Jenny Harper rightly stated in 2009, ‘despite several bold shifts in style and subject matter’ there are several constants in Séraphine Pick’s oeuvre, ‘memory, fantasy, imagination, identity.’1 It is a combination of these characteristics that combines to create Pick’s present work, Sea of Love, from 2009. Carried out with a predominantly blue palette, Pick knits small flickers and tendrils of red across the canvas to energise and unify the work.

The central female figure gazes boldly and directly out of the picture plane, challenging the viewer to engage with her—and with her enigmatic surroundings. A leafy tree extends up her torso, visually linking her with the flowers and plants that populate the painting. The work also speaks to fecundity and fertility—just as the earth nourishes vegetation, women nourish human life—a reading which is continued through the predominance of female forms, the patches of nudity, the ghostly embraces that can be glimpsed on the periphery of the scene and the title of the painting.

In Sea of Love, as in much of Pick’s work, there is a fine and imperceptible line between reality and dreams; between the concrete and the illusory. Pick rarely presents a fixed narrative, for her imagery extends across the realms of the recognisable, the believable, the outlandish and the spectacular. Sea of Love is no exception to this, and the viewer is presented with an array of fantastical horned figures, bats, masks and shadowy forms, which sit comfortably alongside decidedly female figures, many of whom wear elements drawn from the everyday and mundane. Several are seen sporting eye masks, wearing

bras or headphones or adorned with jewelled necklaces, bracelets, headpieces and chokers. Whether the women have marched out of Pick’s subconscious, memory, dreams or her daily experiences is unknown, and this is a central part of the charm and allure of her works. They allow for a wholly personal and subjective experience. While some of the objects and images that reappear throughout Pick’s artistic practice can be traced to her childhood experiences or to her exploration of female identity, there is also much that originates in the universal or collective unconscious. Thus, in Sea of Love, Pick melds the chimeric with the prosaic, so that devilish bat-like creatures and disembodied heads exist alongside irises, underwear and tousled hair. While such uncertainties and ambiguities in imagery and origin could be grounds for an unsettling or confusing viewer experience, Pick’s paintings never disintegrate into nightmarish spectacles. Instead, they charm and seduce by way of technical dexterity, chromatic elegance and the use of an emotive visual language that is uniquely personal yet collectively relevant. Sea of Love offers a dramatic tableau, a theatrical production featuring characters drawn from disparate times, views and realities; but at the centre of it all is an artist who wields a brush and pours the private into the public. In the performance of Sea of Love, Pick is the star of the show—catching segments, snap shots and fragments, which she lays tenderly and serenely on the canvas for future reflection and inspiration.

JEMMA FIELD1. Jenny Harper, “Forward,” in Séraphine Pick (Christchurch: Christchurch Art Gallery, 2009), p.7.

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30 Milan Mrkusich

Earth Emblem IV

oil on jute canvas signed Mrkusich and dated ‘64

in brushpoint lower right; signed Mrkusich, dated 1964 and inscribed Earth Emblem IV in stenciled oil verso

1125mm x 865mm

Estimate $40,000 - $50,000

The bottom chamber contains an anticyclone of deep dark-blue and purple hues while, surrounded by a field of smoky greys, the half-open top square boils with a combination of searing fiery reds and aqua-blue brushstrokes.

It would be no exaggeration to describe Milan Mrkusich as the founding father of abstract art in New Zealand; representation never concerned Mrkusich. For him, a painting depicts the conditions essential for its own existence: paint and canvas, nothing more.

Typically working in series, Mrkusich developed each set of paintings as a direct evolution from the one that preceded it. The series to which Earth Emblem IV belongs is no exception. Painted between 1959 and 1962, the series preceding Earth Emblem IV introduced a number of important stylistic changes in Mrkusich’s work. Earlier experimentations with abstraction, influenced by Bauhaus principles and other such European imports, gave way to a type of expressive scumbling that would later become the foundation of the Emblems series that he would begin in 1963. This spontaneous brushwork, reminiscent of the abstract expressionist paintings of Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning, was adopted for use in the Emblems series and treated according to a compositional strategy in which Mrkusich dissected and compartmentalised it with geometric forms.

As with the majority of his paintings, Mrkusich’s Emblems series can be seen as reflective of his enduring interest in Jungian psychological theories, an interest which began when he first read C. G. Jung’s Man and his Symbols. A large proportion of the Emblems paintings incorporate the word ‘Earth’ into their titles–one of the four classical elements

(Fire, Earth, Air, and Water)–and his later works would be given titles such as ‘Element II’ and ‘Four Elements (Golden)’. Considering Jung’s conflation of the classical elements with his four psychological types or functions (Intuitive, Sensation, Thinking, and Feeling), Mrkusich’s paintings can be seen as allusions to an alchemical synthesis of the outer, physical world with an inner, non-physical one.

For Earth Emblem IV, Mrkusich has vertically aligned two tightly contained chambers of amorphous colour. The negative space between them, divided in half by two tones of earthy-brown, form a sideways capital “I” shape that brings to mind the composition of Colin McCahon’s Necessary Protection series, painted seven years later. Like a piston compressing and rarifying Mrkusich’s brushstrokes, the affect of the negative space between the two chambers varies in each instance: cropped in half by the edge of the canvas, the bottom chamber contains an anticyclone of deep dark-blue and purple hues while, surrounded by a field of smoky greys, the half-open top square boils with a combination of searing fiery reds and aqua-blue brushstrokes.

SIMON BOWERBANK

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In the years preceding the creation of Staccato Ostinato, Jungian archetypes became a central focus of Mrkusich’s painting practice. Between 1962 and 1964, his Emblems paintings explored different configurations of the squared circle or mandala. In addition to being used in Buddhist, Hindu, Native American and Australian Aboriginal cultures as a symbol of the universe and of wholeness, Jung theorised that the mandala, one of a number of recurring primordial motifs in our subconscious, is a blueprint for our psychological representation of the self. Jung claimed that within everyone’s psyche, a central self exists, and it is surrounded by a combination of emotions, anxieties and issues. By getting patients to draw these mandalas, Jung claimed that he could diagnose problems and work towards wholeness in personality.

Staccato Ostinato, which is one of the first paintings Mrkusich made for his 1965 to

1967 Diagrams series, presents an ochre mandala squared with a dark hue and framed by two horizontal bands of grey. Staccato Ostinato is a wholly impersonal mandala: unlike the intuitive approach Mrkusich used when painting his works, such as Earth Emblem IV, he composed the paintings in the Diagrams series over grids according to various mathematically based compositional systems. Mrkusich initially executed these systems on paper as preliminary drawings that would later be transposed onto a larger gridded canvas. The remnants of this process are evident upon close inspection of Staccato Ostinato, which, between the horizontal grey bands and through textured ochre paint, reveals the 10 × 10 graphite grid used to translate the work from drawing to painting.

For Staccato Ostinato, as if playing the initial stages of a game of Go, Mrkusich rendered several multi-coloured red and blue circles in the cells of this grid. These

circles propagate throughout the cells of the grid; they surround one another and claim opposite ends of the canvas according to the system Mrkusich used to determine their locations. This systematic compositional strategy aligns Mrkusich’s practice with those of his international contemporaries, such as Sol LeWitt who, in the mid-1960s, were breaking ground with the development of work based on the execution of pre-determined ideas or information rather that a subjective expression by the artist. As with every other stage of his career, Staccato Ostinato and the Diagrams series to which it belongs is evidence that Mrkusich, unlike any other New Zealand artist of his time, was regularly on the cutting edge of contemporary practice, both nationally and internationally.

SIMON BOWERBANK

31 Milan Mrkusich

Staccato Ostinato

oil on jute canvas signed Mrkusich and dated ‘66

in brushpoint lower right; signed Mrkusich, dated 1966 and inscribed Staccato Ostinato in stenciled oil verso

1220mm x 860mm

Estimate $45,000 - $55,000

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In columns, dripping green and white avian figures march expertly across the branches of a treetop. Others recline or look out into the distance while the large shadows of predators loom above them. Across six panels, Primeval Screen offers a window into a particular area of Hammond’s primordial New Zealand: the canopy of an immense world-tree, which seems to act as the substrate for a community of ghostly birds. The branches of this world-tree are marked with the swirling outlines of swampy weeping willows, contours of distant landforms, and schools of snakes, dark fish and intertwining carnivorous fauna. They hold a disproportionate amount of weight—the ghostly population of an untouched, primordial New Zealand.

Hammond’s haunting depiction of the ghosts of this tree-dwelling community of avian beasts connects his version of

ancient New Zealand to the mythological spaces of numerous ancient cultures and religions. Norse lore describes a gigantic ash tree called Yggdrasil, the branches of which extend to the heavens. These branches serve as a meeting place for the gods and are home to mythological avian beasts. Likewise, according to Serbian mythology, shamans were believed to travel between universes, by either climbing a similarly immense world-tree or by flying. One Siberian myth even tells of a hero who chased a shape-shifting golden bird up the tree and watched it morph into the form of a human woman.

In previous paintings, such as Buller’s Table Cloth (1994) or Watching for Buller, Final Scene (Coastwatchers) (1994), Hammond dramatises the actions of Victorian ornithologist Sir Walter Lawry Buller to produce an allegory of the nineteenth century devastation to New Zealand’s avian life by European settlement and the introduction of foreign species. Primeval Screen can be interpreted as a post-apocalyptic symbol of the aftermath of this devastation. Just as various indigenous North and South American cultures, as well as others from Europe and Asia, consider birds to be the messengers of spirits, Primeval Screen treats the birds that inhabit Hammond’s mythical New Zealand as the ghosts of a lost time; spirits of a utopian version of New Zealand located thousands of years before human contact.

SIMON BOWERBANK

32 Bill Hammond

Primeval Screen

oil on hinged wooden screen, six panels

signed W.D. Hammond, dated 1996 1997 in brushpoint lower right (far left panel) and inscribed Primeval Screen in brushpoint upper left (far left panel); signed W.D. Hammond, dated 1996 1997 and inscribed Primeval Screen, Studio Assistant Jesse Hammond, Joiner T. E. Hammond, Webb Lane, Lyttleton in brushpoint on far right panel verso

1715mm x 375mm (each panel); 1715mm x 2250mm (overall, variable)


Gregory Flint Gallery

Estimate $160,000 - $200,000

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33 Shane Cotton

Recreation: 1.5M DROP. SKULL and COLOURED BIRDS against STONE FACE CLOUDS

acrylic on canvas signed S. Cotton and dated 2009 in

brushpoint lower edge and inscribed Recreation: 1.5M DROP. SKULL and COLOURED BIRDS against STONE FACE CLOUDS in brushpoint lower edge; signed Shane L. Cotton, dated 2008 - 2009 and inscribed Recreation: 1.5m drop. Skull and coloured birds against stone face clouds in ink verso

1505mm x 2205mm

Estimate $75,000 - $100,000

Recreation: 1.5M DROP. SKULL and COLOURED BIRDS against STONE FACE CLOUDS, created during 2008-09, is a major and mature work from Shane Cotton, presenting a brooding morass of clouds, a spiralling skull, a sharply delineated cliff face, and a series of brightly coloured birds. From a purely aesthetic perspective, Cotton’s Recreation is a visual delight. The artist lavishes as much time and attention on the distance between forms as on the forms themselves, intricately mapping form, space, light, and colour. As a result, Recreation delivers a tranquil and richly poetic landscape. Cotton freezes a single fleeting moment in paint, casting a dappled and smoky sky as a harmonious backdrop for a vibrant and energetically twisting array of birds and a plunging, twisting skull. Yet, as with much of Cotton’s work, there is always more than what immediately meets the eye. Recreation is home to a complex interlacing of motifs drawn from western Christianity, Maori cosmology, and the artist’s own career. The suspended skull traverses a liminal space as it references human mortality and the inevitable passage of time, the rich artistic tradition of vanitas, and the moko mai (preserved, tattooed Maori heads) that dominated much of Cotton’s earlier practice. The gliding, wheeling birds represent the spirituality of tangata whenua, while the cliff form serves as a distant reminder of the subject - ownership of land - that was once integral to the artist’s practice.

On the other hand, the cliff can also be read as the edge of the world where land meets air, and where life meets death. Perhaps it is the rocky tip of Cape Reinga/Te Rerenga

Wairua on the Aupouri Peninsula, which according to Maori mythology is the site where the spirits of the dead leave mainland New Zealand on their journey across Te Ara Wairua (the spirit pathway) to their ancestral homeland of Hawaiki. The full title of Cotton’s painting reads Recreation: 1.5m drop. Skull and coloured birds against stone face clouds, perhaps offering commentary on genealogy and creation mythology. Much of Recreation is given over to the subtle interplay between Te Pa (darkness) and Te Ao (light), which is central to Maori creation stories that speak of a world that moved from Te Mangu (darkness) and Te Kore (nothingness) into Te Ao Marama (world of light). Indeed, the majority of Cotton’s canvas is taken up by a vast expanse of gloomy “stone face clouds” gradually fragmented by a soft and nimble light. In contrast, the ragged cliff is bathed in strong light and etched with a high level of detail as time dawns and the earth moves. Against this backdrop, humanity and brightly coloured birds tumble in and out of existence, underscoring the notion of whakapapa (genealogy) as a continual cycle of creation, death, and rebirth. A landscape of memory and imagination, Recreation incorporates elements drawn from cultural traditions, history, the natural world, and the artist’s own oeuvre. A highly suggestive and yet potently elusive piece, Recreation is a classic exemplar of what Lara Strongman has termed “the melting pot of Cotton’s work.”1

JEMMA FIELD1Lara Strongman, “Ruarangi: The Meeting Place between Sea and Sky,” in Shane Cotton Wellington: City Gallery Wellington in conjunction with Victoria University Press, 2003, p. 29.

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Patrick Hanly in 1989Photograph by Gil Hanly

Reproduced courtesy of the photographer

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34 Pat Hanly

Resourceful Redundancy

enamel on board signed Hanly and dated 89 in brushpoint lower right and inscribed Resourceful Redundancy in brushpoint lower left; signed Hanly, dated 1989 and inscribed Resourceful Redundancy and (Foraging Vacationers) in oil stick and ink verso 1180mm x 1200mm

Estimate $130,000 - $160,000

When Russell Haley’s book, Hanly: A New Zealand Artist, was published in 1989, Resourceful Redundancy was the most recent painting reproduced. Still unfinished at the time, it was described as seeming ‘to indicate a new direction in Hanly’s work’. In fact, that prediction did not prove accurate. Hanly certainly did explore new directions in the 1990s, notably in the Bride and Groom series, which derives its inspiration from Rembrandt’s The Jewish Bride, and more radically in the ‘broken’ paintings – works made by breaking up existing paintings on hardboard and reassembling them into new arrangements – a development that was not anticipated in Resourceful Redundancy.

If anything, Resourceful Redundancy looks backwards in Hanly’s career rather than forwards – back to the Figures in Light series of the 1960s or The Golden Age series of the late 1970s/early 1980s. As in those great works – possibly Hanly’s finest – there are multiple figures, mostly female nudes, though in this example, the male presence is reduced to a single head in profile, presumably gazing at the female bathers, rather than the dynamic, angular, active male figures so prominent in The Golden Age works. The male head in profile is probably an artist figure, an identification made explicit in Redskin and the Artist (1985) – a motif that ultimately derives its inspiration from Picasso.

The main focus of Resourceful Redundancy is the foreshore, the background being divided between sky (dark blue) and colourful clouds, and water (light blue) with a green and yellow strip of horizon between. The female figures are sunbathing on the beach, a resourceful response to being made redundant, perhaps (these were the Roger Douglas years of mass unemployment, after all – is that the suggestion of the title?). The watery nature of the lower part of the painting is emphasised by the presence

of a drawn fish in the bottom right corner, a detail that (like the colour of the head in profile) was absent when the painting was first reproduced (Haley, Plate 52, O’Brien, Hanly, p. 223). The lower limbs of the central figure are distorted by the water in which she is standing.

This painting is set apart in Hanly’s work by the rich and unusual colour combination, including blues, greens, red, brown, black, purple, yellow, white, orange and pink. The seated figure on the left, outlined in white or black, is a dark, matte brown, a most unusual colour for Hanly. The central figure, shown full-length in profile, is vigorously painted in a kind of tawny golden brown, reminiscent of a bronze statue, as if the sun has added a burnished patina to the skin. The two nude figures are joined by a patch of bright red paint, hard to read naturalistically but important to the compositional unity of the work.

A curious detail is the small angular bird collaged in the bottom left corner, quite unlike the soaring doves in The Golden Age paintings. It is a grounded creature looking somewhat like an origami piece, and adding to the somewhat earth-bound quality of this fascinating painting.

PETER SIMPSON

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The Moby Dick series bears witness to the artist at a turning point in his career. It is also a testament to the way in which his love for a particular place lifts the work above the function of symbolic illustration.

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35 Colin McCahon

Moby Dick is sighted off Muriwai Beach

acrylic on canvas signed McCahon and dated ‘72

in brushpoint lower right; inscribed Moby Dick Is Sighted Off Muriwai Beach in brushpoint lower left

765mm x 915mm

PROVENANCE Formerly in the collection of a

member of the McCahon family

REFERENCE Colin McCahon reference database

number: cm000631

Estimate $210,000 - $260,000

Moby Dick is Sighted off Muriwai Beach is one of only five paintings on canvas from an important body of work which was a precursor for the open-ended Necessary Protection series. This series heralded the introduction of the simplified representations of cliff forms and some of the more-intimate and controlled themes that would form the basis of the artist’s later-life practice. Further, in this work, it is evident that McCahon has visually articulated both his environmental concerns and his religious convictions with exceptional clarity. Containing both the stylistic tendencies seen in the artist’s practice of 1960–1970 and the oblique representations of the artist’s output until the time of his death, the Moby Dick series bears witness to the artist at a turning point in his career. It is also a testament to the way in which his love for a particular place lifts the work above the function of symbolic illustration.

In the closing months of 1971, McCahon was living at Muriwai, after establishing a studio there in 1969, and began using imagery that had an association with a specific location – the cliffs above Otakamiro Point, Muriwai – with a view that became the key to the Necessary Protection theme. He was quoted in 1972: “My painting is almost entirely autobiographical – it tells you where I am at any given time, where I am living and the direction I am pointing”. In February 1972, McCahon produced this work and three other paintings on canvas, all titled Moby Dick is Sighted off Muriwai Beach, leaving no question about where he had located

himself. This site gave greater reality to the view from the cliff top by including the small offshore island of Oaia. In these paintings, the island has been transformed into Moby Dick, the great white whale from Herman Melville’s classic 1851 novel of the same name. The metaphoric linking of Oaia Island and Moby Dick worked on many different levels. The image of the whale allowed McCahon to reference the symbol of the devil of early Christianity whilst recalling the salvation of Jonah from the whale, thereby reflecting his conflicted view of the Church. It also emphasises McCahon’s despair at what was happening to the Muriwai environment and his desire to protect it. Similarly, the island, or rock, represents the source of faith and Christ’s teachings and, on a metaphysical level, the title of the series, Necessary Protection, alludes to the protection of humanity by a spiritual being.

MARY-LOUISE BROWNE

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36 Richard Killeen

Maze No. 2

alkyd on aluminium, ten cut outs signed Killeen, dated September 1981

and inscribed Maze No. 2, Alkyd on Aluminium 10 Pieces in ink on lid of custom made box; dated Sept 1981 and inscribed Maze No 2, 10 pieces in ink on each piece verso

installation size variable

Estimate $35,000 - $45,000

Better to select components then position them by chance? More important what is on board than where their positions are.1

In August 1978, Richard Killeen made his first cutouts for a September exhibition at the Peter McLeavey Gallery. Comprised of painted red and black aluminum silhouettes, these cutouts represent the point at which Killeen arrived at a solution to a problem that had preoccupied him during the preceding eight years, namely, how he might create paintings without also having to make subjective decisions about their compositions. Killeen’s solution was to create modular works that democratized the required compositional decisions by way of short instructions. These instructions, which dictate how the pieces are to be arranged, shifted the burden (or privilege) of deciding the works’ arrangement from Killeen to whoever might be installing them. In the case of Killeen’s first cutouts in 1978, this responsibility initially lay with his dealer, Peter McLeavey, and then, presumably, with the owners of the works once they had been purchased. For Chance and Inevitability, an exhibition at the Auckland City Art Gallery in 1982, Killeen allowed members of the public to decide on the composition of a huge 85-piece cutout.

This 1981 cutout, titled Maze No.2, is comprised of a set of colourful aluminum shapes; disparate visual signifiers with intuitively familiar yet ambiguous referents. The instructions for its installation read as follows: HANG IN A GROUP OVER SMALL NAILS, ANY ORDER. Presented in a carefully constructed wooden box, these ten seemingly universal glyphs are pieces of an amorphous visual language to be simultaneously encoded and deciphered by whoever opens the box.

SIMON BOWERBANK1 Killeen, the green notebook, p. 110

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37 Rita Angus

The Sawmill Site

watercolour on paper signed Rita Angus in brushpoint

lower right; inscribed “The Sawmill Site - Maungataniwha” on the Angus Property. Painted from the managers house, 1965 in the Summer. Same site as the oil “Scrub Burning Nth Hawkes Bay in another hand on backing board verso

265mm x 375mm

Estimate $35,000 - $45,000

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Focusing on a small rural region between Kaitaia and Okaihau in Northland, Rita Angus’s The Sawmill Site, Maungataniwha is home to a number of compositional, colouristic and linear facets that have become enduringly associated with her name and practice. With its cascade of rolling hills, musty dappled sky and confluence of delicate colour gradients and crisp-edged forms, The Sawmill Site, Maungataniwha is a prime example of Angus’s mature approach to the rural New Zealand landscape. Painted only five years before the artist’s death, the work greets the viewer with Angus’s reductive approach to realism. In the immediate foreground, shrubbery is indicated by way of a minimal flourish of the brush. The forested section in the middle distance is actually a patch of swirling, bleeding paint that Angus is able to make perceptible through the use of carefully placed outlines. In doing so, Angus, in the words of Tony Mackle, ‘prompts the viewer’s awareness of the abstract qualities of the colours and shapes’ found in the natural world.1

The majority of The Sawmill Site, Maungataniwha is given over to the undulating landscape, although nestled in the mid-ground are concrete signs of human endeavour in the form of cranes, houses and fences. These elements work to imbue the painting with a sense of

activity, progress and duty, which provides the spectator with a point of relation and connection. It is also, perhaps, a comment on the changing use and occupation of rural New Zealand—once largely uninhabited and cloaked in great sweeps of forest and bush, the country is gradually coming under the sway of industry, technological advances and financial incentives.

Executed on a relatively intimate scale and painted in watercolour, there is something delicate and fleeting about The Sawmill Site, Maungataniwha. The rhythmic pattern of the rippling hills, the decorative use of pigment and the rigid outlining of forms result in a glowing gem of a painting that has something akin to the luminosity of stained glass. Angus frequently chose to use watercolour for her flower, plant and landscape studies. United by a brilliance and immediacy, these works are often endowed with an elusive tension between the representational and the abstract as Angus seeks to document specific aspects of the natural world while concentrating on tonal relationships and patterns of colours and shapes. This is evident in The Sawmill Site, Maungataniwha, where the scene appears entirely legible and naturalistic, and yet forms are delineated by the most cursory details. Swathes of blue and green pigment offer a myriad of

subtle vagaries in tonality and hue while the dexterous application of a confident line pulls the work together into a wholly recognisable and accessible landscape scene. The Sawmill Site, Maungataniwha is characteristic of Angus’s personal approach to the New Zealand landscape. For, rather than studiously translating her surrounding environment onto the canvas or paper, she repeatedly used it as the departure point for the exploration of abstracted linear and chromatic interactions and harmonies. It was this attitude, in part, that marked her from her contemporaries and proved hugely inspirational for the next generation of painters, including Robin White, Don Binney and Michael Smither.

JEMMA FIELD1Tony Mackle, “‘Everything I paint has the sense of being alive’: From Nature to Abstraction,” in William McAloon and Jill Trevelyan, eds., Rita Angus: Life & Vision Wellington: Te Papa Press, 2008, p.132.

The Sawmill Site, Maungataniwha is a prime example of Angus’s mature approach to the rural New Zealand landscape. Painted only five years before the artist’s death, the work greets the viewer with Angus’s reductive approach to realism.

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38 Frances Hodgkins

Mother and Child

watercolour and graphite on paper signed Frances Hodgkins in graphite

lower left 525mm x 355mm

Estimate $30,000 - $40,000

In February 1921, from the Hotel Moderne in Martigues in the South of France, Frances Hodgkins wrote, ‘I am doing Mothers & Babes as a corrective to Cassis mountains,’ to New Zealand artist Edith Collier, who was in England at the time. Hodgkins continued, ‘If I show in London before you leave, I’ll let you know.’ Hodgkins also wrote to her mother while she was in Martigues in April. ‘The reason I don’t send out more work to NZ is that it has become a bit too modern, & I find it very difficult to return to my earlier & more easily selling style…’

Mother and Child was indeed a modern and challenging work in 1921. It appears to have been first exhibited along with two works titled Martiques from June to July of that year at the London Salon, Allied Artists’ Association exhibition.1

This work also closely matches the description of the first painting Hodgkins sold in May 1928 at the sixth annual exhibition of the Modern English Watercolour Society at the St. George’s Gallery in London. A Times reviewer gave Hodgkins’ Mother and Child praise along with several other watercolours that showed remarkable ability. The reviewer’s summary of the show seems to describe this very painting:

To get not only solidity but luminosity with slight means might be described as the common aim of the works in [this exhibition.] This, broadly, is what makes them “modern.” Water-colour has been used slightly in the past, and light is an old pursuit of the painter, but to capture light while defining structure and configuration with the minimum of labour and material is, comparatively, a new game… 2

In 1951, the St. George’s Gallery director, Arthur R. Howell, published a memoir of his friendship with Hodgkins. In the memoir, the curator, Mary Chamot, states that the painting belonged to Scottish poet Dorothy Seward Walton (the poet’s name also appears on a label verso from The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh). Frances Hodgkins was an artist who continually pushed the edges of her own boundaries. This striking work, a painting of sophisticated emotional character combined extraordinary subtlety with confident, painterly strength. Both minimal and boldly executed, the painting is an important mid-career work by one of this country’s most famous expatriate artists.

SIMON BOWERBANK

1. The Mansard Gallery, London, 10 June–9 July 19212. ‘English Water-colours,’ The Times, 24 May 1928

Frances Hodgkins - Boy in a wood, Pencil on paperCollection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Pun o Waiwhetu; purchased with assistance from the Olive Stirrat bequest, 1992

Frances Hodgkins - Lancashire mill girls, Watercolour on cardboard, Collection of Te Papa Tongarewa; purchased with New Zealand Lottery Grants Board funds, 2000

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39 Rosalie Gascoigne

TAB

acrylic, steel nails, found reflective numbers and wood segments on board

signed Rosalie Gascoigne, dated 1994 and inscribed TAB in ink verso

570mm x 460mm


Roslyn Oxley Gallery in 1995

Estimate $80,000 - $100,000

“This is a piece for walking around and contemplating. It is about being in the country with its shifting light and shades of grey, its casualness and its prodigality. The viewer’s response to the landscape may differ from mine but I hope this piece will convey some sense of the countryside that produced it: and that an extra turn or two around the work will induce in the viewer the liberating feeling of being in open country.”1

ROSALIE GASCOIGNE

In 1974, at the age of 57 and after spending thirty-one years as a homemaker, Rosalie Gascoigne had her first exhibition at the Macquarie Galleries in Canberra. During the preceding years, while raising her children, Gascoigne studied Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging that originated as a Buddhist expression of the beauty of nature. However, by the late 1960s, Gascoigne became dissatisfied with Ikebana and devoted herself entirely to art. Gascoigne stated, “Ikebana disciplined me in a way I wouldn’t have been otherwise” . . .”but it left great big pieces of the Australian ethos out.”2 Instead of plants, Gascoigne began to focus her attention on the sculptural arrangement of man-made materials found in the Canberra landscape—quintessentially Australian detritus such as corrugated iron, old lino, chicken wire, wooden soft drink crates and road signs. A few years later, Gascoigne held a major survey exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, and in 1982, she was the first woman to be chosen to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale.

From the mid-1980s, Gascoigne’s work shifted from Ikebana-inspired sculptural arrangements to the more formal wall assemblages for which she is best known.

This example from 1984 is representative of Gascoigne’s reoccurring use of the grid as a compositional support. By cutting up her weathered materials into smaller units, Gascoigne regularly assembled the triangular and rectangular shards into thoroughly Modernist, yet precarious, wooden grids. In this work, Gascoigne has filled the centre cells of the wooden grid with discarded letterbox numbers. The honesty of the materials that she used was an essential part of Gascoigne’s practice; she did little to the materials that she found, preferring to leave them in the state in which she found them. By doing so, Gascoigne was able to imbue her work with a vitality that would be have been absent if she had used newly fabricated materials. Reflecting on the art she saw during a visit to New York, Gascoigne stated, “I thought it was the product of a decadent society; it should be out in the sun with a pigeon on it.”3

SIMON BOWERBANK

1.Eagle, Mary, Rosalie Gascoigne, 1985, Tasmania: University of Tasmania, 1985, p.42. McDonald, Vici, Rosalie Gascoigne, Sydney: Regaro Pty Ltd, 1998, p. 193. Ibid, p.32

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40 Shane Cotton

Daze

oil on canvas signed SW Cotton and dated 1994

in brushpoint lower right 1520mm x 1830mm

EXHIBITED Claybrook Gallery, 1994


Anna Bibby Gallery in 1997

Estimate $150,000 - $200,000

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In the years since they were produced, Shane Cotton’s ochre-toned paintings of the 1990s have become as synonymous with the decade in which they were made as Don Binney’s fluid imagery is with the 1970s and Ralph Hotere’s messages of protest are with the 1980s. The paintings made by Cotton throughout the 1990s are an innate, profoundly honest reflection of a pivotal period within our nation’s history. Informed by landmark government settlements that aimed to redress historical grievances between the crown and tangata whenua, Cotton’s artistic practice of the time reflected a small colonial state’s struggle to come to terms with its identity as a bi-cultural nation with an independent voice.

Cotton made his first significant ochre paintings-many of which are now held in museum collections-in 1993, and thus, Daze, which was painted in the following year, includes many of the key signifiers that were central to this new wave of creative output. The painting’s most dominant recognisable figurative forms are the silhouettes of hillsides and Victorian china, a juxtaposition of subject matter akin to that used in the artist’s well-known painting Artificial Curiosities (1993)1. In addition, and perhaps most notably, the painting’s lower right corner pictures a potted plant, which is directly comparable to that which is described in the artist’s iconic masterpiece Whakapiri Atu te Whenua (1993)2.

During the period in which Daze was painted, touching upon reference points that were familiar to his audience was

central to Cotton’s method of forming a dialogue. Especially in the earlier part of the 1990s, the artist’s paintings appeared almost as codified assemblages in which every pictorial element had a specific meaning. In presenting an interplay between the similarly scaled descriptions of hill forms, china and, indeed, calligraphic lettering, Daze aimed to contrast European traditions with New Zealand’s inherent cultural history. The contours of the china and calligraphic lettering allude to European high-culture, while the elongated appearance of the mountain forms calls to mind New Zealand artist Charles Heaphy’s paintings of the turn of the century. Similarly, the potted plant is simultaneously a reference to the figurative painting traditionally found within the marae of the North Island’s east coast and the European tradition of growing decorative plants in portable vessels.

Daze’s composition—an assemblage of many individually framed images, particularly of the landscape tradition-references that of Colin McCahon’s seminal early-career painting Six Days in Nelson and Canterbury (1950), which was composed of scenes witnessed by McCahon while travelling through the regions by bicycle, to and from fruit-picking work. This allusion to McCahon’s early-career blue-collar existence suggests that, like his everyday experiences, the process of settling Waitangi grievances, while difficult at the time, would eventually be woven into our nation’s cultural history as an important building block

of nationhood. The prominent sans-serif text, FUTURE, in the painting’s upper-left of centre is an oblique reference to the fact that, for Cotton, this is a ‘forward looking’ painting. Devoid of any form of industrial development and described in pre-1900 style, the New Zealand landscape has been posed by Cotton as the backdrop for a new dawn of positive development.

CHARLES NINOW

1. From the collection of Jim and Mary Barr; on long-term loan to Dunedin Public Art Gallery2. From the collection of Te Papa Tongarewa

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In early April 1958, Colin McCahon and his wife Anne embarked on a three-month tour of America to experience the country’s art and museums first-hand. Besides a trip to the Sydney Biennale in 1984, four years before his death, this was the only overseas trip that McCahon ever undertook. New Zealand’s isolation from the western world’s international centres of artistic production had a major impact on the development of our nation’s 20th century painting. Aside from some limited international travel, the majority of New Zealand’s major modernists experienced the international evolution of painting through published reproductions. However, McCahon’s visit to America allowed the artist to experience contemporary American painting in person and, accordingly, the trip is now viewed as a milestone in his career. When McCahon returned to New Zealand, he produced paintings in a manner unlike anybody that came before him.

The practices of abstract expressionists such as Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell had most impact on the artist. Prior to his ‘American experience’, McCahon’s output had reflected the influence of the European modernism of the early 20th century, beginning with fauvism in the 1930s, then slowly

progressing toward cubism and, in turn, de stijl. Upon his return, however, McCahon slowly loosened and disassembled the tightly regimented approach to image-making that had informed his practice of the previous decade; his miniature, sharply-controlled geometric shapes of colour made way for unpredictable lashings executed with a loaded brush. As a result, the artist found the subject matter that previously held his attention – the kauri forests of Auckland’s Waitakere region – was no longer suitable; instead, he yearned for wide-open spaces to match his newfound painterly freedom. In McCahon’s own words, “my lovely kauris became too much for me. I fled north in memory”.1

Produced in 1962, Northland sees the artist in full flight, pursuing his groundbreaking line of enquiry. With its densely saturated colour and bold, graphic imagery, the painting has an arresting immediacy. Painted from memory, the work is concerned not only with its subject matter but also with the physicality of the artist’s chosen materials. In Northland, the artist has applied and manipulated paint in a number of different ways, some relying on the movement of the paintbrush and others not. The artist’s methods of handling range from wide, flat strokes, to dry-brushed jabs, to wet-on-wet drips of

paint, and their concurrent employment highlights the inherent poetic qualities of each approach. Furthermore, the distinct methods of application consciously provide an insight into the character of the artist’s chosen paints; the work celebrates the raw and subtle beauty of the way in which each dissolves into and layers on top of one another. The work is modern in the truest sense, in that the process by which it was created is inextricably imbedded into its appearance.

The isolated landform suspended in the sky relates to the artist’s Gate series. Produced between 1961 and 1962, this body of paintings portrayed various rectangular forms isolated within flat, void space in a manner that referenced suprematism (the verso side of Northland actually has the remnants of a study for a Gate painting). The fact that Northland includes a ‘nod’ to this series indicates that while it is a figurative painting, McCahon’s intention was for it to also be legible as a concrete image. In Northland, McCahon was experimenting with the notion that a painting could do more than simply describe reality.

CHARLES NINOW

1. Brown, Gordan H. Colin McCahon: Artist, Reed: Auckland, 1984, p.95

41 Colin McCahon

Northland

oil on canvas signed McCahon and dated 9.9.62

in brushpoint lower right; Gow Langsford gallery label affixed verso

900mm x 820mm

Estimate $100,000 - $130,000

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Produced in 1962, Northland sees the artist in full flight, pursuing his groundbreaking line of enquiry. With its densely saturated colour and bold, graphic imagery, the painting has an arresting immediacy.

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42 Stephen Bambury

Apollo

acrylic and graphite on aluminium signed S. Bambury, dated 04 and inscribed ‘Apollo’, Acrylic, resin and pencil on aluminium in ink verso (right panel); signed S. Bambury and inscribed ‘Apollo’, Acrylic, resin and pencil on aluminium in ink verso (left panel) 395mm x 395mm

Estimate $10,000 - $15,000

43 Fiona Pardington

Patiki and Toheroa

gelatin silver print, 5/5 inscribed Putiki and Toheroa, Herries-Beattie Collection, Otago Museum in ink verso 1020mm x 1315mm

Estimate $5,000 - $7,000

44 Grahame Sydney

Myself

oil on linen signed Grahame Sydney and dated

2006 in brushpoint lower edge; signed Grahame Sydney, dated 2006 and inscribed “Myself”, oil on linen, Cambrian Valley, Central Otago, NZ in ink verso 735mm x 535mm

Estimate $50,000 - $70,000

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45 Fiona Pardington

Polypos Cristatus

archival pigment inks on 308gsm Hahnemuhle photo rag, 1/10 825 x 1100mm

Estimate $10,000 - $12,000

46 Tony Fomison

Head of a Harbour

oil on canvas signed Fomison and dated 1980 in

graphite verso and inscribed “Head of a harbour”, underpainted 7/4/80 with a mix of Indian red, Indian yellow, Prussian blue and viridian in ink verso

550mm x 500mm

Estimate $25,000 - $35,000

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47 Terry Stringer

Untitled

lost wax cast bronze, 1/3 signed Terry Stringer and dated 2006

with incision 1600mm x 330mm x 300mm

Estimate $18,000 - $26,000

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48 Ralph Hotere

Untitled (from the Baby Iron series)

acrylic on burnished corrugated iron in Roger Hicken frame

signed Hotere and dated Port Chalmers ‘83 in brushpoint lower left

770mm x 710mm

Estimate $50,000 - $70,000

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49 Milan Mrkusich

Untitled Dark, 1985

acrylic on canvas signed Mrkusich, dated ‘85 and inscribed Untitled Dark, 1985 in graphite verso

1600mm x 1600mm

Estimate $35,000 - $45,000

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50 Dale Frank

Untitled

acrylic and liquid glass on canvas signed Dale Frank and dated 2002 in

ink verso 2000mm x 2000mm

Estimate $28,000 - $36,000

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Landscape Panels in Memory of Daisy Le Cren was painted in a year of monumental production for Colin McCahon. It was in 1976 that McCahon embarked on creating landmark bodies of work, such as the Clouds and Noughts and Crosses series. These series have the same brilliant, yellow hue as Daisy Le Cren, against which forms resembling landscapes float in loose brushstrokes, which as a result of McCahon’s techniques with the medium, preserve the spontinaety of application. The intimate scale, alongside the title, lends the work an elegiac feel, as the chromatic subtleties employed in each panel evoke a stillness and contemplation of human existence.

In many ways, this work is similar to the artist’s landscapes from the early 1970’s, which were painted just after he moved to his Muriwai studio. McCahon was aware of the significance of the area to local iwi, and during his explorations of the surrounding countryside, he was able to articulate in his work a visual language that transcribes a soul’s journey towards Spirit Bay, where souls pass over into the afterlife. Thus, each panel of Daisy Le Cren becomes episodic, highlighted by the disconnected lines of the landscapes and culminating in the final panel, located at the lower right, which bears only subtle traces of pigment. However, while this work was a brief return to the landscape tradition, it was also decidedly an existentialist statement.

The manner in which landmarks and sky are portrayed in bands of colour of

varying intensity was clearly informed by the strategies McCahon’s Kaipara series pioneered in 1970-1972 as he investigated new representations that signalled his shift from regionalism. The reduction of forms could be viewed against the backdrop of biographical details, such as how McCahon’s slow retreat from the influential surroundings of his studio resulted in landscapes that were painted from memory, allowing them to be potent vehicles for the artist’s concepts. McCahon’s fervent interest in Roman Catholicism was increasingly influential after his decision to dedicate all of his time to his practice and, together with the artist’s existentialist concerns, suggests that existence is not defined by our environment and the nature of our environment is defined by our perception of it.

ALEKSANDRA PETROVIC

51 Colin McCahon

Landscape panels in memory of Daisy Le Cren

synthetic polymer paint on card, four panels

signed C. McC and dated 76 in brushpoint lower left (each)


Estimate $75,000 - $100,000

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McCahon’s fervent interest in Roman Catholicism was increasingly influential after his decision to dedicate all of his time to his practice and, together with the artist’s existentialist concerns, suggests that existence is not defined by our environment and the nature of our environment is defined by our perception of it.

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By the late 1990s, a distinctly unique pictorial language made up of zoomorphic creatures had taken up a dominant role in the painting practice of Bill Hammond. The artist’s trip to the subantarctic Auckland Islands in 1989 has become something of folklore, for it was that journey that transformed Hammond’s artistic vision and catapulted him to the forefront of New Zealand art history. The decade of the ’90s saw Hammond forge, distil and refine his vision of the country’s primordial past: a vision that is pictorially transcribed in Flight Recorder.

True to the work’s title, the six unstretched pieces of canvas that make up Hammond’s Flight Recorder, from 1998, record

The decade of the ’90s saw Hammond forge, distil and refine his vision of the country’s primordial past: a vision that is pictorially transcribed in Flight Recorder. Here, as with much of Hammond’s work, the saturnine and the beautiful collide.

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52 Bill Hammond

Flight Recorder

acrylic on six loose canvas panels signed W.D. Hammond, dated 1998

and inscribed Flight Recorder in brushpoint (each)

1800mm x 2500mm (overall)

PROVENANCE From the Helene Quilter Collection.

Acquired from Brooke Gifford. On loan to the Govett-Breswter Art Gallery, New Plymouth 1998 - 2014.

EXHIBITED Brooke Gifford gallery

ILLUSTRATED Hay, Jennifer, Bill Hammond: Jingle

Jangle Morning, Christchurch: Christchurch Art Gallery, 2007, p.118 - 119

Estimate $70,000 - $90,000

a multiplicity of flight modes that encompass the natural, the man-made, the religious and the mythological. World War II-era light bombers and biplanes are seen alongside a host of different creatures such as flying fish, bats and soaring eagles, and, taken from Greek mythology, the figure of Pegasus is presented with hooves delicately outstretched. The dark silhouette of a trumpet-blowing winged figure draws parallels to the Archangel Gabriel or Saint Michael, while a chalkboard displays and records the arrival times of several flights, the last of which has apparently been “delanded”. Amongst it all, Hammond’s idiosyncratic avian creatures walk, dance, huddle and fly. The pictorial and painterly

language of Flight Recorder is uniquely, and instantly recognisably, Hammond. Employing a restricted palette, Hammond relies on his deft handling of paint and graphite to impart the work with a poetic narrative that is both metaphorical and historical.

Flight Recorder comprises six separate canvases, each branded with the title of the painting and, in some cases, with other pieces of signifying text. The words inscribed on the two paintings of the mid-sections locate the painting in the early 20th century, for the planes are identified as the British-built Gloster Gladiator, a fighter that was used in the 1930s, and the Dornier Do 17, a German fast bomber,

also used in the 1930s. Reference is made to consumer items that were popular at the time: the cork-tipped Capstan Navy Cut cigarettes and Griffin’s biscuits. Stretching further back in time, another of the sections of the painting pays homage to the Victorian era of collecting by offering up a wooden drawer complete with eggs or bones, and topped with a stuffed ornithological specimen in a glass cloche. Here, as with much of Hammond’s work, the saturnine and the beautiful collide, producing visual forms that challenge and stimulate the viewer.

JEMMA FIELD

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53 Grahame Sydney

Water Trough

oil on canvas signed Grahame Sydney and dated

2003 in brushpoint lower right 400mm x 500mm

Estimate $45,000 - $55,000

Water Trough is emblematic of Grahame Sydney’s intensely realist style, which he employs through his expert handling of brush and medium. What is presented is a very austere and elegant composition, with the eponymous water trough centrally placed before and dividing a vast mountain plain that, in turn, formally divides the land and sky. Despite its domestic scale, the work possesses a visceral quality: one can feel the desiccating winds and hear the dry scrub’s crackling underfoot; the soft ripples in the water hint at a breeze, while the long shadow intimates the sun’s harsh, unflinching gaze despite the gathering gloam.

Sydney’s depiction of the trough builds upon earlier representations of Otago—most notably works by W. A. ‘Bill’ Sutton, with his explorations into representing the region, ranging from his use of a colour palette comprising ochres and blues to his emphasis on the depicted landscape’s linear flatness; specifically, works like Sutton’s Country Church (1953) and Dry September (1949) could be viewed as precursors to Sydney’s compositions in general, and in particular, the composition of Water Trough, depicting as it does a centrally placed focal point against a background of distant mountains.

As with Sutton’s methods, Sydney’s placement of the trough in the foreground serves primarily as a formal element within the composition as the viewer’s eye travels around the work, examining the fine brushstrokes that make up its painted surface. The trough’s secondary purpose, meanwhile, is to highlight the duality between the manmade and the natural,

underpinning another key concept within Sydney’s overall philosophy. The subject of Water Trough can be viewed either as a superfluous, temporary object overlooked by passers-by or as a vital feature of a pastoral existence, a necessary oasis within a formidable landscape.

The cropped edges of the work hint at a vastness outside the canvas’s boundaries, alluding to an idealised vision of the New Zealand landscape—one populated by an isolated southern man who exists outside society and is unencumbered by the trappings of modernity. And yet, it is entirely possible Sydney intentionally cropped and selected the pictorial elements that comprise Water Trough, highlighting the concept of accuracy within realist painting practices by directing the viewer’s gaze to a very finite number of elements within an elegant composition.

In fact, Water Trough possesses no location identifiers, and it is this dearth of recognisable landmarks that makes the piece internationally important. Through his painting, Sydney engages in a wider conversation on environment and place and their importance to humanity’s existence; through a very precise composition devoid of the picturesque and superfluous, Sydney draws the viewer’s attention to the trough, offering an objective view of it and its relationship to its surroundings. Water Trough subtly hints at the agricultural history of New Zealand, while at the same time confronting elements of landscape representations within New Zealand’s artistic tradition.

ALEKSANDRA PETROVIC

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54 Milan Mrkusich

Meta Grey No.1

oil on canvas signed Mrkusich and dated ‘69 in

graphite verso; signed Mrkusich and inscribed Painting; Meta Grey No.1 in stenciled oil verso

715mm x 715mm

Estimate $23,000 - $28,000

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55 Allen Maddox

Cheeky Painting

acrylic on cotton signed AM , dated 3. 76 and

inscribed ‘Cheeky Painting’ and 54 in brushpoint lower edge

1260mm x 1700mm

Estimate $15,000 - $20,000

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56 John Pule

Icebreaker

acrylic on canvas signed John Pukeatau Pule and dated

Feb 2000 in graphite on stretcher edge; signed John Pukeatau Pule and dated 2000 in ink verso; Gow Langsford Gallery label attached verso

1525mm x 1015mm

Estimate $12,000 - $18,000

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57 Mark Adams

North East Point

gelatin silver print signed Mark Adams and dated

3, 2012 in ink lower right (each) 585mm x 465mm (each)

Estimate $7,000 - $10,000

58 Hye Rim Lee

Candyland 1

C-type print Gow Langsford Gallery label

affixed verso 700mm diameter

Estimate $7,000 - $9,000

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59 Greer Twiss

Flight of Fancy

enamel, bronze and lead over fibre glass 3840mm x 2470mm x 1820mm

Estimate $30,000 - $50,000

60 Ralph Hotere

Patu

acrylic and burnished steel signed Hotere and dated Koputai 83

in brushpoint lower right; signed RH and inscribed Merata, I Roto I Nga Mauniwitanga O Te Wa Ko Tenei He Taonga Iti in brushpoint verso

525mm x 385mm

Estimate $40,000 - $60,000

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61 Michael Smither

Tai Chi in Argentina

oil on board signed MDS and dated 2001 in brushpoint lower left 645mm x 950mm

Estimate $30,000 - $50,000

62 Nigel Brown

Home Gardener

oil on board signed Nigel Brown and dated 89 in brushpoint lower left; signed N Brown, dated 89 and inscribed Home Gardener, Painting No 14 , oil on board, 23 Aroha Ave, Sandgringham, Auckland in brushpoint verso 1720mm x 1185mm

Estimate $15,000 - $20,000

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63 Ralph Hotere

Midnight Oil

lacquer on corrugated iron, four panels

signed Ralph Hotere, dated 2000 and inscribed Midnight Oil in brushpoint verso

2000mm x 870mm (each) 2000mm x 3480mm (overall)

Estimate $60,000 - $80,000

Midnight Oil comes from a series of works that includes Round Midnight (1999) in the collection of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Black Cerulean, (1999) in the Chartwell Collection and Black Water, a large-scale installation by Hotere and Bill Culbert, which featured in Toi Toi Toi: Three Generations of Artists from New Zealand at the Museum Friedericianum Kassel, Germany, in 1999.

All translate the ubiquitous Kiwi building material of corrugated metal into pieces of fine art. Of all the above examples, Midnight Oil is the most significantly pared-back and elegant work, using little more than four spray-lacquered sheets of corrugated aluminium and the cut-away spaces that roll or peel back from the centre edge. The work embodies two of the concepts that have dominated Hotere’s work: the practice of repetition and the persistence of black.

A piece from this period seemingly stems from the minimalist movement, and these works have been compared at times with those of Ad Reinhardt and his reductive tendencies. Hotere has instead created what is fundamentally a colour work: shiny black and reflective. The centred split, sharp edged, allows the wall behind to create the integral Roman cross motif, often repeated throughout his oeuvre. It is this negative space that creates the most powerful and recognisable symbol

of Christianity. Hotere was brought up in Mitimiti in what Gregory O’Brien has called a hybridised Maori-Catholic tradition, so it is no wonder that the rich resources of Catholicism and its iconography have held such a sway over Hotere.

When faced with a work that steadfastly refuses to bestow an answer, we can be comforted by Ian Wedde who has simply described Hotere’s work as ‘beautiful’. It is beautiful intellectually, materially, in a sublime sense and in a humanist sense, and also in a formal sense, in its structure and its balance. The high -gloss reflective-ness of the spray-lacquered sheets refuses to be read as merely darkness or a void, but instead reflects and intrudes on the world. In certain lights, beams of radiance cross the work horizontally in contrast to the slick undulations of the vertically corrugated metal. His art refuses to be still.

Part of the title of the work comes from the work of jazz musicians, Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis; it is also the name of the Aussie rock band, which, like Hotere, is renowned for its political and social statements involving land issues and indigenous peoples. The connection can be stretched further from Reinhardt to Davis. Reinhardt said “what is not there is more important than what is”, and Davis said “don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there”. Hotere strives to do both.

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64 L. Budd

Fig 1-12

gesso on vintage wallpaper, fibreglass and epoxy resin


PROVENANCE From the Helene Quilter Collection.

Acquired from Hamish McKay. On loan to the Govett-Breswter Art Gallery, New Plymouth 1998 - 2014.

EXHIBITED Hamish McKay gallery.

A very peculiar practice: Aspects of recent New Zealand paintings, City Gallery, Wellington Te whare Toi, 1995. The Helene Quilter and Tony Chamberlain Collection, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 1998.

ILLUSTRATED Smith, Allan, A very peculiar practice:

Aspects of recent New Zealand painting, Wellington: City Gallery, Wellington Te Whare Toi, 1995, p. 34

Estimate $15,000 - $20,000

I have heard the forms Budd fashions qualified as minimalist with a quirky humanness. Minimalist they certainly are, if by minimalist we mean reduced, shorn of detail, formal accident or expressive incident. However, if with this term we are referring to a precise art-historical context… Budd’s art is not minimal.

– p. mule1

L. Budd, who is thought to have passed away during the year of 2005, was an artist who exhibited throughout New Zealand and internationally from the late 1980s. Along with a number of colleagues with whom the artist was thought to have worked closely – including Blanche Readymade, p. mule, Merit Gröting and Merilyn Tweedie – Budd was a member of the elusive et al collective which began producing exhibitions in 2000, won the prestigious Walters Prize in 2004 and represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale in 2005. The output from the years in which the collective was active under the formal moniker ‘et al’ absolved the independent authorship of the group’s individual members; it was a core tenet of its collaborative practice that the contribution of one member was no more apparent than that of another. While Fig.1–12 has been attributed to Budd when previously exhibited and catalogued, inscriptions and labels on its reverse side suggest that, throughout its making, the work was, at various stages, also attributed to Popular Productions (an early-career moniker used by Merilyn Tweedie), Blanche Readymade and Merilyn Tweedie herself. As such, Fig 1–12 is considered to be an important example in which the collective contributed to a collaborative outcome.

In Fig 1–12, the central substrate is vintage wallpaper that has been backed with woven fibreglass sheeting, coated with epoxy resin and painted with gesso (a gypsum-based preparation used to prime canvas for painting). A number of different wallpapers have been used; ranging from fleur-de-lis-style patterns to tessellated Pollock-like paint splatters – in some instances, the patterns are visible while, in others, they are not. The application of the gesso and the resulting residual markings call to mind the practice of American minimalist Robert Ryman. In much the

same way as is true in Ryman’s paintings, Fig 1–12 is an optical white-out except for very subtle shifts in contrast between similar colours. The act of ‘whiting-out’ content from found materials was central to L. Budd’s oeuvre and carried with it a specific set a philosophical connotations and concerns – the practice would later develop to include uniform painted coatings of other colours such as black, pink, green and various shades of grey. Unlike most of Budd’s practice from the 1990s, the surface of Fig 1–12 does not carry any of the artist’s signature scrawls, leaving the viewer to consider the implications of the over-painting without any direction from the author.

Many of the found materials that Budd incorporated into her work appear, at first reading, to be relatively benign. In addition to wallpaper, these included objects like magazine racks and awnings. Their relevance, however, is explained by Budd’s simultaneous use of other objects which are traditionally involved in the relay of information, such as projector screens, photocopies and billboards. Like these objects, the household furnishings in Budd’s practice are presented as didactic structures: as subtle methods of exerting societal influence and control. The work’s title Fig. 1–12 and simple method of hanging (each element is suspended from a single nail) stages the 12 strips of wallpaper in the same manner as specimens would hang for scientific examination. Further, the white over-painting mirrors the process of gentrification and adaptive reuse. To this end, Fig 1–12 is a subtle political statement that urges its audience to look past the smooth veneers of the modern world and examine the seemingly innocuous boundaries that shape their everyday existence. It is poignant that the artists who contributed to the work have chosen to make the extent of their authorship unknown (opting, instead, to hide behind the singular moniker ‘L. Budd’) as the strategy mirrors the manner in which real-world political rhetoric is disseminated.

CHARLES NINOW1 The Estate of L. Budd, Michael Lett & Ryan Moore (Eds.). The Estate of L. Budd (Michael Lett Publishing, 2008), p.186

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Fig 1–12 is a subtle political statement that urges its audience to look past the smooth veneers of the modern world and examine the seemingly innocuous boundaries that shape their everyday existence.

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65 Callum Innes

Suiteoffiveetchings

folio of five photopolymer intaglio etchings with frontispiece, 10/20

signed with artist’s initials in graphite (each)


Estimate $15,000 - $20,000

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67 Max Gimblett

Dragon / You Know the Way

oil, 12 carat white gold and hyplar spray varnish on canvas

signed Max Gimblett, dated 1989/90 and inscribed “You Know the Way” and oil/size/12K white gold/hyplar spray varnish in ink verso

1245mm x 1245mm


Gow Langsford Gallery.

EXHIBITED Max Gimblett - Illuminations,

Gow Langsford Gallery, 12 - 29 June 1991.

Estimate $25,000 - $35,000

66 Israel Birch

Untitled

lacquer on stainless steel 1400mm x 1400mm

Estimate $10,000 - $12,000

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68 Dick Frizzell

Looking East from the Ponsonby Ridge

oil on canvas signed Frizzell, dated 20/8/87 and

inscribed Looking East from the Ponsonby Ridge in brushpoint upper edge

1400mm x 1200mm

Estimate $10,000 - $15,000

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71 Seraphine Pick

Woman with Red Hands

watercolour on paper signed Seraphine Pick and dated 2003 in graphite lower right 780mm x 530mm

Estimate $3,500 - $5,500

69 Peter Stichbury

Sullivan

graphite on paper signed P. Stichbury, dated 04 in

graphite lower right and inscribed ‘Sullivan’ in graphite lower left

720mm x 540mm

Estimate $3,000 - $5,000

70 Michael Stevenson

Isolated Mass

acrylic and charcoal on paper signed Michael Stevenson, dated

1993 and inscribed ‘Isolated Mass/Circumflex’ in graphite verso

570mm x 770mm

Estimate $5,000 - $7,000

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72 Fatu Feu’u

Le Ulu Manu

oil on canvas signed Feu’u and dated 99 in oilstick lower right; signed Feu’u, dated 99 and inscribed Le Ulu Manu in brushpoint verso 1640mm x 1620mm

Estimate $11,000 - $15,000

73 Geoff Thornley

Edgings and Inchings of Final Form

oil on linen signed Geoff Thornley, dated 2. 2000

and inscribed “Edgings and Inchings of Final Form” in stenciled oil verso

1235mm x 1060mm

Estimate $8,000 - $12,000

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75 Minnie Pwerle

Awelye Athwengerrp

acrylic on linen inscribed Minnie Pwerle, 2001, Awelye

Athwengerrp in ink in another hand verso

1150mm x 1920mm


Flinders Lane Gallery

Estimate $8,000 - $12,000

74 Ralph Hotere

Winter Solstice, Carey’s Bay

acrylic and ink on paper signed Hotere and dated 7-91 in

brushpoint lower edge 330mm x 455mm

Estimate $10,000 - $15,000

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77 Mervyn Williams

Right on Time

oil on canvas, diptych signed Mervyn Williams and inscribed

Right on Time in ink verso 810mm x 460mm (each)


Estimate $10,000 - $15,000

76 John Walsh

Rest Here a While E Hoa

oil on board signed J Walsh, dated 2004 and inscribed Rest Here a While E Hoa 890mm x 1185mm

Estimate $15,000 - $20,000

78 Martin Ball

Carey’s Bay IV

oil on canvas signed Martin Ball, dated 08 and

inscribed Carey’s Bay 2000 IV in ink verso 1015mm x 1215mm

Estimate $12,000 - $18,000

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80 Peter Stichbury

Glister

giclee print, 94/100 signed P. Stichbury and dated 08 in

graphite lower right 270mm x 235mm

Estimate $4,500 - $6,500

79 Laurence Aberhart

Untitled

gelatin silver print signed L. Aberhart and dated 1986/1991 in ink lower right 285mm x 240mm

Estimate $5,000 - $7,000

81 Andre Hemer Art is Power (power is money, and

paint is love) and I don't do either very well acrylic on canvas signed Andre Hemer, dated 07 and inscribed Art is Power (power is money, and paint is love) and I don't do either very well 2000mm x 2000mm

Estimate $4,000 - $6,000

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146 Index of Artists

Terms & Conditions & Index of Artists

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ENTRIES NOW INVITED FOR MARCH 2015 AUCTION

IMPORTANT PAINTINGS & CONTEMP- ORARY ART

Grahame Sydney, Sunset Near Omarama, achieved $170,012

CONTACT CHARLES NINOW [email protected] / 09 529 56011SIMON BOWERBANK [email protected] / 09 524 6804


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The first half of 2014 has seen Webb’s achieve a host of landmark sales across two auctions of Important Paintings and Contemporary Art. The most notable of these was the sale in March of Colin McCahon’s Kauri Trees, Titirangi, which achieved $412,700 – the highest price achieved this year for the sale of any work of art at auction. In the July sale, the inclusion of a group of four works by McCahon contributed $635,448.75 towards the highest sale total of the auction season. Achieving $281,400,

North Otago 7 was the highest-selling of these; Rosegarden VI was second, with a sale price of almost $149,500—59% over its $80,000 lower estimate.

Tony Fomison was well represented in both sales, with #226 from the July sale achieving $53,935—216% over its reserve—and Mental Defective achieving $129,000 in the March sale. Among a host of other record-breaking sales in July’s auction, Grahame Sydney’s Sunset Near Omarama catapulted to $170,012.50, the

highest amount ever achieved for one of Sydney’s paintings under the hammer; additionally, Don Driver’s Euclid sold for $26,970, beating the previous record for a Driver work by $3,970.

Entries are now invited for the next auction of Important Paintings and Contemporary Art, which is due to be held in November 2014. Feel free to contact our team of Fine Art Specialists to organise a no-obligation auction appraisal and discuss consignment into this sale.

WEBB’S IMPORTANT PAINTINGS & CONTEMPORARY ART MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

01 – Colin McCahon, Rosegarden VI. Achieved $149,49302 – Lillian Budd, Modern World. Achieved $50,00003 – Colin McCahon, North Otago 7. Achieved $281,40004 – Tony Fomison, #226. Achieved $53,935

05 – Shane Cotton, The Painted Bird. Achieved $117,25006 – Colin McCahon, Kauri Trees, Titirangi. Achieved $412,00007 – Peter Robinson, The Queen Is Dead Long Live the King. Achieved $26,38108 – Tony Fomison, Mental Defective. Achieved $129,000

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WEBB’S IMPORTANT PAINTINGS & CONTEMPORARY ART 2014 SALES HIGHLIGHTS

Highest sale total of the July auction season

$1.6mAverage return on reserve for works sold in 2014

138%“With a sales total in excess of $1.6 million,

the recent July auction of Important Paintings and Contemporary Art saw Webb’s achieve a market-leading result.”

Charles NinowWebb’s Fine Art Specialist

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Gordon Walters, Arahura. Achieved $10,552


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ENTRIES NOW INVITED FOR 2015 AUCTION

CONTACT SIMON BOWERBANK [email protected] / 09 524 6804

CHARLES NINOW [email protected] / 09 529 56011

A2 ART

Chief among the successful sales in our recent A2 art auction was Trevor Moffitt’s Death of a Hare No. 3: Dying, which, after lengthy competition between determined bidders, eventually sold for $15,828 – far beyond its published estimate of $4,000 - $7,000. Similarly, competition for Aruha, a screenprint by Gordon Walters which carried a published estimate of

$4,000 - $5,000, resulted in a sale price of $10,552. As with the May A2 sale, at $4,690, one of Bill Hammond’s McCahon House lithographs sold particularly well, as did an untitled work on paper by Max Gimblett which sold for $4,396 – $2,896 above its lower estimate. Other notable sales were Heather Straka’s Saint Sebastian for $6,214, Nigel Brown’s,

Washday PTG for $4,750 and Karl Maughan’s Plume for $2,400.

Entries are invited for our next A2 sale, to be held early 2015. Webb’s encourages you to contact our Fine Art specialists to discuss consignment opportunities for any of our future catalogues.

Total turnover in 2014$1,583,468Growth in A2 sales since 201347% “With 367 works offered across two sessions,

the recent September A2 sale contained an unprecedented amount of lots and generated a number of notable successes.”

WEBB’S A2 ART SALES HIGHLIGHTS 2014

WEBB’S A2 ART MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

Simon BowerbankWebb’s Fine Art Specialist

01 – Philip Clairmont, Mangamahu. Achieved $9,10002 – Bill Hammond, Untitled. Achieved $4,69003 – Don Binney, Swoop of the Kotare, Waimanu. Achieved $11,72504 – Trevor Moffitt, Death of a Hare No. 3: Dying. Achieved $15,828

05 – Ralph Hotere, London X. Achieved $7,91506 – Dick Frizzell, Man and His Dog. Achieved $27,00007 – Ralph Hotere, Le Pape Est Mort. Achieved $9,38008 – Dick Frizzell, Self Portrait. Achieved $18,760

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CONTACT ANNA [email protected]/ 09 529 5606

FINE JEWELLERY& WATCHES

Oval diamond cluster ring. Achieved $24,600


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ENTRIES NOW INVITED FOR 2015 AUCTION

WEBB’S FINE JEWELLERY & WATCHES MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

WEBB’S FINE JEWELLERY & WATCHES SALE HIGHLIGHTS

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Anna CarrWebb’s Jewellery Specialist

The recent September Fine Jewellery & Watches auction was a successful reflection of the ongoing growth and reputation of this department and reaffirmed Webb’s leading position in the market for high-value jewellery and premium-brand watches.

Excellent results were secured for the vendors, with nationwide interest and multiple post-auction transactions making this a particularly rewarding sale. Both the Jewels: Buy/Sell/Collect and the Fine Jewellery & Watches auctions offered buyers antique and contemporary adornments and items, ranging in price from $40 to $140,000.

Highlights included an Edwardian opal fringe necklace with 28 cabochon opals in wire rub-over mounts, with a high estimate of $900, which achieved just under $2,000 at auction. The stylish art-deco emerald-and-diamond ring, with an estimated value of between $6,000 and $7,000, achieved in excess of $8,000, affirming the demand for stylish and unusual antique jewels. Proving that diamonds are still in favour with buyers, the stunning oval 2.01-carat diamond cluster ring achieved $24,600, while the Boucheron solitaire diamond ring realised $15,500 and the beautiful Pasquale Bruni charm bracelet brought in $17,600.

In contemporary jewellery, the Warwick Freeman acrylic-shell-and-linen neckpiece achieved in excess of $2,600, while the sterling-silver-and-pearl Guenter Taemmler brooch earned $1,300: well above the high estimate of $700. These results highlight the importance of these artists’ works in the secondary market.

Countless private transactions have been brokered through Webb’s on behalf of clients and our direct access to an international diamond supply uniquely qualifies Webb’s to facilitate lucrative transactions off the auction floor as well as on it.

Annual increase of sale lots offered to market

25% “As 2014 comes to a close, we celebrate the second year of the new specialist team presenting innovative approaches to jewellery sales and marketing for the secondary market”

01 – Diamond cluster dress ring. Achieved $7,00002 – Emerald and diamond ring. Achieved $7,50003 – A stylish Art Deco emerald and diamond ring. Achieved $8,20504 – Guenter Taemmler brooch. Achieved $1,30005 – White gold and diamond Boucheron ring. Achieved $15,500

06 – Warwick Freeman neck piece. Achieved $2,60007 – Pasquale Bruni diamond set charm bracelet. Achieved $17,60008 – Christine Hafermalz-Wheeler brooch. Achieved $4,70009 – An Edwardian opal fringe necklace. Achieved $1,995

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Webb’s Fine & Rare Wine department holds an established position as one of one of New Zealand’s leading sources of cellared quality vintage wines. Alongside New Zealand wines by the great makers

such as Te Mata, Dry River and Felton Road, each sale offers a selection of boutique French wines from the Burgundy, Champagne and Bordeaux regions. In particular, French Wine Vintages have

demanded top prices on the markets of London, New York and Hong Kong and their availability at Webb’s offers local buyers the opportunity to purchase some of the world’s finest wines.

ENTRIES NOW INVITED MARCH 2015 AUCTION

FINE & RARE WINE

[email protected] / 09 524 6804


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ENTRIES NOW INVITED FOR 10 DECEMBER 2014 AUCTION

BETHUNESCONTACT BEN ASHLEY [email protected] / 09 524 6804

The upcoming Bethunes Rare Books auction, which will be held on the December 10, includes several large private collections from New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

The auction will feature a strong offering of important first editions, including S. C. Brees ‘Pictorial Illustrations of New Zealand’; E. J. Wakefield’s ‘Illustrations to “Adventures in New Zealand,”’ including the

atlas; J. L. Nicholas’s ‘Narrative of a Voyage to New Zealand’; J. S. Polack’s ‘New Zealand; Being a Narrative of Travels and Adventures’; J. C. Bidwill’s ‘Rambles in New Zealand’; a second edition of Walter Lawry Buller’s ‘A History of the Birds of New Zealand’; and a complete set of New Zealand Blue Books. The Antarctic exploration includes first editions of Douglas Mawson’s ‘The Home of the Blizzard’ and ‘Scott’s Last Expedition.’

Additional auction highlights include signed deluxe editions of ‘The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm’ and ‘Stories from Arabian Nights.’

This sale will also contain a selection of New Zealand poetry from the collections of Alistair Te Ariki Campbell and Riemke Ensing as well as a wide range of antiquarian titles, maps, and historical photography.

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ENTRIES NOW INVITED FOR MARCH 2015 AUCTION

CONTACT JEFF [email protected] / 021 503 251

OCEANIC & AFRICAN ART

Prestigious Waka Huia

In its fifth year under the direction of Oceanic Art Specialist Jeff Hobbs, Webb’s Oceanic and Tribal Art department demonstrated not only the department’s strength in sales, achieving a total of $691,836 (hammer price with buyer’s premium) but also the ability to source and make available to the market some of the world’s finest and rarest Oceanic and Tribal artefacts. Among them, the repatriation of a number of significant pieces of Taonga Maori to New Zealand.

Both Oceanic and Maori material culture continues to attract passionate competition from both private collectors and cultural institutions.

One sale is held annually in this specialised area of collecting. Sales feature artefacts from the pre-contact and contact periods through to 20th century works. Pieces covered include those used for ritual, ceremonial, decorative and practical purposes within traditional Maori

and Oceanic cultures. This sale category also includes New Zealand colonial furniture.

Of special interest to collectors are Maori figurative carvings, architectural fragments and weapons. A merging of the Maori and Pakeha cultures is reflected in pieces from the 1920s to the 1950s. For further enquiries or specialist advice regarding collection or consignment, please contact Jeff Hobbs.


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Webb’s Valuation department is the most comprehensive of its kind in New Zealand. With over 38 years of experience and a dedicated team of specialist staff members, we provide tailored services that set the industry standard. Significant recent commissions include the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, The National Library of New Zealand and valuations for Auckland Art Gallery, Wellington City Council Public Art Collection, the complete contents of Olveston, several collections for Auckland War Memorial Museum, Auckland Council, Museum of Transport & Technology, Voyager New Zealand Maritime Museum, and numerous regional museums and galleries. Webb’s valuers offer a proven

ability to accurately undertake valuations for any items, from single pieces to complete collections, within set time frames and in a cost-effective manner.

Specialist fields of expertise include:- New Zealand and International Art - Photography - Ceramics - Antiques and Decorative Arts - Modern Design - Maori Artefacts and Oceanic Art - Books, Rare Documents, Maps and Manuscripts - Fine and Rare Wine - Vintage Motorcycles - Fashion and Textiles - Household Chattels

Valuations are prepared for the purposes of:- Insurance - Post-loss Insurance - Family Estate Division - Financial Reporting - Relationship Property Division - Corporate Compliance

Webb’s valuations are based on industry-standard methodology and are accepted by all of the leading insurance companies and brokers. To discuss your valuation requirements or for a no-obligation quote, contact Ben Ashley.

WEBB’S VALUATIONS RECENT COMMISSIONS

COMMISSIONS NOW INVITED WEBB’S VALUATIONS SERVICE

01 - Te Papa Tongarewa02 - Olveston Historic House, Dunedin03 - Auckland Art Gallery

04 - Motat05 - Wellington City Council Public Art

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VALUATIONSCONTACT BEN ASHLEY [email protected] / 09 524 6804

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Fine ArtWebb’s Fine Art department has an unmatched reputation for achieving record prices at auction for contemporary, modern and historical artworks. Our extensive Fine Art calendar leads the market and consists of specialist sales of Important Paintings & Contemporary Art, Photography, A2 Art and A3 Art.

Charles Ninow — MFA, Fine Art Specialist, Auctioneer

Charles joined Webb’s in 2011 and has an expert, well-referenced knowledge of the New Zealand secondary market. Particularly, his areas of interest lie in the modern and contemporary periods. In addition to this, he is also engaged with current critical discourse surrounding the primary market and the institutional sector. Charles holds a master’s degree from Elam School of Fine Arts.

Simon Bowerbank — BA (Hons), MFA, Fine Art Specialist

With a background in commercial gallery management, curatorial work and artist’s studio management, Simon offers Webb’s an extremely broad knowledge of the different areas of contemporary New Zealand art. Investment in the careers of emerging artists is of particular interest to him, as are the developing markets for digital art. He holds an honours degree in Art History and a master’s degree from Elam School of Fine Arts.

Hannah Daly — Hannah Daly — BA, Fine Art Specialist, Registrar

Hannah holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with majors in Art History and History from The University of Auckland. She has a strong interest in European modernism, particularly across the fields of Fine Art and Design.

Aleksandra Petrovic — PgDipFA, Fine Arts Specialist, Registrar

Aleksandra has previous experience working in commercial and contemporary art spaces and an education in Fine Art.

Gillie Deans — Fine Art Specialist (South Island)

With over 30 years experience within the visual arts community, Gillie provides fine art services to Christchurch and South Island clients including current market and insurance valuations, conservation and advice around the purchase and sale of artworks by auction or private treaty.

Fine & Rare WineWebb’s Fine & Rare Wine department leads the New Zealand auction market in the sale of fine, collectable wine. Webb’s sales feature fine New Zealand wines, premium Australian wines, Champagne, First Growth Bordeaux, premium Burgundy and a selection of Sauternes, Ports, Italian wines and Cognacs.

Simon Ward — RAWM, Wine Specialist

Simon joined Webb’s as director of the Fine Wine department in 2009. With over 20 years in the industry encompassing production, sales, marketing and winery management, Simon’s international experience includes four years based in Italy. He holds an Associate Diploma of Wine Marketing (Roseworthy College, South Australia).

WEBB’S PEOPLE

DDI: +64 9 529 5601Mobile: +64 29 770 [email protected]

Mobile: +64 27 226 [email protected]

Phone: +64 9 524 6804Mobile: +64 21 045 [email protected]

Phone: +64 9 524 [email protected]


Over 38 years of experience in fine art and auctions.Founded in 1976, Webb’s established a position as New Zealand’s foremost auction house by creating a market for contemporary art at auction during the 1980s and leading the rise of the art market in the early 2000s. Today, Webb’s is 100% owned by NZX listed company, Mowbray Collectables Limited. Mowbray Collectables had been a share holder in Webb’s since 2003. The company acquired the controlling interest from the Webb’s family in October, 2013.



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Charles Ninow Mobile: +64 29 770 4767DDI: +64 9 529 [email protected]

Simon BowerbankMobile: +64 21 045 1464 DDI: +64 9 524 [email protected]

James HoganMobile: +64 21 510 [email protected]

Peter DowneyDDI: +64 9 529 [email protected]

Ruri RheeDDI: +64 9 529 [email protected]

Julie Lamb DDI: +64 9 524 [email protected]

Hannah Daly DDI: +64 9 524 [email protected]

Anna CarrDDI: +64 9 529 [email protected]

Simon WardMobile: +64 21 642 277DDI: +64 9 529 [email protected]

Mandy ThorogoodDDI: +64 9 524 [email protected]

Cara Griffith DDI: +64 9 524 [email protected]

Jeff HobbsMobile: +64 21 503 [email protected]

Katrina SewellDDI: +64 9 524 [email protected]

Aleksandra PetrovicDDI: +64 9 524 [email protected]

Chris AllsopMobile: +64 21 679 319DDI: +64 9 529 [email protected]

Ben AshleyDDI: +64 9 524 [email protected]

Kevin Lauv DDI: +64 9 524 6804 [email protected]

Christopher SwasbrookDDI: +64 9 524 [email protected]

Charis RobinsonDDI: +64 9 524 [email protected]

Greg StoffelsDDI: +64 9 524 [email protected]

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DEPARTMENTS

Fine Jewellery & WatchesWebb’s jewellery sales include a wide selection of fine and magnificent jewels, loose diamonds, antique and modern jewellery and watches from the most sought-after makers in the world.

Anna Carr — BDes, DipTeach, Jewellery Specialist

Anna Carr (nee Ward) is a practising jeweller who, since graduating in 2004 with a Bachelor of Design (Hons) degree, majoring in Contemporary Jewellery and a Postgraduate Diploma in teaching, has exhibited nationally and internationally. Prior to starting at Webb’s, Anna worked as a Jewellery Coordinator at Masterworks for four years.

Peter Downey — Jewellery Specialist, Valuer

A founding director of Webb’s jewellery department in the 1980s, Peter has 44 years of market experience and is one of New Zealand’s most experienced jewellery specialists. Peter has a comprehensive knowledge of all materials and styles and his specialist areas include Castellani, Giuliano, Fabergé, Cartier, art nouveau and art deco.

Ruri Rhee — Jewellery Assistant & Administrator

Ruri has a strong interest in contemporary jewellery design, holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History and is currently working towards her Masters Degree in Arts Management. Working closely with Anna Carr and Peter Downey to facilitate the operations of the Webb’s fine Jewellery Department, Ruri has been part of the Webb’s team now for nearly a year.

ValuationsWebb’s provides valuation services to public institutions and corporate and private collections, including the Auckland Art Gallery, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the National Library of New Zealand and numerous regional galleries and museums. Domestic valuation services include single items or entire collections and cover artworks and the full spectrum of antiques, interiors, modern design and collectables.

Ben Ashley — BA, Valuations Specialist

As Webb’s valuations specialist, Ben has a sound knowledge of all collecting genres and is a expert in rare books, manuscripts and historical photography. Ben studied New Zealand literature at the University of Auckland, Victoria University of Wellington and the International Institute of Modern Letters.

Oceanic And African ArtThe Oceanic And African Art department holds one sale annually in this specialised area of collecting. These sales feature artefacts from pre-contact and contact periods through to 20th-century works. Catalogues include pieces used for ritual, ceremonial, decorative and practical purposes within traditional Maori and Oceanic and African cultures, as well as New Zealand colonial furniture.

Jeff Hobbs — Oceanic and African Art Specialist

Jeff is a veteran expert in Oceanic, Tribal Arts and antiquities. A successful dealer and consultant in New York and the United Kingdom during the 1990s, he subsequently owned and operated Wellington’s well-respected Sulu Gallery. Jeff has travelled internationally on behalf of Webb’s repatriating significant Maori and Oceanic material.

Mobile: +64 21 503 [email protected]

DDI: +64 9 529 [email protected]





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Bethunes at Webb’s – Rare BooksBethunes operates as the rare book department of Webb’s. The department deals in rare, out-of-print and collectable books, historical photography, maps and plans, manuscripts, documents and ephemera, posters and prints, and postcards.

Ben Ashley — BA, Rare Books Specialist

Ben has a sound knowledge across all collecting genres and is a expert in rare books, manuscripts and historical photography. Ben studied New Zealand literature at The University of Auckland, Victoria University of Wellington and the International Institute of Modern Letters.

Vintage Motorcycles & Industrial DesignWebb’s is the market leader in the sale of collectable motorcycles in Australasia. As the largest auction house in New Zealand that holds exhibitions and auctions of important motorcycles, Webb’s delivers international prices and expert service to its clients and caters for both local and global demand for superior machines.

Design and MarketingWebb’s Design and Marketing team provides comprehensive marketing support to our vendors, buyers and brand partners. Utilising established as well as emerging channels of communication and promotion, Webb’s continues to develop new marketing methods for collectors and consumers.

Charis Robinson — BDes (Vis Com), Design Director

Charis has a Bachelor of Design (Visual Communication), with honours, from the University of Western Sydney and has been working in the design industry for over 15 years. With extensive design industry experience, including logo development, website development, book publishing, magazine and newspaper design, packaging design and art direction, Charis is well placed to lead Webb’s Design and Marketing department.

Cara Griffith — BVA, Junior Designer

After completing a Bachelor of Visual Arts degree from The University of Auckland, Cara joined Webb’s with an enthusiasm and passion for typography, print and publication design. Cara’s previous experience includes personal design projects as well as a junior design role producing digital and print work for an Auckland-based boutique marketing agency.

Greg Stoffels — GradDip(Mrkt), Marketing Assistant

With more than a decade of experience orchestrating publicity, communications and promotion, Greg brings to Webb’s significant knowledge of various marketing processes. His personal highlights include managing communications and publicity for national music events and working as a key contributor to the development of multiple corporate websites. Greg is a passionate advocate of digital and online marketing processes and is committed to supporting Webb’s development in these arenas.

Kevin Lauv — BDes, Photographer

Kevin holds a Bachelor of Design – Visual Communications degree, majoring in photography, from Unitec. He has a strong interest in portraiture and product photography. Kevin’s previous experience includes freelance work with projects and corporate and retail client accounts for two of New Zealand’s leading specialist retail and full-service advertising agencies.

DEPARTMENTS






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Management

Christopher Swasbrook — Chairman

Christopher is an independent director of NZX-listed Mowbray Collectables, the parent company of Webb’s. Christopher is currently managing director of Elevation Capital Management Limited, a global funds management company (which he founded) based in Auckland, New Zealand. He is a member of the NZ Markets Disciplinary Tribunal and the NZX Listing Sub-Committee. He is also (via Elevation Capital in a personal capacity) a major sponsor of the Auckland Art Gallery’s Walters Prize – New Zealand’s premier contemporary art prize.

John Mowbray — Director

John is the Managing Director and largest shareholder of NZX-listed Mowbray Collectables, the parent company of Webb’s. Since starting Mowbray Collectables in 1963, John has made philately his career, specialising in the auctioning of stamps. He is past president of the New Zealand Stamp Dealers Association and a past president of the International Federation of Stamp Dealers Associations (IFSDA). From 1989 to 1995, he was a director of Stanley Gibbons Group PLC Limited, London. John is currently patron of the Waikanae Rugby Football Club and the Kapiti Philatelic Society. He is chairman of the Horowhenua Kapiti Rugby Union and the Mahara Gallery Trust. John is also a director of Sotheby’s Australia of which Mowbray Collectables currently owns 25%.

Ian Halsted — Director

Ian is a director and shareholder of NZX-listed Mowbray Collectables, the parent company of Webb’s. Ian’s previous corporate experience includes his being managing director of Hedley Byrne New Zealand Limited, managing director of Hallenstein Glasson Holdings Limited and a director of Hallenstein Bros Limited and Mr Chips Holdings Limited. He is also a past president of the New Zealand Retailers Federation and has served on the boards of several private companies.

Chris Allsop — DipActg, DipIntlMktg, General Manager – Finance/Human Resources

Chris Allsop comes to Webb’s with over 20 years’ experience in accounting, administration and business management. Having been with Webb’s for seven years, he brings to the business exceptional financial and management skills.

James Hogan — General Manager – Operations, Auctioneer

James is one of New Zealand’s most experienced specialist valuers and appraisers. He has provided almost three decades of service to the growth and development of Webb’s as New Zealand’s leading auction house. James successfully oversees the daily operation of the gallery, auctions and the individual departments; he is committed to the continued success of Webb’s as it transitions into a new era of specialist sales.

DEPARTMENTS

Phone: +64 9 524 6804Mobile: +64 21 510 [email protected]



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CONDITIONS OF SALE FOR BUYERS1. Bidding. The highest bidder shall be the purchaser subject to the auctioneer having the right to refuse the bid of any person. Should any dispute arise as to the bidding, the lot in dispute will be immediately put up for sale again at the preceding bid, or the auctioneer may declare the purchaser, which declaration shall be conclusive. No person shall advance less at a bid than the sum nominated by the auctioneer, and no bid may be retracted.

2. Reserves. All lots are sold subject to the right of the seller or her/his agent to impose a reserve.

3. Registration. Purchasers shall complete a bidding card before the sale giving their own correct name, address and telephone number. It is accepted by bidders that the supply of false information on a bidding card shall be interpreted as deliberate fraud.

4. Buyer’s Premium. The purchaser accepts that in addition to the hammer or selling price Webb’s will apply a buyer’s premium of 15% for the sale, (unless otherwise stated), together with GST on such premiums.

5. Payment. Payment for all items purchased is due on the day of sale immediately following completion of the sale.

If full payment cannot be made on the day of sale a deposit of 10% of the total sum due must be made on the day of sale and the balance must be paid within 5 working days.

Payment is by cash, bank cheque or Eftpos. Personal and private cheques will be accepted but must be cleared before goods will be released. Credit cards are not accepted.

6. Lots sold as Viewed. All lots are sold as viewed and with all errors in description, faults and imperfections whether visible or not. Neither Webb’s nor its vendor are responsible for errors in description or for the genuineness or authenticity of any lot or for any fault or defect in it. No warranty whatsoever is made. Buyers proceed upon their own judgement.

Buyers shall be deemed to have inspected the lots, or to have made enquiries to their complete satisfaction, prior to sale and by the act of bidding shall be deemed to be satisfied with the lots in all respects.

7. Webb’s Act as Agents. They have full discretion to conduct all aspects of the sale and to withdraw any lot from the sale without giving any reason.

8. Collection. Purchases are to be taken away at the buyer’s expense immediately after the sale except where a cheque remains uncleared. If this is not done Webb’s will not be responsible if the lot is lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed.

Any items not collected within seven days of the auction may be subject to a storage and insurance fee. A receipted invoice must be produced prior to removal of any lot.

9. Licences. Buyers who purchase an item which falls within the provisions of the Protected Objects Act 1975 or the Arms Act 1958 cannot take possession of that item until they have shown to Webb’s a license under the appropriate Act.

10. Failure to make Payment. If a purchaser fails either to pay for or take away any lot, Webb’s shall without further notice to the purchaser, at its absolute discretion and without prejudice to any other rights or remedies it may have, be entitled to exercise one or more of the following rights or remedies:

A. To issue proceeding against the purchaser for damages for breach of contract.

B. To rescind the sale of that or any other lot sold to the purchaser at the same or any other auction.

C. To resell the lot by public or private sale. Any deficiency resulting from such resale, after giving credit to the purchaser for any part payment, together with all costs incurred in connection with the lot shall be paid to Webb’s by the purchaser. Any surplus over the proceeds of sale shall belong to the seller and in this condition the expression ‘proceeds of sale’ shall have the same meaning in relation to a sale by private treaty as it has in relation to a sale by auction.

D. To store the lot whether at Webb’s own premises or elsewhere at the sole expense of the purchaser and to release the lot only after the purchase price has been paid in full plus the accrued cost of removal storage and all other costs connected to the lot.

E. To charge interest on the purchase price at a rate 2% above Webb’s bankers’ then current rate for commercial overdraft facilities, to the extent that the price or any part of it remains unpaid for more than seven days from the date of the sale.

F. To retain possession of that or any other lot purchased by the purchaser at that or any other auction and to release the same only after payment of money due.

G. To apply the proceeds of sale of any lot then or subsequently due to the purchaser towards settlement of money due to Webb’s or its vendor. Webb’s shall be entitled to a possessory lien on any property of the purchaser for any purpose while any monies remain unpaid under this contract.

H. To apply any payment made by the purchaser to Webb’s towards any money owing to Webb’s in respect of any thing whatsoever irrespective of any directive given in respect of, or restriction placed upon, such payment by the purchaser whether expressed or implied.

I. Title and right of disposal of the goods shall not pass to the purchaser until payment has been made in full by cleared funds. Where any lot purchased is held by Webb’s pending i. clearance of funds by the purchaser or ii. completion of payment after receipt of a deposit, the lot will be held by Webb’s as bailee for the vendor, risk and title passing to the purchaser immediately upon notification of clearance of funds or upon completion of purchase. In the event that a lot is lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed before title is transferred to the purchaser, the purchaser shall be entitled to a refund of all monies paid to Webb’s in respect of that lot, but shall not be entitled to any compensation for any consequent losses howsoever arising.

11. Bidders deemed Principals. All bidders shall be held personally and solely liable for all obligations arising from any bid, including both ‘telephone’ and ‘absentee’ bids. Any person wishing to bid as agent for a third party must obtain written authority to do so from Webb’s prior to bidding.

12. ‘Subject Bids’. Where the highest bid is below the reserve and the auctioneer declares a sale to be ‘subject to vendor’s consent’ or words to that effect, the highest bid remains binding upon the bidder until the vendor accepts or rejects it. If the bid is accepted there is a contractual obligation upon the bidder to pay for the lot.

13. SALES POST AUCTION OR BY PRIVATE TREATY. The above conditions shall apply to all buyers of goods from Webb’s irrespective of the circumstances under which the sale is negotiated.

14. Condition of Items. Condition of items is not detailed in this catalogue. Buyers must satisfy themselves as to the condition of lots they bid on and should refer to clause six. Webb’s are pleased to provide intending buyers with condition reports on any lots.

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INDEX OF ARTISTS

Artist Lot Number

Aberhart, Laurence 79

Adams, Mark 57

Angus, Rita 37

Ball, Martin 78

Bambury, Stephen 12, 21, 42

Barber, Andrew 10, 11

Binney, Don 1

Birch, Israel 66

Brown, Nigel 62

Budd, L. 64

Clairmont, Philip 27

Cotton, Shane 33, 40

Feu’u, Fatu 72

Fomison, Tony 23, 46

Frank, Dale 50

Frizzell, Dick 68

Gascoigne, Rosalie 39

Gimblett, Max 67

Hammond, Bill 8, 24, 32, 52

Hanly, Pat 34

Hemer, Andre 128

Hodgkins, Frances 38

Hotere, Ralph 22, 28, 48, 60, 63, 74

Innes, Callum 65

Killeen, Richard 19, 36

Knox, John Ward 14

Artist Lot Number

Lee, Hye Rim 17, 18, 58

Madden, Peter 3

Maddox, Allen 4, 55

McCahon, Colin 26, 35, 41, 51

McLeod, Andrew 2, 6, 15

Mrkusich, Milan 30, 31, 49, 54

Orjis, Richard 7

Pardington, Fiona 13, 43, 45

Parekowhai, Michael 5

Pick, Seraphine 29, 71

Pule, John 56

Pwerle, Minnie 75

Smither, Michael 61

Stevenson, Michael 70

Stichbury, Peter 69, 80

Stringer, Terry 47

Sydney, Grahame 44, 53

Thomson, Elizabeth 20

Thornley, Geoff 73

Trubridge, David 16

Twiss, Greer 59

Walsh, John 76

Walters, Gordon 25

Wealleans, Rohan 9

Williams, Mervyn 77


146 CATALOGUE 393

THE LAST WORD

BEN ASHLEYValuations Manager and Rare Books SpecialistAs both Webb’s Valuations Manager and Rare Books specialist, Ben Ashley provides valuation services to large public institutions, museums, the insurance sector and private collectors. Since joining Webb’s more than two years ago, Ben has developed into a ‘specialist-generalist’ and honed his skills by managing a variety of auctions, including comics, natural history and orders, decorations and medals. The experience he has gained from these areas is now applied to valuations.

“I enjoy the diversity of my role. You just never know what’s going to turn up. This has meant that I’ve developed a broad knowledge across a wide range of collecting genres, including art, antiques, furniture, artefacts and other collectables. I am also fortunate that I can

draw on the wealth of knowledge that other Webb’s specialists have to offer.”

Over the past few months, Ben has been travelling frequently all over the country to value important collections. “I’ve had the privilege of valuing some of our country’s most important cultural assets, including items that belonged to Captain Cook, but most of my time is spent appraising smaller, private collections that owners have built up lovingly over many years. Their passion for collecting and the stories behind the items are what I find most intriguing.”

Ben also manages Bethunes Rare Books, Webb’s rare books department. Founded in 1877, Bethunes is one of New Zealand’s oldest book auctioneers and continues to supply bibliophiles, both locally and

internationally. Ben’s passion for books stems from his studies at Victoria University of Wellington, the International Institute of Modern Letters and The University of Auckland, where he focused on New Zealand literature and creative writing. “I feel extremely fortunate to be able to indulge in my interest in historical New Zealand literature and to be surrounded by beautiful books on a daily basis. I also enjoy getting to know collectors and curate the sales in ways that are engaging for all types of buyers.”

Ben is always happy to discuss your valuation requirements, as well as collecting and consignment: he regularly visits major New Zealand centres.

WEBB’S

147CATALOGUE 393

Peter Madden, The Sparrow’s Heart. Estimate $4,000 - $5,000