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This season we invite you to seek moments of calmness & allow yourself to truly be still. Explore our new collection in store & online now. 2020
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COFFEE SUPREME –TOP SHELF YOU CAN REACH Cafe quality at your place.
R O A S T E D D A I LY D E L I V E R E D F R E S H
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March
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Upcoming Auction
Meighan Ellis Cervical 2017 archival pigment print 570mm x 430mm est $800 - $1,200
Meighan Ellis Cervical II 2017 archival pigment print 570mm x 430mm est $800 - $1,200
Art to Date 29 June 2020 Entries Invited
Charles Ninow Head of Art charles@webbs.co.nz +64 21 053 6504 Adrienne (AD) Schierning Manager, Art ad@webbs.co.nz +64 9 529 5609 +64 27 929 5609 Auctions Private Sales Valuations webbs.co.nz
Pac Studio Architecture Interior Design Spatial Strategy Auckland - Queenstown 09 973 5050 pacstudio.nz
Unique Contemporary Homes
7 March–1 June 2020
Hokusai, Hiroshige and the Art of Edo Japan
Exhibition partners
Webb's
2020
The exhibition is organised by MondoMostre, Italy.
Keisai Eisen Gateway to Success circa 1825, hanging scroll, ink and colour on paper. Private collection.
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Webb's
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Upcoming Auction
Collectors’ Cars
1972 Mercedes-Benz 300SL est $90,000 - $100,000
24 May 2020
Auctions Private Sales Valuations webbs.co.nz
Ian Nott Consultant +64 21 610 911 ian@webbs.co.nz
Webb's
March
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Upcoming Auction
14.06.20 Entries Invited Fine Jewels & Watches Now inviting entries for our next Fine Jewels & Watches live auction taking place on 14th June, with consignments closing from 1st of May.
Tiffany & Co Sapphire and Diamond Ring Estimates $6,500 - $8,500 Price Achieved: $7,050
Auctions Private Sales Valuations webbs.co.nz
Webb's
2020
Marcela Jimenez-Ramirez Fine Jewels & Watches Specialist jewels@webbs.co.nz +64 9 529 5607
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CLASSI C COLLECT I ON
1954 Jaguar XK 120SE OTS 120 SE
$249,990
This charming XK120 is a desirable Open Two-Seat roadster equipped with the optional Special Equipment package, and comes to us fresh from long-term ownership A wonderful example of this world renown classic sports car older restoration, stunning in classic Cream and matching colour coded wire wheels. Combined with red leather interior, the look reflects the style and class of this by gone era, now a serious appreciating investment. 3.4 Litre 6-cylinder engine, 4-speed manual gearbox.
1968 MGB Roadster
$29,990
Lovingly restored, this MGB has been the pride and joy of previous owners. The engine, drivetrain, interior and exterior have all been carefully restored. The body treated to rosttile treatment and repainted in an exquisite metallic blue.
1957 Triumph TR3
$69,990
This car has been beautifully restored. Showing a gorgeous light patina. Lovely driving character very tight and comfortable an appreciating investment. Classic 4-speed manual, plus overdrive. Complete with soft top and hard top options. Factory RHD.
Webb's
March
21 Great South Road, Newmarket ¡ 09 520 1588 12 Ivan Lecanda 021 574 596 ¡ Chris Eblett 021 378 498
Upcoming Auction
Entries Invited Fine & Rare Wines ‘It’s a seller’s market. At least that’s the impression I got from a Webb’s Wine Auctions email inviting entries into an upcoming wine auction at their Auckland auction rooms.’ Bob Campbell MW Feb 06, 2020, therealreview.com
Auctions Private Sales Valuations webbs.co.nz Webb's
2020
Marcus Atkinson Head of Fine & Rare Wines marcus@webbs.co.nz +64 27 929 5601 13
Theo Schoon, Done Up In Pins and Curlers, oil and ink on paper, c.1965 Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 2013
SPLIT LEVEL VIEW FINDER: THEO SCHOON AND NEW ZEALAND ART 7 March – 31 May 2020 teuru.org.nz
Toured by
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Exhibition supporters
March
Festival partner
Principal funder
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Upcoming Auction
Asian Art 19 April A Chinese Late Yuan Dynasty/Early Ming Dynasty Longquan Kiln Large Plate engraved with lotus H70 D420mm est
$18,000 - $28,000
Tom Pan 湯姆 潘
Webb's
2020
Auctions Private Sales Valuations webbs.co.nz
Head of Asian Art 亞洲藝術部主管 +64 9 529 5608 +64 21 045 0118 tom@webbs.co.nz
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Better furniture, for hire.
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March
www.arkade.co.nz
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Webb's
2020
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ISSUE 29 OUT NOW
SUBSCRIBE NOW AND RECEIVE YOUR COPY OF VAULT MAGAZINE FIRST LIME CLARA ADOLPHS, PATRIZIA BIONDI, LOUISE BONNET, SINÉAD BURKE, MICHAEL GEORGETTI, NAN GOLDIN, ROBERT KLIPPEL, DANIEL LISMORE, KATE NEWBY, NIRIN, STUART RINGHOLT, STELARC, MONSTER THEATRES, ELIZABETH WILLING, WESTERN DESERT ART MOVEMENT & MORE Webb's
SUBSCRIBE NOW VAULTART.COM.AU March
KATE NEWBY Something Central, 2019 porcelain, stoneware, glaze, brass, silver Courtesy the18artist and Michael Lett, Auckland
Get a 6 pack. drinkalmighty.com
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2020
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home style
Modern ways to make a life at home. @homestylemag
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homestyle.co.nz
March
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WWW. B ROTHER SB EER .CO.NZ Webb's
2020
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SHOWROOM 5 NEWTON ROAD, GREY LYNN
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2020
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Webb's
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Webb's
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We believe that we have a responsibility to run our restaurant in a way that is respectful of our environment. As a means to lessen the impact we have on our climate, we source the majority of our ingredients from growers as locally as possible. Because we are essentially cooking with what we can find growing nearby, our offering is likely to be fluid and changing.
March 177 Symonds Street, Eden Terrace
Webb's
www.whatisforest.com
@forest.akl
26 @forest.akl
Works of Art
Auction Monday 30 March 6:30pm
Specialist Enquiries Charles Ninow Head of Art charles@webbs.co.nz +64 21 053 6504 AD Schierning Manager, Art ad@webbs.co.nz +64 27 929 5609 +64 9 529 5609 Condition Reports Tasha Jenkins Administrator, Art art@webbs.co.nz +64 9 529 5600 Webb's
2020
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Webb's
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Table of Contents
The Collection of Tim & Helen Beaglehole
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Public Programme
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Viewing
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List of Essays
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Plates
33
Terms & Conditions
148
Index of Artists
152
85 John Johns Red Beech Forest, Lake Sumner Forest Park c1972 gelatin silver print in ink and graphite in another hand verso 256 x 198mm est Webb's
$1,500 — $2,500 2020
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The Collection of Tim & Helen Beaglehole Within this Works of Art catalogue we are very pleased to include a selection of work from the collection of Tim and Helen Beaglehole. From 1963 until his retirement in 1995, Tim Beaglehole, Victoria University of Wellington academic, teacher, author, university administrator and, for a period postretirement, the University’s chancellor, developed the University’s art collection. This collection, bought on a shoestring budget and largely confined to works purchased from what was available in Wellington, includes many significant works including Colin McCahon’s memorable Gate III. Author of adult non-fiction and children’s fiction, Helen Beaglehole shared Tim’s passion for the arts; together they built their own private art collection over many years. The works from their collection that are featured in this catalogue include works by Evelyn Page, Toss Wollaston, Tony Fomison, Peter Robinson, Geoff Thornley, Don Peebles, Alan Maddox and the impressive early Richard Killeen Bus Stop. These works tell a story of a developing art scene in New Zealand and a couple that championed this development.
Public Programme
Richard Killeen in Conversation with Laurence Simmons Saturday 28 March
11:30am
Richard Killeen is an important part in the fabric of contemporary New Zealand Art. Our catalogue includes two significant works from the artist both created in 1969; Bus Stop and Lounge Dancer. Webb’s is delighted to host Richard Killeen in conversation Professor Laurence Simmons. Dr Laurence Simmons is an associate professor teaching in Film, Television and Media Studies at the University of Auckland. He is a published author specialising in post-structuralist theory, psychoanalytical theory, New Zealand film and television and post-war Italian cinema.
Webb's
March
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Viewing
Preview Evening Tuesday 24 March
6pm – 8pm
Gallery Hours Wednesday 25 March
10am – 5pm
Thursday 26 March
10am – 5pm
Friday 27 March
10am – 5pm
Saturday 28 March
10am – 3pm
Sunday 29 March
10am – 3pm
Monday 30 March
10am – 1pm
Auction Monday 30 March
6:30pm
Auctions Private Sales Valuations auction@webbs.co.nz +64 9 529 5600 33a Normanby Road, Mount Eden, Auckland 1024, New Zealand Webb's
2020 2019
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List of Essays
Tony Fomison Return to the Lake By Andrew Clark
Colin McCahon The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version) By Kelly Carmichael
118 - 121
48 - 49
Ralph Hotere Black Window By Samantha Taylor
124 - 125
52 - 53
Chris Heaphy Tracing Legacies By Tasha Jenkins
138 - 139
Peter Peryer Erika By Serena Bentley
56 - 57
John Johns The Right Track By Andrew Clark
146 - 147
Fiona Pardington Female Huia By Vanessa Gurung
64 - 65
Ani O'Neill Lucky Dip By AD Schierning
70 - 71
Colin McCahon Manukau 2 By Samantha Taylor
74 - 75
Shane Cotton Self-Portrait By Neil Talbot
80 - 81
Theo Schoon Field Study By Andrew Paul Wood
86 - 89
Robert Mapplethorpe Phillip Prioleau, NYC (On a Pedestal, Side-Facing) By Michael Do Peter Stichbury Study for 'Bleibtreu Strasse' By Margherita Cornali
Richard Killeen An Ounce of Ambiguity By Andrew Clark
Webb's
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98 - 101
Laurence Aberhart A Sensitive Sensibility By Vanessa Gurung
106 - 107
Colin McCahon Load Bearing Structures Series 2 By Samantha Taylor
110 - 111
Bill Sutton Shifting Shadows By Christie Simpson
114 - 115
March
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Plates
Specialist Enquiries Charles Ninow Head of Art charles@webbs.co.nz +64 21 053 6504 AD Schierning Manager, Art ad@webbs.co.nz +64 27 929 5609 +64 9 529 5609 Condition Reports Tasha Jenkins Administrator, Art art@webbs.co.nz +64 9 529 5600
01 Gordon Walters Maho 1972 screenprint on paper signed Gordon Walters, dated 72 and inscribed “Maho”/Artists Proof in graphite lower edge 380 x 224mm
02 Bill Hammond untitled 2006 lithograph on paper, 74/100 signed WD Hammond, dated 2006 and inscribed 74/100 in graphite lower right 590 x 430mm
est $4,000 — $7,000
est $5,000 — $8,000
Provenance Private collection, Auckland.
Provenance Private collection, Auckland.
Webb's
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03 Richard Killeen Phone Call to Gordon 1995 watercolour on paper signed Killeen, dated 1995 and inscribed Phone call to Gordon in brushpoint lower edge; inscribed 2998 in graphite lower edge 500 x 350mm est $2,500 — $5,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired directly from the artist. Webb's
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04 Joanna Margaret Paul Open/Closed 1987 pastel on paper signed JMP, dated 87 and inscribed Waipu/Open/ Closed in graphite lower right; inscribed Brooker Gallery/44 Upland Rd/Wellington5/(04) 758978/ April 1988 in ink verso 750 x 570mm
05 Joanna Margaret Paul Open/Closed 1986-1987 pastel on paper signed JMP, dated 86/87 and inscribed Open/ Closed/Wanganui in graphite lower right; inscribed Brooker Gallery/44 Upland Rd/Wellington5/(04) 758978/April 1988 in ink verso 750 x 570mm
est $800 — $1,600
est $800 — $1,600
Provenance Collection of Tim and Helen Beaglehole, Wellington. Acquired from Galerie Legard, Wellington, c1987.
Provenance Collection of Tim and Helen Beaglehole, Wellington. Acquired from Galerie Legard, Wellington, c1987.
Webb's
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06 Allen Maddox Grid Painting c1975 oil on linen 450 x 555mm est $7,000 — $12,000 Provenance Collection of Tim and Helen Beaglehole, Wellington. Acquired from Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington, c1985. Webb's
2020
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07 Jude Rae untitled 2003 charcoal on paper signed J Rae and dated 2003 in graphite lower right 570 x 760mm
08 Jude Rae untitled 2003 charcoal on paper signed J Rae and dated 2003 in graphite lower right 570 x 760mm
est $4,000 — $6,000
est $4,000 — $6,000
Provenance Private collection, Christchurch.
Provenance Private collection, Christchurch.
Webb's
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09 Peter Robinson untitled 1988 asphalt on paper signed PR and dated 10/5/88 in graphite lower right 555 x 750mm est $4,000 — $6,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Webb's
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10 Edward Bullmore Life Study 1966 paper, paint and pastel on paper signed Bullmore and dated 66 in graphite lower left; signed E. Bullmore, dated 1966 and inscribed ‘Life Study'/paper paint pastel in graphite verso 670 x 510mm est $4,000 — $7,000 Provenance Collection of Tim and Helen Beaglehole, Wellington. Acquired c1980. Webb's
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11 Toss Woollaston From the Mouth of the Grey River 1961 watercolour on paper signed Woollaston and dated ‘61 in brushpoint lower right; inscribed Toss Woollaston - The Mouth of the Grey River/43 in ink in another hand on label affixed verso; inscribed bought c. 1963. in ink in another hand verso; inscribed T.H Beaglehole/507/21 3/4 x 18 5/8 in graphite in another hand verso 300 x 380mm est $3,000 — $6,000 Provenance Collection of Tim and Helen Beaglehole, Wellington. Acquired from Frederick Page, Wellington, c1963. Webb's
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12 Toss Woollaston Bayleys Hill 1966 ink on paper signed Woollaston and dated ‘66 in ink lower right; inscribed Beaglehole in graphite in another hand verso 275 x 375mm est $1,000 — $2,000 Provenance Collection of Tim and Helen Beaglehole, Wellington. Acquired from Peter McLeavey Gallery, c1968. Webb's
March
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13 Tony Fomison Return to the Lake 1984 oil on canvasboard signed Fomison, dated ‘84 and inscribed Started in Christchurch/26.8.84/“Return to the Lake” in graphite verso 150 x 200mm est $10,000 — $16,000 Provenance Collection of Tim and Helen Beaglehole, Wellington. Acquired from Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington c1968. Webb's
2020
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Tony Fomison - Return to the Lake Essay by ANDREW CLARK
Fomison’s talent for capturing nuanced expressions using relatively economical brushwork is in full effect here; despite its small scale, this image manages to deliver a portrait that feels rounded and entire, capturing a person whom the viewer might imagine meeting in an everyday setting. Webb's
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13 Tony Fomison Return to the Lake 1984 oil on canvasboard signed Fomison, dated ‘84 and inscribed Started in Christchurch/26.8.84/“Return to the Lake” in graphite verso 150 x 200mm est
Webb's
$10,000 — $16,000
2020
Despite his status as one of New Zealand’s most highly regarded and widely discussed painters, the canvasses of Tony Fomison have never quite lost their status as enigmas. Indeed, it is perhaps because of this enduring sense of mystery that Fomison’s work has continued to command the attention that it does. His brooding, eerie tableaux blend personal and universal mythologies with recognisably New Zealand landscapes. Like McCahon, he created images that spoke to the uneasy tensions simmering beneath the surface of contemporary Kiwi society. Fomison saw his personal struggles, as well as the political and social issues of the age in which he lived, as manifestations of mytho-poetic structures as old as civilisation itself. In Return to the Lake, Fomison assembles a typically ambiguous scene. A middle-aged woman stands in profile against a large, dark outcrop of rock, which towers above her like an immense shadow or cloud. Her pale skin stands out against the overbearing cliff, while a slightly bemused expression plays about her lips. Fomison’s talent for capturing nuanced expressions using relatively economical brushwork is in full effect here; despite its small scale, this image manages to deliver a portrait that feels rounded and entire, capturing a person whom the viewer might imagine meeting in an everyday setting. Before the woman stretches an expanse of coast, presumably the lake mentioned in the title. This painting is part of a broader grouping of works within Fomison’s oeuvre, namely those that represent coastal scenes and caves, usually with figures either emerging from or dwelling within these liminal spaces. Fomison’s interest in pre-European rock art, often found in caves and cliffside shelters, is perhaps reflected in his fascination with these subterranean zones. Caves are locations where the past and the present overlap, liminal domains that simultaneously shelter and conceal. In Fomison’s art, the image of a figure emerging from a cave is often a metaphor for birth or rebirth. The fascinating and enduring power of Fomison’s imagery perhaps lies in his ability to connect mythological themes to mundane specificities. Here, a middle-aged woman becomes a kind of archetypal figure; the title of the painting suggests a link to Arthurian folklore, specifically the Lady of the Lake. In legend, the enchantress Nimuë was responsible for giving King Arthur his enchanted sword, Excalibur. Here, Nimuë comes back to her watery home, older, perhaps wiser, maybe having lived a life of suburban normalcy. She is weary but triumphant, a shawl or cardigan draped over her shoulders, despite the bright sunlight that spills around the edge of the rocks behind which she stands. The scene is bathed in a wash of light; islands in the middle distance overflow with vegetation, suggested by a few deft strokes of Fomison’s brush, seeming to melt and shimmer in the noonday haze. The mood is contemplative and peaceful; Fomison deftly captures the feeling of stepping out from a darkened space into the overwhelming tide of light that characterises a New Zealand summer, accompanied by the deafening crash of a chorus of cicadas.
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14 Max Dupain Impassioned Clay 1936 gelatin silver print signed Max Dupain and dated ‘36 in ink lower right 450 x 315mm est $3,000 — $6,000 Provenance Private collection, Melbourne. Collections Another from the edition held in the collection of Art Gallery New South Wales (acquired 1976); National Gallery of Victoria (acquired 2016); National Library of Australia. Webb's
March
15 Max Dupain Dreaming 1930 gelatin silver print signed Max Dupain and dated ‘30 in graphite lower right 490 x 350mm est $3,000 — $6,000 Provenance Private collection, Melbourne. 46
16 Robert Mapplethorpe Phillip Prioleau, NYC (On a Pedestal, Side-Facing) 1979 gelatin silver print signed Robert Mapplethorpe, dated ‘79 and inscribed For Phillip in graphite lower edge 348 x 348mm est $8,000 — $16,000 Provenance Private collection, Melbourne. Acquired privately, 2019; private collection, Melbourne. Passed by descent, 2019; collection of Martin Lum, Australia. Acquired from Winwood Gallery, 2013; collection of Philip Prioleau; gifted by the artist, c1979. Webb's
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Robert Mapplethorpe - Phillip Prioleau, NYC (On a Pedestal, Side-Facing) Essay by MICHAEL DO
This elegant and crisp composition of Prioleau perched on a pedestal highlights Mapplethorpe’s undeniable interest in Classical Greek and Roman sculpture. Admiring this genre for its pursuit of idealised male forms, Mapplethorpe sought to reinterpret this practice by inviting chiselled young men to strike classical poses. Webb's
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American studio photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s (1946– 1989) lens has roved across taut skin, muscled limbs, leather harnesses, fabrics, flowers and phalluses. Conferring a classical glow to these subjects, his identifiable photographic style is marked by his meticulous and flawless black-and-white technique that emphasises the sculptural beauty of his tight and geometric compositions. Speaking about his portrait photography he said, “I want the person to look at least as interesting as they can look…I try to catch something unique in him that no one else has/ That quality is what I want to come across, not the superficial prettiness, even though I love photographing beautiful people.”¹ In 1978, Mapplethorpe produced his infamous portfolios of themed imagery, X of sadomasochistic images and Y of floral still lifes. These portfolios highlighted the formal connection between flowers and genitalia, using metaphor and allusion to breathe desire and life into flowers, while ossifying sex acts into cool geometries. This image, Phillip Prioleau, NYC (On a Pedestal, Side-Facing) (1979) was created following this period, when Mapplethorpe was working on his subsequent portfolio that would complete the series – Z, nude portraits of African American men, released in 1981. Prioleau, whom Mapplethorpe hired to work in his studio and then convinced to pose, regularly features in the Z portfolio and sat for images that typify Mapplethorpe’s classicising figure-studies of this period. This elegant and crisp composition of Prioleau perched on a pedestal highlights Mapplethorpe’s undeniable interest in Classical Greek and Roman sculpture. Admiring this genre for its pursuit of idealised male forms, Mapplethorpe sought to reinterpret this practice by inviting chiselled young men to strike classical poses. In this example, Prioleau is lit with a heavenly beam of light, creating a chiaroscuro effect that brings the mottled shimmer of the sitter’s muscles to the fore. In many of Mapplethorpe’s images, he used beauty as a means to provoke and challenge viewers to not avert their gaze from the troubling societal topics of his time. Here, the idealised image of African American man, sitting prized on a pedestal, is at odds with the troubling African American race relations of the time – revealing a deeper agenda that runs throughout Mapplethorpe’s work. This image of Prioleau also foreshadows the movement away, in the early 1980s, from taking erotic pictures – which have always occupied a place of disproportionate importance in his canon – to his concentration on nudes, portraits and still lifes. Mapplethorpe’s icy and idealised forms – which are becoming apparent in this image – would take centre stage for the rest of his career, until his death in 1989, at age 42. The legacy of Mapplethorpe’s work would crest in 1990, when prosecutors indicted the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, along with its director, on obscenity charges for exhibiting a touring exhibition of his work, interpreting his elegant geometries as offensive S&M scenes paid for using public funds (the National Endowment for the Arts granted $30,000 towards the exhibition). While the Arts Center ultimately won the case, conservative politicians, led by North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, led a national debate on the self-indulgent excesses of culture and art during this time. Through this case, the name Mapplethorpe would go on to become a byword for controversy and the culture wars of the 1990s – speaking to the frictions, tensions and contradictions that give Mapplethorpe’s images their undeniable energy.
16 Robert Mapplethorpe Phillip Prioleau, NYC (On a Pedestal, Side-Facing) 1979 gelatin silver print signed Robert Mapplethorpe, dated ‘79 and inscribed For Phillip in graphite lower edge 348 x 348mm est
$8,000 — $16,000
1 Bruno Cora, “Robert Mapplethorpe, Portraitist and Photographer of the Erotic,” in Robert Mapplethorpe: Perfection in Form, ed. Franca Faletti and Jonathan Nelson (New York: teNeues, 2009), 220-221. Webb's
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17 Paul Hartigan Litmus 2010 argon tube light, perspex signed Hartigan, dated 2010 and inscribed ‘LITMUS’ in paint marker verso 720 x 300 x 190mm (widest points) est $10,000 — $16,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Webb's
March
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18 Peter Stichbury Study for ‘Bleibtreu Strasse’ (Cordelia) 1998 acrylic on canvas signed PETER STICHBURY, dated 1998 and inscribed STUDY FOR ‘BLEIBTREU STRASSE’ (CORDELIA)/ACRYLIC ON CANVAS in graphite on verso 560 x 560mm est $28,000 — $38,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award, Whakatane, 1999. Webb's
2020
Note This painting was the winning entry in the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award, 1999. 51
Peter Stichbury - Study for ‘Bleibtreu Strasse’ Essay by MARGHERITA CORNALI
The subjects of his paintings are treated with surgeon-like care, exploiting the material qualities of paint to obtain an airbrushed effect and minute attention to detail. However, Stichbury’s figures are often depicted with a sense of overall flatness, comparable to an image from a graphic novel. Webb's
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Peter Stichbury is a New Zealand artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Born in 1969, he graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts in 1997, the same year he received the Wallace Art Award in support of continuing his postgraduate studies at The University of Auckland. Stichbury operates with a contemporary lens on the media-saturated context of Generation X. His portraits are defined by Emily White as "both a microcosm and distortion of the social world".¹ Stichbury generates his paintings through a process of imagery collection, from magazines and other media, combined with memories of people he has encountered. New Zealand’s Pavement magazine, and Vogue, are frequent sources of inspiration for his artworks. Stichbury's fascination for Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres has an obvious influence on the traditional poses within his compositions. He himself defines his canvases as "a cross-pollination between old and new, or neoclassical portraiture."² His subject matter is usually teenage models, misfits and intellectuals in their 20s and 30s, transmitting feelings of isolation and alienation. This is accentuated by a cold palette that removes all traces of warmth and emotional activity. The subjects of his paintings are treated with surgeon-like care, exploiting the material qualities of paint to obtain an airbrushed effect and minute attention to detail. However, Stichbury’s figures are often depicted with a sense of overall flatness, comparable to an image from a graphic novel. His works are characterised by a lustre typical of oil paint, but are in fact rendered through layering acrylic paint. Stichbury presents a doll-like quality to his subjects, conferred by their accentuated foreheads, Cupid-bow lips and mesmerising gazes. Wide doe-eyes, such as those that we see in Study for 'Bleibtreu Strasse' (Cordelia), dated 1998, are a signature of Peter Stichbury's paintings. The gaze we see within this work resembles that of several of Lucian Freud’s (b.1922) subjects, who also present wide-set eyes. The eyes of Stichbury's Cordelia are both enchanting and uncanny; they draw the viewer into the gaze of the subject. The work’s square, cropped close-up format intensifies the psychological significane of the subject by establishing an intimate connection with the viewer. Stichbury's portraits are in numerous prestigious collections including the James Wallace Arts Trust in Auckland, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington, and various private collections in the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand.
18 Peter Stichbury Study for ‘Bleibtreu Strasse’ (Cordelia) 1998 acrylic on canvas signed PETER STICHBURY, dated 1998 and inscribed STUDY FOR ‘BLEIBTREU STRASSE’ (CORDELIA)/ACRYLIC ON CANVAS in graphite on verso 560 x 560mm est
$28,000 — $38,000
1 Peter Stichbury and Emma Bugden. Peter Stichbury: The Alumni (Auckland, NZ: Starkwhite, 2010). 2 Peter Stichbury and Emma Bugden. Peter Stichbury: The Alumni (Auckland, NZ: Starkwhite, 2010). Webb's
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19 Peter Peryer Erika 1975 gelatin silver print inscribed [PETER PERYER.] in graphite in another hand verso 180 x 180mm est $5,000 — $8,000 Literature Peter Peryer: Photographs (Sarjeant Gallery: Wanganui, 1985), 15, 31.
Provenance Collection of John B Turner, Beijing. Webb's
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20 Peter Peryer Erika 1975 gelatin silver print signed PETER PERYER, dated 1975 and inscribed 5/7 x 6 15/16/ 7 1/4 x 7 3/16/104%/Erika/104 in graphite verso 177 x 175mm est $5,000 — $8,000
Exhibitions Snaps Gallery, Auckland, 1977; Peter Peryer: an introduction. Dowse Art Gallery, Lower Hutt, 16 December 1977 - 22 January 1978; Erika: A Portrait by Peter Peryer, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, 20 January - 1 April 2001, City Gallery Wellington, 14 July - 16 September 2001, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland, 10 November 2001 - 27 January 2002.
Provenance Collection of John B Turner, Beijing.
Literature “Peter Peryer,” PhotoForum 29 (December 1975-January 1976), 13.
Webb's
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Peter Peryer - Erika Essay by SERENA BENTLEY
What is so compelling about these portraits is the slippage between fact and fiction (an ambiguity enhanced by Peryer’s deliberately neutral titles). The photographs record a latent exchange between husband and wife in which the artist’s presence is undeniable. However peering through the lens we too as viewers become implicated in these psychodramas. Webb's
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When Peter Peryer first began taking photographs in the early 1970s his practice centred on the portraiture genre. His pool of sitters was relatively small and consisted largely of friends, acquaintances and the artist himself. One subject Peryer continued to revisit was his then-wife, Erika Parkinson, who features in some of his most noteworthy early works. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s Peryer photographed his wife repeatedly, not unlike his American contemporaries Nicholas Nixon, Harry Callaghan and Emmet Gowan, whose work Peryer admired. Peryer’s early photographs reveal his interest in exploring the expressive potential of the medium. They are the antithesis of ‘smile for the camera’ snapshot photographs. Peryer directed and often dressed his sitters, assembling an image in his head for weeks, even months, before finally picking up his camera. Accordingly, Peryer has referred to these carefully composed portraits as film stills, an appropriate observation when considering the meticulous preparation involved in each ‘shoot’. Peryer’s grainy, brooding black and white photographs were described by the artist as ‘heavy on the moody blues’ and the three works in this catalogue titled Erika (1975) is no exception. In two of the Erika images included Parkinson stares directly into the camera, her gaze is unwavering, in the third she shy’s away from the camera placing her arm over her face. What exchange has occurred between photographer and sitter to provoke this reaction? Parkinson is a chameleon; in some cases barely recognisable from one of Peryer’s photographs to the next. Erika with Knives (1977) for instance, features Parkinson’s face obscured by shadow and framed by a dark black bob, emphasising her full, dark lips. It is a deliberately blurry, sensuous shot. The portrait series reveals the highly charged yet ultimately enigmatic emotional exchanges that infused much of the artist’s work at this time. What is so compelling about these portraits is the slippage between fact and fiction (an ambiguity enhanced by Peryer’s deliberately neutral titles). The photographs record a latent exchange between husband and wife in which the artist’s presence is undeniable. However peering through the lens we too as viewers become implicated in these psychodramas. Peryer’s photographs of Parkinson are particularly significant because they reflect his intense (and ultimately short lived) interest in human portraiture. From the mid-1980s onwards Peryer began to adopt a more formalist approach, reacting against the emotive content that characterised the work he was making at the beginning of his career. Accordingly, the portraits of Erika Parkinson are iconic. They are a part of a contained body of portraits that were central to Peryer’s early work and to his subsequent artistic development. More than that the Erika works are a line in a bittersweet love song that will never lose its potency.
19 Peter Peryer Erika 1975 gelatin silver print inscribed [PETER PERYER.] in graphite in another hand verso 180 x 180mm est
$5,000 — $8,000
20 Peter Peryer Erika 1975 gelatin silver print signed PETER PERYER, dated 1975 and inscribed 5/7 x 6 15/16/ 7 1/4 x 7 3/16/104%/Erika/104 in graphite verso 177 x 175mm est
Webb's
$5,000 — $8,000
2020
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21 Peter Peryer Erika 1975 gelatin silver print inscribed [PETER PERYER] in graphite in another hand verso 175 x 175mm est $5,000 — $8,000
Literature Erika: A Portrait by Peter Peryer (Dunedin: Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 2001), 23.
Provenance Collection of John B Turner, Beijing. Webb's
Exhibitions Erika: A Portrait by Peter Peryer, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, 20 January - 1 April 2001, City Gallery Wellington, 14 July - 16 September 2001, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland, 10 November 2001 - 27 January 2002.
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22 Peter Peryer untitled c1976 gelatin silver print inscribed [PETER PERYER, c. 1976.] in graphite in another hand verso 180 x 180mm est $3,000 — $6,000
Note This photograph pictures Erika Parkinson with her and Peryer's children Amy and Clovis.
Provenance Collection of John B Turner, Beijing. Webb's
2020
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23 Peter Peryer Denise c1975 gelatin silver print inscribed [PETER PERYER, c 1975/Gr 4/Fresh Bromophen 1-3/[PERYER] in graphite in another hand verso est $3,000 — $6,000 Provenance Collection of John B Turner, Beijing. Webb's
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24 Peter Peryer Julie 1975 gelatin silver print signed PETER PERYER, dated April 75 and inscribed Taken: Auckland/P.I.P in ink verso 135 x 195mm est $3,000 — $6,000 Provenance Collection of John B Turner, Beijing. Webb's
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25 Ans Westra Ruatoria 1964 gelatin silver print signed Ans Westra, dated 1964 and inscribed Taken Ruatoria/To John, 6-11-1970 in ink verso; inscribed JOHN B. TURNER COLLECTION/0 in graphite in another hand verso 345 x 305mm est $5,000 — $8,000 Provenance Collection of John B Turner, Beijing. Webb's
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26 Fiona Pardington Female Huia 2009 c-type print signed Fiona Pardington and dated 2009 in graphite verso 610 x 485mm est $16,000 — $26,000 Provenance Private collection, Melbourne. Acquired from Two Rooms, Auckland, c2011. Webb's
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Fiona Pardington - Female Huia Essay by VANESSA GURUNG
The viewer’s eye follows the figure from the beak down to the bottom of the image, which is punctuated with the glowing white band of the bird’s tail tip. The image emphasises the frayed tail feathers, evidence of the taxidermic specimen’s decay, and ultimately illustrating the transitory nature of life. Webb's
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Fiona Pardington has been one of Aotearoa’s leading photographers for the past 30 years. Her work has been exhibited in significant galleries around the world and has earned her multiple prestigious awards, such as the Arts Foundation Laureate Award (2011), the Chevalier Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2016) and a New Zealand Order of Merit (2017). Pardington grew up on Auckland’s Hibiscus Coast and established at a young age that she was going to pursue photography, which led her to study at Elam School of Fine Arts, where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1984, Master of Fine Arts in 2003 and Doctor of Fine Arts in 2013. Her long career has encompassed a variety of subject matter, ranging from gender politics, the gaze, the ontology of museum collections and taonga (treasure). Pardington’s various series and concerns are unified by her focus on the photographic process, which manifests in her distinctive style of sombre, beautiful imagery. Her hauntingly beautiful still-life photography pays homage to her Māori (Ngāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe and Ngāti Kahungunu) and Scottish heritage (clan Cameron of Erracht). Female Huia (2009) can be read as an evocation of these two cultures meeting. The huia itself is a symbol already laden with meaning; Female Huia (2009) adds another layer of symbolism, as the subject is a taxidermic specimen. The huia was a native bird that was regarded as tapu (sacred) to Māori, for its beauty. However, the species suffered because of deforestation and was ultimately hunted to extinction due to the overwhelming demand for mounted specimens by collectors and museums, as well as for their feathers, which were worn by Māori to indicate high status. Within the work Female Huia the black figure of the huia is perched against a black backdrop, with lighting delicately differentiating the body from the background, made slightly more apparent by the contrast of the orange beak and wattle. The viewer’s eye follows the figure from the beak down to the bottom of the image, which is punctuated with the glowing white band of the bird’s tail tip. The image emphasises the frayed tail feathers, evidence of the taxidermic specimen’s decay, and ultimately illustrating the transitory nature of life. The form of the tail feathers, reminiscent of a Victorian mourning dress, further conveys this notion. The less focused upper body of the huia takes on a painterly quality, almost melting into the background – a visual reference to the 16th-century vanitas painting tradition, reinforcing the image’s suggestion of the transience of life. Conversely, photography is a medium that serves to immortalise subjects and aligns with te ao Māori (Māori worldview) perspective of time as operating in a non-linear fashion, with the past, present and future coexisting at once. Female Huia (2009) while confronting viewers with a darkly romantic depiction that conjures the transience of life, simultaneously illustrates that taonga, such as the huia, continue to have a spiritual life that spans generations after their physical extinction.
26 Fiona Pardington Female Huia 2009 c-type print signed Fiona Pardington and dated 2009 in graphite verso 610 x 690mm est
Webb's
$16,000 — $26,000
2020
65
27 Séraphine Pick Easy Living II 2015 watercolour on paper signed S. Pick and dated 2015 in brushpoint lower right 755 x 565mm est $6,500 — $9,500
Exhibitions Easy Living, Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington, 7 August - 28 August, 2015.
Provenance Private collection. Acquired from Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington, 2015.
Literature Séraphine Pick, White Noise (Wellington: Dowse Art Gallery, 2015), 100.
Webb's
March
66
28 Liz Maw Pilgrims 2013 oil on board signed by E Maw/LIZ MAW, dated 2013 and inscribed ‘Pilgrims’ in ink verso 490 x 380mm (widest points) est $12,000 — $18,000 Provenance Private collection. Acquired from Ivan Anthony, Auckland, 2013. Webb's
2020
Exhibitions Pandora Rides the Noon Day Demon, Ivan Anthony, Auckland, 1 May - 25 May 2013. 67
29 Katy Corner Swoop 2007 embroidery signed Katy Corner, dated 2007 and inscribed SWOOP in ink on label affixed verso 325 x 320mm est $1,000 — $2,000 Provenance Collection of Tim and Helen Beaglehole, Wellington. Webb's
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30 Ani O'Neill Lucky Dip c2000 wool, stainless steel 1200 x 1550mm est $18,000 — $26,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Webb's
2020
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Ani O'Neill - Lucky Dip Essay by AD SCHIERNING
The one uniting element that stands out in Ani O’Neill’s overall practice is the sense of collaboration – with her fellow artists and with a wider community. Her works invite the viewer to enjoy an experience at any level of engagement. Webb's
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The Auckland suburb of Ponsonby was a thriving community for Māori and Oceanic immigrants round the 1980s. Ani O’Neill was raised by her Rarotongan grandparents in their Ponsonby home in the heyday of this vibrant community. O'Neil graduated from Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts in 1994, but she also learnt, in a way that later influenced her practice, from her whānau. Her grandmother was part of a community of Cook Island ‘Mamas’ who met to make craftworks and chat, and she passed on techniques of weaving and craft that O’Neill would later use in her installation works. Her work is considered a meshing together of her Rarotongan and Irish heritages, while simultaneously connecting contemporary and traditional forms of making. Employing many forms, including lei made from recycled bread bags, and crochet flowers built around a conceptual interactive project, her practice has crossed many boundaries. From the 1990s O’Neill was a part of the highly influential collective Pacific Sisters, working alongside artists Lisa Reihana, Rosanna Raymond, Suzanne Tamaki, Selina Haami, Niwhai Tupaea, Henzart @ Henry Ah-Foo Taripo, Feeonaa Wall and Jaunnie ‘Ilolahia. The collective of New Zealand–born Pacific and Māori artists once described themselves as being like the Polynesian version of Andy Warhol’s factory, and were an integral part in paving the way for many of the contemporary Pacific artists now working in Aotearoa. In 2001 O’Neill worked on the first iteration of a project titled The Buddy System for Auckland Art Gallery’s Bright Paradise Triennial. The Buddy System invited visitors to the gallery to learn to crochet a flower; the flower each contributor produced added to an immersive installation of colourful woollen flowers and, after the exhibition, was sent to a nominated ‘buddy’. Working alongside fellow artist Megan Hansen-Knarhoi, O’Neill took the project to New York as part of a residency she undertook at the Art In General gallery. Lucky Dip (c. 2000) follows on from a series O’Neill developed during a six-month residency at the Rita Angus Cottage in Wellington. The project, Cottage Industry, was made during the residency and comprised 29 brightly coloured discs crocheted in wool. The project referenced modernist abstract paintings, such as the 'target' paintings of Jasper Johns and Kenneth Noland, and, more locally and recently, Julian Dashper's drumheads. O’Neill held a market day during the exhibition of Cottage Industry, in which local ‘cottage industries’ were invited to showcase their own wares alongside the artist’s work. In Lucky Dip (c. 2000), we see elements of O’Neill’s Buddy System, with a smaller-scale installation of discs rather than a gallery overflowing with crocheted flowers. The work is an installation of circular pieces, much like Cottage Industry but in a more organic and communal composition. Lucky Dip is an installation piece at a more domestic scale that still allows for a sense of immersion in the artist’s vibrant palette. The one uniting element that stands out in Ani O’Neill’s overall practice is the sense of collaboration – with her fellow artists and with a wider community. Her works invite the viewer to enjoy an experience at any level of engagement. O’Neill’s practice is warm, open and inviting, while still breaking new conceptual ground and adding to a much wider discourse.
30 Ani O'Neill Lucky Dip c2000 wool, stainless steel 1205 x 1550mm est
Webb's
$18,000 — $26,000
2020
71
31 John Weeks Still Life c1940 gouache on paper signed J WEEKS in brushpoint lower left 350 x 250mm est $4,000 — $7,000 Provenance Collection of Tim and Helen Beaglehole, Wellington. Passed by descent; collection of JC and Elsie Beaglehole. Acquired from Centre Gallery, Wellington, 1950. Webb's
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32 Colin McCahon Manukau 2 1954 watercolour and gouache on paper signed McCahon, dated Jan 54 and inscribed Manukau 2 in brushpoint lower left 534 x 730mm est $55,000 — $75,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Paramount Series, Webb's, Auckland, 5 April 2016, lot 14. Webb's
2020
Exhibitions The Group Show, Durham Street Art Gallery, Christchurch, 2 - 17 November 1954. Literature Peter Simpson, Colin McCahon: The Titirangi Years, 1953–1959 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2008), 84; Marja Bloem and Martin Browne, Colin McCahon: A Question of Faith (Nelson: Craig Potton, 2002), 180. Note Colin McCahon Online Catalogue (www. mccahon.co.nz) number: cm000852. 73
Colin McCahon - Manukau 2 Essay by SAMANTHA TAYLOR
Manukau 2 depicts the harbour and hills in the background as a rhythmic abstraction. The composition is animated, and the scene plays out in perfect compositional balance with a reflection of the sky in the waters of the harbour. Webb's
March
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In May 1953, Colin McCahon moved north to Auckland’s west coast and was immediately struck by the damp climate and moody light compared with Canterbury. Manukau 2 (1954) belongs to series of landscapes inspired by the artist’s response to his new surroundings, in French Bay on the Manukau Harbour. McCahon recalled: “At this time the bush and the harbour were of prime importance as subjects…the November light for that first year was a miracle. It remains an obsession and is still a miracle.”¹ Painted in watercolour and gouache on paper, Manukau 2 depicts the harbour and hills in the background as a rhythmic abstraction. The composition is animated, and the scene plays out in perfect compositional balance with a reflection of the sky in the waters of the harbour. It may be simplistic to read the painting purely for its balanced and ethereal depiction of a west Auckland landscape. The land of McCahon’s painting is a vessel for his interest in the formal structures of modernism. The composition and imagery are broken and reconnected through a series of curved and straight lines. These divisions work with the naturally occurring forms of nature to create a composition that addresses pictorial concerns. The linear elements divide the surface into planes that merge into one another by the technique of passage, a technique first introduced into painting by Cézanne and the analytic cubists. In this technique an opening, allowing one form to be merged with another, facilitates the transition between them and allows foreground and background to be interlocked. Cubism, and especially the work of Georges Braque, was influential on the works of McCahon at this time. McCahon was especially concerned with making the painting appear as something solid and permanent rather than illusory. He felt that all space was a relevant and important part of the composition. In this painting we can see this principle in action as the clouds and their reflections in the water below are made as substantial as the hills and the foreshore. We also note the subdued palette is restricted to blue-grey and ochre tints. Rather than imitating the palette of the vista he is depicting, McCahon creates an image based on the contrast between cold and warm hues, the blue of sky and water against the ochre of the hills in the background and coast in the foreground. In doing so he once more follows the example of Braque and Picasso before him, who found a restricted palette enhanced the objectivity of their cubist works and drew attention to the forms they were depicting. The use of multiple viewpoints is evident in Manukau 2; at times we seem to be looking at the forms of the land at eye level, while the harbour appears as if viewed from above. The artist is freed from the constraints of conventional one-point perspective and invites the elements of both time and movement into the work. Manukau 2 (1954) displays concepts that continue to feature in McCahon’s later paintings.
32 Colin McCahon Manukau 2 1954 watercolour and gouache on paper signed McCahon, dated Jan 54 and inscribed Manukau 2 in brushpoint lower left 534 x 730mm est
$55,000 — $75,000
1 Gordon H. Brown, “Colin McCahon: A Basis for Understanding,” Art New Zealand 8 (November/ December/January 1977-8): 26. Webb's
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33 Karl Maughan Pukerua 2018 oil on canvas signed KM, dated 2018 and inscribed “PUKERUA” in brushpoint verso 1002 x 1002mm est $18,000 — $26,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Webb's
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34 Karl Maughan Woodhaugh 2018 oil on canvas signed Karl Maughan, dated 2018 and inscribed “WOODHAUGH” in brushpoint verso 1000 x 1000mm est $18,000 — $26,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Webb's
2020
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35 Peter Robinson untitled 1998 screenprint on canvas signed Peter Robinson and dated 98 in graphite lower right 1080 x 770mm est $7,000 — $12,000 Provenance Collection of Tim and Helen Beaglehole, Wellington. Webb's
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78
36 Shane Cotton Self-Portrait 2005 acrylic on canvas signed S.C, dated ‘05 and inscribed SELF-PORTRAIT in brushpoint lower right 1805 x 1600mm est $60,000 — $90,000 Provenance Private collection, Christchurch. Webb's
2020
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Shane Cotton - Self-Portrait Essay by NEIL TALBOT
The work has figurative elements, mixed with bold abstraction and a collage-like reference to pop art. Precise and hard edged, the painting has such bold colour against a black background that it becomes three dimensional, with an illusion that the symbols in the foreground are floating in space. Webb's
March
80
“Shane Cotton is a postmodern Māori 'merchant of ideas'. His art activates, intervenes upon and transforms traditional Māori narratives, stimulating and challenging Western explanations of Māori.”¹ Rich in symbolism that is personal, historical and mythological, Cotton’s sizeable work Self-Portrait (2005) is both visually arresting and deeply complex. In a manner typical of Cotton’s work, it holds a multitude of possible interpretations, none of which is fixed or dominant. Self-Portrait (2005) is part of a wider body of work from this time that witnessed the expansion of his already-extensive visual lexicon, both beyond Aotearoa and back in time to ancient history. Despite this shift, Cotton’s work continues to engage with issues of land and identity. Self-Portrait (2005) investigates the artist’s genealogy and connection to Australian history; we are led to the narrative through the bold and drop-shadowed word ‘Parramatta’ across the lower left of the canvas. Through the symbology of the composition, Cotton shows his whakapapa to ancestor Hongi Hika, and therefore his connection to the Reverend Samuel Marsden, based at Parramatta in the early years of colonisation. Marsden was an influential missionary who had arranged for a carved head of Hika to be sent to London as an example of the native people that he was converting to Christianity. Marsden gained an unfavourable reputation in Australia and became known as the ‘flogging parson’. Self-Portrait was first exhibited in 2005, in the exhibition Pararaiha (paradise) at Sherman Galleries, Sydney. Pararaiha included a selection of large canvases with blue mokomokai (preserved tattooed Māori heads), landscapes with symbolic landforms, black backgrounds and the now-iconic Cotton target. The composition of Self-Portrait mixes iconography, which is balanced over the picture plane to tell a story. The work has figurative elements, mixed with bold abstraction and a collage-like reference to pop art. Precise and hard edged, the painting has such bold colour against a black background that it becomes three dimensional, with an illusion that the symbols in the foreground are floating in space. Here Cotton sets a stage – the large blue target focusing our interest and operating as a tool to connect all of the smaller elements of the composition. In Self-Portrait, two tautau (silvereyes) flitter between the subjects. Silvereyes were introduced to Aotearoa from Australia. The birds are a symbol of protection, and in Māori mythology they represent a whistle-blower; perhaps a comment on the artist’s whakapapa to Hongi Hika and the story that epitomises a colonial past.
36 Shane Cotton Self-Portrait 2005 acrylic on canvas signed S.C, dated ‘05 and inscribed SELF-PORTRAIT in brushpoint lower right 1805 x 1600mm est $60,000 — $90,000
1 Ngahiraka Mason, “The Māori Merchants of Nga Pūhi,” in Pararaiha exhibition catalogue (Sydney, Australia: Sherman Galleries, 2005), np. Webb's
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37 Theo Schoon Geothermal Study c1950s gelatin silver print 360 x 390mm est $3,000 — $6,000 Provenance Collection of Robert and Elizabeth Ellis, Auckland. Gifted by the artist, 1962. Webb's
March
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38 Theo Schoon Geothermal Study c1950s gelatin silver print 285 x 360mm est $2,500 — $4,500 Provenance Collection of Robert and Elizabeth Ellis, Auckland. Gifted by the artist, 1962. Webb's
2020
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39 Theo Schoon Carved Prow c1960 gelatin silver print 345 x 280mm est $2,500 — $4,500 Provenance Collection of Robert and Elizabeth Ellis, Auckland. Gifted by the artist, 1962. Webb's
March
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40 Theo Schoon untitled c1960 gelatin silver print 155 x 200mm est $1,000 — $3,000 Provenance Collection of Robert and Elizabeth Ellis, Auckland. Gifted by the artist, 1962. Webb's
2020
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Theo Schoon - Field Study Essay by ANDREW PAUL WOOD
Schoon’s photographs of New Zealand mud pools and assemblages of natural objets trouvÊs have an aesthetic sensibility with a direct lineage to European avant-garde modernism. Webb's
March
86
Theo Schoon is without doubt one of New Zealand’s most significant pioneering modernists and one of the most neglected. A perennial outsider in a provincial Dominion, he was a remarkable interlocutor between Māori, Pākehā and European visual cultures, deft in multiple media, by turns generous, mercurial and cantankerous, and without doubt a singular genius. Schoon’s photographs of New Zealand mud pools and assemblages of natural objets trouvés have an aesthetic sensibility with a direct lineage to European avant-garde modernism. Their virtuosity of lighting and subtle use of greyscale and colour are virtually unique in New Zealand art, resonating so well with the spirit of a young country trying to negotiate modernity, while still identifying with the natural landscape, that Schoon’s photographs were selected to be shown at the New Zealand pavilion at the Tokyo Expo in 1970. In the late 1930s Schoon had worked for the Dutch shipping line KLM in the Dutch East Indies on tourist marketing and was no stranger to promoting the exotic beauty of a place. Schoon was born in 1915 to middle class Dutch parents in the small village of Kebumen, Central Java. As was common for colonial scions of his class, Schoon was sent back to the Netherlands to further his studies. The Schoons had family in Rotterdam and in 1931 young Theo was enrolled at that city’s Academie van Beeldende Kunsten en Technische Wetenschappen (Academy of Fine Arts and Technical Sciences). It was here that Schoon received his artistic training, though the specific records of that time were lost when much of the city was razed by the German Luftwaffe in 1943. It seems reasonable to assume that Schoon was a student of the Academie’s traditional and conservative Fine Arts department, of which Willem de Kooning was a later alumnus. Schoon’s figurative painting, loosely expressive and rooted in Rembrandt and Vermeer (“in the style of [the forger Han] van Meegeren’s sugary soft drawings of longlegged deer,” as one acquaintance described it) and some of his stylistic devices support this hypothesis, though Schoon had a tendency to change his story when it was convenient. The Academie, however, also contained a department of Applied Arts which specialised in advertising and industrial design. Rotterdam at the time was one of the most modern cities in Europe; bustling, vibrant and aspirational, having transformed itself through the 1920s from a picturesque river village (think Ludolfe de Jonge’s View in Rotterdam of St Laurenskerk of 1679) into what filmmaker Joris Ivens in his 1930 documentary Die Bruge called a “harbour machine.” The city encouraged modernist architects like J. A. Brinkman, L. C. van der Vlugt, and Jacobus Oud (who built his famous, Mondrian-inspired Café de Unie there in 1924). Rotterdam was also a major centre of modernist design at the Verbeek, Gispen, Leerdam Glasfabriek, and Van Nelle factories, the latter of which hired Jacob “Jac” Jongert (1883–1942) as their chief designer. The Academie’s Applied Arts department lay at the heart of these pioneering aesthetic attitudes. Jongert and the typographer/photographer Piet Zwart (1885–1977) had, inspired by the German Bauhaus school, created the department’s syllabus to reflect modernist taste and philosophy. They put publications about modernist art and design in the Academie library, which is where Schoon told artist and gallerist Kees Hos that he had first encountered modernist (particularly Bauhaus) ideas. Zwart was to spend some time at the Bauhaus before the Nazis permanently closed it in 1933, was a member of the socialist avant-garde artist collective Links Richten (Look or Aim Left), and a proponent of the associated Dutch Nieuwe Fotografie movement which combined American Straight Photography’s realism with the constructivist and abstract aesthetics of Bauhaus photography. Schoon’s geothermal photographs closely echo Zwart’s studies of factory machinery in their severe cropping, acute angles and eye for visual rhythms. It is possible that Schoon remained in touch with another Nieuwe Fotografie and Links Richten member, Wally Elenbass (1912–2008), because Schoon’s close friend, the artist Gordon Walters, knew to make contact with Elenbass when he visited Rotterdam in 1950.
37 Theo Schoon Geothermal Study c1950s gelatin silver print 360 x 390mm est
Webb's
$3,000 — $6,000
2020
87
Schoon on many occasions made reference to the Bauhaus influence in his work, writing in an article for New Zealand Potter shortly before his death in 1985 that two things informed his work the most: “The first was a training in Holland in graphic design, the second was a strong influence by the legacy of the Bauhaus.” Bauhaus ideals were entrenched in the pedagogical foundations of the Academie’s Applied Arts department ahead of their time. The Bauhaus school was founded in Weimar by the architect Walter Gropius in 1919, though it would move to Dessau in 1925 and Berlin in 1932. The intention was to bring all of the arts together by emphasising design and structural qualities. At first the introductory courses were run by Swiss expressionist artist/ mystic Johannes Itten (1888– 1967) and a rarefied countercultural atmosphere prevailed. In 1923 Itten was replaced by the Hungarian photographer and constructivist painter László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) and the school’s educational emphasis shifted to rational design with industrial applications, though the political culture remained predominantly left wing, leading to its ultimate closure by the Nazis. At a time when artist Eric Lee-Johnson describes photography in New Zealand as occupying “a position about midway betweendoodlingand washing thedishes,” Schoon’s view of photography as a way of pushing abstraction forward showed a definite Bauhaus influence. Moholy-Nagy’s influence on Bauhaus photography, and by extension Schoon’s photography, was profound. He was a ceaseless experimenter, fascinated by the possibilities inherent in photograms, photomontage, aerial and acute perspectives and the use of careful cropping to find a photographic aesthetic equivalent to pure abstraction in painting. By the standards of the prevailing pictorialist aesthetic of the day, Moholy-Nagy’s photographs seemed ludicrously bad, with the apparent subject flattened, jostled to the side by incidental details, random forms and unfamiliar perspectives, but in fact it was a new way of seeing otherwise mundane and everyday things; an effort to resolve the twentieth century aesthetic conflict between illusory perspectival space and the flat, patterned surface of the image. There are strong resemblances between Schoon’s geothermal pictures and the photographic assemblages of Walter Peterhans (1897–1960), a Bauhaus teacher who later replaced Gropius as director. In 1936 Schoon returned to Java to set up his own studio in Bandung, but in 1939, fearful of a likely Japanese invasion, Schoon, his parents and brother fled to New Zealand. Schoon moved around the country for several years, from job to job, pursuing early Māori “moa hunter” cave art and an ever elusive artistic community that would meet his standards. In 1950, Schoon was living in Rotorua where he created this series of close-up photographic studies of mud pools and silica formations around the Rotorua-Taupō region. Rotorua’s geysers, hot pools and mudpools had been an international tourist attraction since the nineteenth century. It was also a centre for Māori art and craft (something that fascinated and engaged Schoon deeply), the National Publicity Studios and even, as art historian Damian Skinner has noted, a small group of New Zealand artists working in modernist and primitivist modes. In Rotorua’s sultry environs with their whiff of brimstone, Schoon seems to have found a kind of temporary turangawaewae, a place to stand, where he could explore a number of his obsessions including Māori visual culture, as well as gourd carving, which Schoon took up himself and did much to revive. Throughout the 1950s and ‘60s Schoon returned to the area to photograph geothermal formations. These images evolved as Schoon began to include other elements made of plasticine, carved pumice forms, drawing on the dried and cracked mud, and even (unthinkable by today’s environmental standards) adding dyes to mud pools. Schoon saw these natural phenomena in strictly formal terms, describing to filmmaker Martin Rumsby the circular patterns created by bubbling mud as “discs”. Parallels can be drawn to the biomorphic forms of sculptor Jean Arp, and Bauhaus teacher Paul Klee’s metaphor of applying a microscope to nature to study the underlying basic structures.
38 Theo Schoon Geothermal Study c1950s gelatin silver print 285 x 360mm est
Webb's
$2,500 — $4,500
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Schoon used the natural abstract forms of Rotorua’s geothermal areas as a visual resource, describing them in an undated letter to Luit Bieringer (then director of the National Art Gallery in Wellington) as “nature’s super abstract (concrete) art” and “An artist’s visual diary.” In a 1972 article for Australian Photography entitled “Pictures by a Caveman” he writes: “While on this project, I became interested in Natural designs, patterns and abstract forms ... especially in small things, not tremendous landscapes. I began to escape from the whole European tradition of painting, and to develop a fresh new vision ... a new visual freedom.” The geothermal photographs represent a Damascene epiphany for Schoon, allowing him to free himself from the overwhelming legacy of European art and find a new synthesis from his accumulated observation and reading (in a letter he wrote to art historian Michael Dunn in 1964 he says, “Your legacy [New Zealand] is one of mediocrity and bad teaching—mine was the burden of getting too much rammed down my throat, without a decent chance to digest it, or to orientate myself”). The mud pools also allowed Schoon to explore abstraction while remaining safely anchored in the familiar and tourist-friendly exotic tropes of the New Zealand landscape, telling architect and civil planner Gerhard Rosenberg: “I found this particularly amusing whenever I thought of the discomfort of New Zealanders in the presence of abstract art. Here at least they can’t splutter and waffle: nature is a modern artist.” Schoon explained his process in several letters to Michael Dunn. His first forays into the subject were taken on a 21/4 square twin-lens reflex camera—first an Ikoflex and later a Yashicaflex— in black and white, often hand-held and taken at long exposures, up to a thirtieth of a second or more. When he relocated back to Rotorua for a period in the mid ‘60s to work in the forestry camps, he switched to colour, sometimes using a single-lens early model Canon reflex with a close-up lens. Colour photography allowed Schoon to take full advantage of the vivid colours created by sulphur compounds and extremophile organisms. He would live rough on site, as he once did recording ancient Māori cave art, waiting for the critical moment when the light was just right or for an interesting pattern to take shape in the mud, then freezing these ephemeral and seasonal transformations in time. Martin Rumsby was with Schoon during some of his explorations in the Waiotapu geothermal area when it wasn’t as well known, writing: “Theo told me that nature worked in repeating cycles— that was his theory. So, if he wanted a particular design in the mud pools, for example, then he would wait and count them out. That is, a particular form may appear with every seventh ‘plop’ so, once he had seen it he would count out how many formations it would take to reappear then photograph it.” The project was not without a certain amount of risk. Sandflies and lack of rations aside, Schoon eschewed the safe and well-trodden tourist areas with their distractions, and thought nothing of adopting a precarious perch over scalding mud and boiling water to get his shot, where sometimes a misstep would result in a foot plunging through a deceptive crust into the searinghot mud lurking beneath. Despite these ascetic sacrifices, the images speak for themselves. The extreme close-ups that isolate the mud pools and other formations from the context of their surroundings and the flattening effect this produces allowed Schoon to transform an unusual natural phenomenon into abstract studies in formal beauty that are about place and yet transcend geography. In the same way that the Dutch Nieuwe Fotografie attempted to blend ‘straight’ photography with abstraction, Schoon sourced abstract forms already found in nature. Arguably, Schoon was able to pare photography down to its irreducible essence. This is photography in a pure form of its intended purpose—to freeze a moment for deliberation; the godlike freezing of a dynamic, passing moment in time so that we may appreciate and comprehend its miraculous beauty.
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41 Theo Schoon Study in Design with Paint on Glass Sheets c1950s gelatin silver print 285 x 375mm est $2,500 — $4,500 Provenance Collection of Robert and Elizabeth Ellis, Auckland. Gifted by the artist, 1962. Webb's
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42 Theo Schoon Study in Design with Paint on Glass Sheets c1950s gelatin silver print 285 x 370mm est $2,500 — $4,500 Provenance Collection of Robert and Elizabeth Ellis, Auckland. Gifted by the artist, 1962. Webb's
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43 Theo Schoon Tekoteko c1960 gelatin silver print 245 x 190mm est $1,000 — $3,000 Provenance Collection of Robert and Elizabeth Ellis, Auckland. Gifted by the artist, 1962. Webb's
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44 Theo Schoon Carved Maihi c1960 gelatin silver print 200 x 155mm
45 Theo Schoon Carved Panel c1960 gelatin silver print 200 x 175mm
est $1,000 — $3,000
est $1,000 — $3,000
Provenance Collection of Robert and Elizabeth Ellis, Auckland. Gifted by the artist, 1962.
Provenance Collection of Robert and Elizabeth Ellis, Auckland. Gifted by the artist, 1962.
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46 Theo Schoon Man with Pipe c1940 gelatin silver print 285 x 345mm
47 Theo Schoon Wood Carving c1940 gelatin silver print 225 x 365mm
est $1,000 — $3,000
est $1,500 — $2,500
Provenance Collection of Robert and Elizabeth Ellis, Auckland. Gifted by the artist, 1962.
Provenance Collection of Robert and Elizabeth Ellis, Auckland. Gifted by the artist, 1962.
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48 Theo Schoon Rock Formations c1950s gelatin silver print 270 x 360mm
49 Theo Schoon Rock Study c1950s gelatin silver print 285 x 355mm
est $2,500 — $4,500
est $2,500 — $4,500
Provenance Collection of Robert and Elizabeth Ellis, Auckland. Gifted by the artist, 1962.
Provenance Collection of Robert and Elizabeth Ellis, Auckland. Gifted by the artist, 1962.
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50 Richard Killeen Lounge Dancer 1969 acrylic and pastel on paper signed Killeen, dated 8/5/69 and inscribed No 2049 in ink and graphite lower edge; inscribed No 2049 in graphite verso 320 x 495mm est $3,000 — $5,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Ivan Anthony, Auckland, 2016. Webb's
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51 Richard Killeen Bus Stop 1969 oil on board signed RK and dated ‘69 in brushpoint lower right; printed Richard Killeen/90 The Drive Auck. 3/Bus Stop/April 1969 18’ x 18”/Oil on hardboard on label affixed verso 450 x 450mm est $25,000 — $35,000 Provenance Collection of Tim and Helen Beaglehole, Wellington. Acquired from Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington, 1970. Webb's
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Exhibitions Barry Lett Galleries, Auckland, 1970. 97
Richard Killeen - An Ounce of Ambiguity Essay by ANDREW CLARK
It is tempting to read these works as depictions of a realm of sunny, stage-like spaces, whose reserved, enigmatic inhabitants move unbidden from one mysterious assignation to another. However, this is to undersell the extent to which Killeen is also an acute observer; the world that he depicts is firmly grounded in the visual and architectonic realities of the New Zealand (specifically, the Auckland) suburbs, with their expanses of gleaming white weatherboards and red iron roofs. Webb's
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Although Richard Killeen is better known for his vibrant, energetic series of cut-out works begun in the late 1970s, which were ultimately to become synonymous with his practice as a whole, his early works are of considerable interest in their own right. As Francis Pound commented in his PhD thesis on Killeen’s cut-out works, the early paintings are at this point always necessarily considered in terms of what would come later: “they are read against their chronological grain,” retroactively becoming wellsprings of symbolism that feed the tributary rivulets of his later work.¹ However, as tempting as it may be to read Killeen’s early paintings as a prefiguration or a starting point for the informationally dense postmodern syllabary of the cut-outs, the works have their own integrity, their own concerns and their own place as a record of a particular moment in New Zealand art history. By the late 1960s, when Killeen was making these works, New Zealand painting (which was, by and large, still the dominant mode in New Zealand art discourse) had begun to move away from the valorisation of “hard men in hard light” (to borrow Pound’s phrase).² In Richard Killeen’s practice, this gradual turning away from the regionalist landscape model is crystallised as a mode of facing towards, an inversion of these received values. The heroic is replaced by the quotidian; the sublime by the mundane; the rural by the urban; the national by the international. In the works from this period, Killeen developed a novel painterly vision of New Zealand. It is tempting to read these works as depictions of a realm of sunny, stage-like spaces, whose reserved, enigmatic inhabitants move unbidden from one mysterious assignation to another. However, this is to undersell the extent to which Killeen is also an acute observer; the world that he depicts is firmly grounded in the visual and architectonic realities of the New Zealand (specifically, the Auckland) suburbs, with their expanses of gleaming white weatherboards and red iron roofs. Like Cézanne’s depictions of Provence, in which, in Leo Steinberg’s words, “he studied the subterranean geologic energies which had rolled up the landscape,”³ Killeen offers a vision of the suburban scene that is more than a mere depiction. It is, rather, an acutely observed synthesis that draws on the submerged political and social forces shaping this human landscape. Interestingly, the suburban mode of being that Killeen investigates in these works seems to offer a continuous vista of both interior and outdoor spaces. One of the characteristics of the suburbs, as envisioned by Killeen, might be their quality of “inside-ness”: even in works such as Bus Stop, included in this catalogue, the outdoors comes to feel like one endless living room, the trees overgrown potted plants, the sky a painted ceiling. These paintings might, then, represent an expanded field of domesticity, an introverted space that rejects the extroverted gestures of the regionalist canon. They are also an indication of the way New Zealand’s artistic consensus was turning its focus from the labour of the rural proletariat (while also, sometimes, eliding their existence; think of Woollaston’s unpeopled expanses of land and sky, paeans to a country undefiled by the complex realities of human emotion) to the anxieties and aspirations of the urban bourgeoisie. In Bus Stop (1969), Killeen describes a prosaic scene of suburban life: the moments of tedium encountered while waiting for public transport. In this subjective aeon, detached from but adjacent to the working day, the mind has time to wander, and the eye a chance to light on serendipitous details – the tangent between a roofline and the curve of a hill, perhaps, or the inscrutable expression on the face of a bored stranger, likewise stranded on this atoll of lost time. The picture plane is broken down into a tessellating façade of hard-edged shapes; for example, the edge of the pedestrian crossing sign and the slope of the roof create a skewed rectangle that feeds into the central band created by the verticals of signpost and veranda. All of this is to point out that Killeen’s handling of the image is,
51 Richard Killeen Bus Stop 1969 oil on board signed RK and dated ‘69 in brushpoint lower right; printed Richard Killeen/90 The Drive Auck. 3/Bus Stop/April 1969 18’ x 18”/Oil on hardboard on label affixed verso 450 x 450mm est
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at this point in his career, highly formal and structured. His style owes something to American pop art, or perhaps the more subtle version of that movement seen in the early works of David Hockney. Primarily, Killeen seems concerned in this work with painting economically, in the sense that each line and plane of colour is calculated to produce the maximum effect with the minimum expenditure of informational capital. An exception to this are the trees, which Killeen paints almost in a pastiche of regional modernist expressiveness. However, their carefully rendered leaf clusters also feel somewhat artificial; this is a representation of nature, but not wholly natural. The net effect of these choices is not so much a flattening of the picture plane, or a tendency towards abstraction, as a peculiarly airless sense of space. Killeen also plays games with the viewer’s ability to read said space; a careful examination of the clump of foliage protruding from behind the female figure’s head reveals a spatial paradox. This plant’s foliage is rendered in the same way as the other background trees, but it passes in front of the sign-post, seemingly emerging from the woman’s scalp like a leafy beehive. Killeen is surely poking fun here, offering a subtle take-down of realist sincerity. This is, he seems to say, only a painting; deal with it on its own terms. The figures in Bus Stop, a man and a woman, face away from one another, gazing expressionlessly into space. The woman, although turned towards the viewer, does not meet their gaze; her eyes are cast off, towards the edge of the canvas, glancing slightly upwards at some unseen distraction. Her compatriot, standing in profile behind the crosswalk sign, squints his eyes slightly against the harsh antipodean sun. He is similarly devoid of emotion, likewise trapped in a De Chiricoesque moment of waiting, a suspended animation. Killeen’s people, as is perhaps more apparent in larger contemporaneous works such as Rise and Fall and Street Corner, share a kind of crowd-identity, a depersonalised persona, if such a thing exists. They are supremely detached; they are, in fact, observers in their own drama. In this, these works offer a mirror to the viewer, transgressing the frame, blurring the boundary between the inside and outside of the image. Another effect of Killeen’s smoothing and flattening of forms, and the neatly deployed gradients that indicate shading (or perhaps indicate the idea of shadow and threedimensionality), is to break down the barrier between animate and inanimate objects in these works. The people’s faces and the curve of the signpost are of a piece; the distinction between flesh and metal melts away, revealing an equivalency that is as much an uncanny animation of the non-human as it is an alienation of the human. The second work included in this auction, Lounge Dancer, shows much of the same structural and aesthetic language as Bus Stop. Here, however, the exterior scene is replaced with an interior, and stillness replaced by movement. The scene is a suburban living room, replete with armchairs, lamp, carpet and curtains. A female figure in a leotard dances ecstatically in the centre of the room; a male face looks on in profile from the left, his inscrutable gaze reminiscent of a piece of monumental statuary. Killeen’s bold, confident linework quantifies and partitions the picture’s surface, creating a net of interlocking geometries like that seen in Bus Stop. However, the way he deploys colour in this work is quite different; his confidently applied hues overflow or obscure the linework in places, creating a sense of simmering energy, barely confined. Again, the natural world is reduced to a decorative motif, a floorto-ceiling window simultaneously drawing the exterior into the interior and rendering it inert, reduced to the status of a mural or wallpaper. The dancer herself is a figure worth looking at more closely. Her head thrown back, she seems entranced, transported, transfixed – back arched, perched on the balls of her feet as if about to launch herself skywards. Again, this
Exhibition of new paintings by Richard Killeen, Barry Lett Galleries, Auckland, 1970. Photo: Richard Killeen.
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image is an expression of the subterranean fault-lines that run beneath the surface of the suburban milieu. Killeen creates a David Lynch-esque scene of inscrutable, private oddity, a “lounge” act with an audience of one – or two, counting the viewer, who in this scenario is placed in the position of a voyeur. The space is again jumbled, confusing juxtapositions and entanglements between foreground and background lending the scene a sense of inreality, suggesting that this suburban living room is a mere front or stage. The suburban living room is here disassembled and reconfigured as the backdrop to a strange, Lynchian primal scene. For Killeen, the suburbs were fertile terrain, a new frontier, divorced from the established parameters of New Zealand painting bounded by mountains and skies. In the enigmatic, vigorous and occasionally humorous works he produced in the late 1960s, Killeen staked a claim as a dynamic artist whose work would reflect the changing societal and material landscape of this country.
Bus Stop on the veranda of Richard Killeen’s Newmarket studio, 1969. Photo: Richard Killeen.
1 Francis Pound, “Cut-Outs Killeen” (PhD diss., University of Auckland, 1991), 1. 2
Ibid., 47.
3 Leo Steinberg, Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 296. Webb's
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52 Laurence Aberhart Midway Beach, Gisborne, 13 June 1986 1986. printed 1989 gelatin silver print signed L. Aberhart, dated 1986/1989 and inscribed Midway Beach, Gisborne, 13 June 1986 in ink lower edge 195 x 245mm est $5,000 — $8,000 Webb's
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53 Laurence Aberhart Lyttleton Heads, Lyttleton, 1980 1980 gelatin silver print signed L. Aberhart and inscribed Lyttleton Heads, Lyttleton 1980 in ink lower edge 190 x 240mm est $4,000 — $7,000 Webb's
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54 Laurence Aberhart Interior Hall, St Bathans, Central Otago, December 1980 1980. printed 2007 gelatin silver print signed L. Aberhart, dated 1980/2007 and inscribed Interior Hall, St Bathans, Central Otago, December, 1980 in ink lower edge 190 x 240mm est $3,000 — $6,000 Webb's
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55 Laurence Aberhart Save The Family Tent, Marton, 8 April 1986 1986. printed 2008 gelatin silver print signed L. Aberhart, dated 1986/2008 and inscribed Save The Family Tent, Marton, 8 April 1986 in ink lower edge 191 x 240mm est $3,000 — $6,000 Webb's
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Laurence Aberhart - A Sensitive Sensibility Essay by VANESSA GURUNG
Aberhart incorporates the sensibility, sensitivity and aesthetics of early photography, and combines contemporary artistic concerns to produce a unique body of work. He presents the ordinary in a elevated way, but also encourages viewers to consider the duration of time, as well as the historical and cultural significance of the subjects he captures. Webb's
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Laurence Aberhart has been a prominent figure in New Zealand photography since the late 1970s. A self-taught photographer from Nelson, he rose to prominence capturing images of various locations throughout New Zealand. His expansive career has led him to Asia, Europe and North America in recent years, continuing to document places using traditional analogue methods. Regardless of the location, Aberhart’s images shed light on the significance of time and cultural history. He is best known for his photographs of buildings, but is captivated by any subject that suggests the passing of time, often opting to present the mundane in a beautiful way. He says, “What I am photographing has usually been deemed unimportant.” Photography is his way of memorialising these ‘unimportant’ remnants of the past, and he does so in a way that alludes to how communities or individuals have interacted with that subject. His photograph Midway Beach, Gisborne, 13 June 1986 features an outdoor beach shower. While this is a relatively banal subject, the image conveys his interest in sites of remembrance and metaphors of mortality. The cross structure of the shower has an undeniable biblical connotation and recalls other subjects favoured by Aberhart, such as old churches, cemeteries, war memorials, museums, Masonic lodges and historical landmarks. The combination of light radiating from the horizon with the subtle vignette of the image places all the emphasis on the subject of the cross. The ambience that is created by the lighting, the blurred shapes on the cross-beam, and the old-fashioned shower-heads all suggest the derelict cross belongs more in a cemetery than at a beach. This idea is further reinforced by the dark, circular grilles – constructed to drain water, here they are metaphors for abattoirs and executions, blood and death. In Save the Family Tent, Marton, Manawatu, 8 June 1986, a shadow engulfs the figure of the tent, almost making it look as though the space is empty. It is literally being overshadowed by its surroundings, suggesting its unimportance. This is reinforced by the transitory nature of a tent, which is a temporary structure. The image suggests its time is coming to an end. The work Lyttelton Heads, Lyttelton presents an image that is aesthetically similar to the warped panoramic photographs that are captured by phone cameras today. Contrarily, it has been taken using a painstaking analogue method. Creating a frame within a frame is a signature feature of Aberhart’s photography and illustrates his ability to create abstract geometric shapes using shadows. Another of Aberhart’s photographs that uses the framewithin-a-frame technique in a more playful way is Interior, Hall, St. Bathans, Central Otago, December 1980. It presents multiple frames within the image, which is likely to be placed within a physical frame. This image illustrates the self-reflexive nature of photography in a humorous way. This irony is reaffirmed by the way the viewer gazes at the image of an interior that presents a painted image of an exterior. Aberhart incorporates the sensibility, sensitivity and aesthetics of early photography, and combines contemporary artistic concerns to produce a unique body of work. He presents the ordinary in a elevated way, but also encourages viewers to consider the duration of time, as well as the historical and cultural significance of the subjects he captures.
52 Laurence Aberhart Midway Beach, Gisborne, 13 June 1986 1986. printed 1989 gelatin silver print signed L. Aberhart, dated 1986/1989 and inscribed Midway Beach, Gisborne, 13 June 1986 in ink lower edge 195 x 245mm est
$5,000 — $8,000
53 Laurence Aberhart Lyttleton Heads, Lyttleton, 1980 1980 gelatin silver print signed L. Aberhart and inscribed Lyttleton Heads, Lyttleton 1980 in ink lower edge 190 x 240mm est
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56 Shane Cotton Te Paku o te Rangi 1998 oil on canvas signed SWC, dated 1998 and inscribed TE PAKU O TE RANGI in brushpoint lower right 655 x 835mm est $25,000 — $35,000 Provenance Private collection, New South Wales. Webb's
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57 Colin McCahon Load Bearing Structures, Series 2 1978 - 79 acrylic on board signed C.McC. and dated 78-79 in brushpoint lower right; inscribed LOAD BEARING STRUCTURES; SERIES 2 in brushpoint verso 277 x 355mm est $65,000 — $85,000
Note Colin McCahon Online Catalogue (www.mccahon.co.nz) number: cm001930.
Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Webb's
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Colin McCahon - Load Bearing Structures, Series 2 Essay by SAMANTHA TAYLOR
Unlike the landscapes of McCahon’s earlier career, Load Bearing Structures Series 2 (1978) was not a reaction to the artist’s immediate physical surroundings. Rather, this work saw McCahon engage with the written history of the geographical region pictured within the work. Webb's
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Load Bearing Structures, Series 2 (1978) alters our view of the New Zealand landscape in the framing of a constructed monument – in this case, a structure of the artist’s own imagining. The prominent black tau form described in this image was first used by McCahon in the Necessary Protection works, which McCahon made while working from his studio in Muriwai in the early 1970s. The series of works sharing the title Necessary Protection was born out of the artist’s concerns about the gradual gentrification and pollution of the west coast landscape. McCahon stated: “I am painting about what is still there and what I can still see before the sky turns black with soot and the sea becomes a slowly heaving rubbish tip.”¹ The series would evolve to have a much wider-reaching relevance as McCahon shaped a discourse for his painting into a proposal that all human actions are part of a path towards spiritual enlightenment. McCahon imbued the form with symbolic relevance – the horizontal bar represented a divine entity and the vertical bar represented man’s path through the physical world – and it became a prominent feature of his practice that he would use exclusively for a two-year period in the early 1970s. Load Bearing Structures, Series 2 also draws from McCahon’s seminal early work, On Building Bridges (1952), which presents a view of the Canterbury landscape seen through, and yet obscured by, the support struts of a metallic structure. Load Bearing Structures once again shapes a view of the landscape in relation to a constructed form. Unlike the landscapes of McCahon’s earlier career, Load Bearing Structures, Series 2 (1978) was not a reaction to the artist’s immediate physical surroundings. Rather, this work saw McCahon engage with the written history of the geographical region pictured within the work. The King Country was named after the Māori King movement, which took force in the mid-1800s and sought to establish the region as a sovereign state, free from the control of the British monarchy. As a result, the region was the site of ongoing conflict between Māori and Pākehā settlers until 1867, when economic difficulties affecting the inhabitants of the King Country led to a peace agreement between the two parties. The Truth from the King Country series was painted in the wake of the fallout that followed the passing into law of the Treaty of Waitangi Act of 1975, which established the Waitangi Tribunal. When the tau motif was related to the ongoing conflict between the rival ideologies of Pākehā and the tangata whenua, McCahon found that it had a new and poignant relevance. Yet, unlike the works that McCahon had painted at the start of the decade, the Truth from the King Country series does not present the viewer with a situation of hopeless decline. In the years before he painted the Truth from the King Country series, McCahon had all but abandoned the tau form and had primarily been making black-and-white paintings featuring words and linear imagery suspended in dark pools of negative space. In contrast to this dark shift, Load Bearing Structures, Series 2, with its use of burning orange yellow, is a light at the end of a tenebrous tunnel. It presents a sunrise over a horizon. While Load Bearing Structures, Series 2 reflects upon an ongoing conflict, the proposition that equilibrium will one day be reached is what lies at its heart. In this work, McCahon propagates his hope that a load-bearing structure – a set of governing principles – will eventually lead to a resolution.
57 Colin McCahon Load Bearing Structures, Series 2 1978 - 79 acrylic on board signed C.McC. and dated 78-79 in brushpoint lower right; inscribed LOAD BEARING STRUCTURES; SERIES 2 in brushpoint verso 277 x 355mm est
$65,000 — $85,000
1 Gordon H. Brown, Colin McCahon: Artist (Wellington: A. H. and A. W. Reed, 1984), 164. Webb's
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58 Geoff Thornley Cipher of a Turning #2 1989 oil on canvas signed Thornley, dated 1989 and inscribed CIPHER OF A TURNING.2./THORNLEY in brushpoint verso; inscribed 0689/GEOFF THORNLEY/ CIPHER OF A TURNING #2/1989/ OIL ON CANVAS/92 X 279.5 CM in ink on Vavasour Godkin Gallery label affixed verso 920 x 2750mm est $5,000 — $8,000 Webb's
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59 Bill Sutton Threshold IX 1973 oil on canvas signed W A SUTTON and dated ‘73 in brushpoint lower right 1105 x 2805mm est $45,000 — $65,000 Provenance Private collection, New South Wales. Webb's
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Bill Sutton - Shifting Shadows Essay by CHRISTIE SIMPSON
The Threshold series is an important body of work that Sutton produced during the early 1970s. In these works, repeated river-terrace landforms are constantly refined, manipulated and re-interpreted in a continual flow of yellow-ochre paintings. Threshold IX, painted in 1973, is Sutton at his peak; incorporating the best of past learnings, the work turns a familiar landscape into an abstract musing. Webb's
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“All the shapes I wish to use are about me in our natural environment.”¹ —W. A. Sutton The distinctive ochre-coloured landscapes of W. A. Sutton are synonymous with Canterbury’s dry, arid summers. Inspired by the landforms, geological structures, seasonal changes, weather and cloud patterns, his paintings are governed by and immersed in a sea of yellow ochre. The varying moods of the Canterbury landscape, where the artist was born and trained, and where he lived his whole life, became a vital touchstone for him, stimulating numerous series of paintings over the course of a productive career that spanned more than six decades. Initially working in a pseudo-impressionist manner, following in the footsteps of his tutors at the Canterbury College School of Art, Sutton produced one-off representational landscapes. After a near-two-year study period in London and exposure to Cézanne and other international artists, his real breakthrough came with Dry September (1949), painted on his return to New Zealand. This work, with its dramatic perspective, bridge structure, riverbed and distant ochre hills, highlighted Sutton’s “new interest in compositional structure”.² However, through constant reproduction, both Dry September and Sutton’s now-iconic work Nor’wester in the Cemetery – both painted when the artist was in his early 30s – have to a great extent come to define his contribution to New Zealand art during this period. The term ‘regionalist’, so often applied to Sutton and a number of his South Island contemporaries, including Doris Lusk and Olivia Spencer Bower, suggests their output has no relevance beyond where they were executed. Sutton’s own words tend to refute this reading; he memorably stated that he “had no desire to create or recognise national totems”, a startling assertion given the status he has retroactively been accorded. Ultimately, Sutton’s positioning as an icon of a nationalist, regional style of New Zealand modernism needs rethinking, and the relevance of his works, divorced from their status as the kind of ‘totem’ that Sutton refers to, warrants exploration. Arguably, such positioning of Sutton’s practice comes at the expense of work produced in the latter period of his career, when he began to engage more fully with the possibilities of modernism. As aspects of abstraction invigorated his approach and extended his thinking, he produced some highly original, lyrical and almost classical paintings, which reconfigure the landscape in bold and striking ways. By 1960 Sutton found his previous figurative approach wanting, and he began experimenting with various forms of abstraction, while still relating his work to direct experience and observations of his environment. He travelled constantly throughout Canterbury and into the foothills and the Port Hills region, recording his observations on the spot in pencil and with watercolours. Later, back in the studio, he distilled and reworked his findings, often onto expansive canvases that bridge the gap between pure, imaginative abstraction and traditional observational landscape painting. The Threshold series is an important body of work that Sutton produced during the early 1970s. In these works, repeated river-terrace landforms are constantly refined, manipulated and re-interpreted in a continual flow of yellow-ochre paintings. Threshold IX, painted in 1973, is Sutton at his peak; incorporating the best of past learnings, the work turns a familiar landscape into an abstract musing. Sutton stated that he “was intrigued at the pattern that clouds’ shadows made as they passed over rolling hillsides. The patterns would shift and shift and shift and shift and so I drew a lot of gentle diagonals crisscrossing and filled them in with patterns which appeared to shift on the canvases.”³ Another from the series, Threshold IV, is held in the collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū. Sutton’s considered investigations of the intersection between modernist methodology and traditional, sincerely felt appreciation for the possibilities of landscape produced an intriguing body of work that remains vital and refreshing to this day.
59 Bill Sutton Threshold IX 1973 oil on canvas signed W A SUTTON and dated ‘73 in brushpoint lower right 1105 x 2805mm est
$45,000 — $65,000
1 “Nineteen Painters: Their Favourite Works,” Islands 10, vol. 3, no. 4 (Summer 1974): 376. 2 Ken Hall, Jenny Harper, Felicity Milburn, Nathan Pohio, Lara Strongman and Peter Vangioni, 101 Works of Art (Christchurch, NZ: Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, 2015), 194. 3 Deborah Shepard interview with W A Sutton, audio tape, 20 March 1982, Robert and Barbara Stewart Library and Archives, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu. Webb's
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60 Don Peebles Relief Painting 1966 PVA on canvas, wood signed PEEBLES, dated 1966 and inscribed “RELIEF PAINTING/P.V.A” in brushpoint verso 390 x 390 x 150mm est $4,000 — $7,000 Provenance Collection of Tim and Helen Beaglehole, Wellington. Acquired from Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington, c1966. Webb's
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61 Colin McCahon The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version) 1961 enamel on board signed C.M and dated OCT.'61 in brushpoint lower right; inscribed THE FIRST BELLINI MADONNA. (SECOND VERSION) in brushpoint lower edge 1205 x 755mm
Exhibitions Colin McCahon: A Question of Faith, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 30 August - 10 November 2002; City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand, 7 December 2002 - 9 March 2003; Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland, 29 March - 15 June; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 4 July - 7 September; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 15 November - 16 January 2004
est $350,000 — $450,000
Literature Marja Bloem & Martin Browne, Colin McCahon: A Question of Faith (Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum; Nelson: Craig Potton, 2002), 92, 196, 197.
Provenance Private collection, New South Wales.
Note Colin McCahon Online Catalogue (www. mccahon.co.nz) number: cm001516. 116
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Colin McCahon - The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version) Essay by KELLY CARMICHAEL
McCahon was a lover of Bellini, and scholar Gordon H. Brown relates that, after discovering a colour plate showing Bellini’s The Pieta with St John, McCahon was so moved he slammed the book shut until he could recover his composure. Webb's
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Everyone has a different take on Colin McCahon and there are many strong narratives that could be told. Over the course of his career McCahon could be variously defined as a landscape artist, a figurative painter, a regionalist, and an innovator for his use of painted text. Perhaps the two most defining thematics of his practice, however, are McCahon’s relationship with religion and his abstraction. The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version) (1961), by a celebrated New Zealand painter of international importance, incorporates these two incredibly strong trajectories of McCahon’s practice. The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version) is one of a series of four known works by McCahon responding to Venetian Renaissance painter Giovanni Bellini. McCahon was a lover of Bellini, and scholar Gordon H. Brown relates that, after discovering a colour plate showing Bellini’s The Pieta with St John, McCahon was so moved he slammed the book shut until he could recover his composure. The Bellini Madonna series is said to be based on Bellini’s The Alzano Madonna/Madonna with a Pear (c.1485). The artist’s son William McCahon recalls that the series came from the time McCahon underwent religious instruction within the Catholic church and, in particular, the trouble he was having with some of the doctrine around the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary. At first glance Bellini’s sumptuous Madonna and Child seems odd source material for this series of abstract paintings, yet connections and allusions reveal themselves and an understanding of how McCahon experimented with Bellini’s composition becomes clear. As in the Bellini, colour is a rich and allegorical component. Horizontal and vertical axes (the ‘implied cross’ composition of Christ symbolism) in both works become apparent, as do some of the tonal and textural qualities of background and drapery. The line created by the Christ child’s plump leg leading us to Bellini’s signature now becomes a diagonal black line defining the golden triangle in the lower right corner of the work, pointing to the work’s title written by McCahon in small capitals. McCahon has also replicated Bellini’s celebrated parapet seen in The Alzano Madonna, the compositional device that acts as a low barrier in the foreground of many of Bellini’s images of the Madonna and Child intended for private devotion. In many paintings, Bellini conspicuously placed his signature on this parapet, as does McCahon, using his initials here. More than just a convenient spot to place the pear – considered a symbol of virginity – the red marble parapet creates an illusion of three-dimensional space, functioning as a visual enticement for the viewer to look beyond, and into the painting. Richly symbolic, the barrier is the line where sacred and worldly meet, but also recalls Christ's tomb and the altar upon which his sacrifice is re-enacted in the Eucharist. Most striking about McCahon’s The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version) is the geometric blocks that make up the composition and the way the vertical and horizontal are split with a diagonal/triangular overlay. Here we might imagine McCahon extracting the abstraction he sensed in Bellini’s original. Painted between 1961 and 1962, The Bellini Madonna series came shortly after McCahon’s transformative trip to America in late 1958, a trip that shifted his practice in response to American abstraction and led to a paring back of source. It is possible to imagine the green brocade curtain that hangs behind Bellini’s Madonna and Child translated into the top-left block of McCahon’s work, its texture brought out in colours of ash, charcoal and golden ochre. The soft modulating of light and dark in the lower left block – palpable, fleshy and warm in meaty pink and smudgy brown tones beneath a sky-blue triangle – derives from the marbled drapery seen in the cuff of the Madonna’s robe, and the red marble parapet. It also alludes to the suffering that will ensue for the Christ Child. “Here in the red marbling, Christ’s blood becomes a sunset, with the white light of a sunlit rainstorm below. Within the ‘sunset’, Colin uses the ‘crescent moon’ wound symbol that Bellini used when portraying the dead Christ,” William McCahon commented of
61 Colin McCahon The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version) 1961 enamel on board signed C.M and dated OCT.'61 in brushpoint lower right; inscribed THE FIRST BELLINI MADONNA. (SECOND VERSION) in brushpoint lower edge 1205 x 755mm est
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The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version). Dominating most of the right-hand side of the painting is the velvety black that would become so familiar in McCahon’s later religious works – the unknowable, the void, God. The divisions between blocks and diagonals in The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version) are not so much defined by colour, but by McCahon exploiting line and light to section the pictorial plane. Light is symbolic, of course, both for Bellini and McCahon. Bellini’s use of light, in particular the shadowing behind the Madonna’s head and shoulders, places the figures in our world, suggesting the earthly reality of this divine vision. This shadow must be cast from a light source to the front and right of the figures, that’s to say from outside the frame, where we, the viewers, exist. The same light that illuminates them illuminates us, binding secular and divine. For McCahon, who explored and grappled with questions of faith and doubt throughout his life and practice, imagery of darkness and light in the Christian tradition was deeply significant and often employed. The Bellini Madonna became geometric abstractions into which he poured his broader message. In her essay from the publication for the exhibition A Question of Faith, Stedelijk Museum curator Marja Bloem describes how, in deciding which work to select for the first European retrospective of Colin McCahon and how to present his practice, “…it became apparent that landscape and religion or, more accurately, the spiritual – but also humanist – message conveyed by the language of the Christian Bible, are constant factors in his life and work.” McCahon’s relationship with Christianity was complex and multifaceted. His life and work were an ongoing and intense engagement with spiritual matters; he underwent spiritual training from c. 1959-62, but was never a member of any religious organisation. McCahon remained, in the words of his son William, a “homeless Christian”. As an exhibition, A Question of Faith focused on the artist's ongoing spiritual quest, demonstrating how McCahon explored questions of faith, doubt, hope, and eventually despair, in his practice. While visual clues could be ambiguous, there were always signs for the spiritually cognisant. However, even in the paintings offering more obvious clues, McCahon’s audience didn’t seem to understand his paintings as vehicles for spiritual thought, a foundational theme of his practice. “No one seems to know what I’m on about, it amazes me, no one seems to know that I’m painting Christ,” McCahon told an interviewer in 1980. Although dissociated from formal bodies of faith and strict theology, McCahon’s practice continually explored a profound religiosity and spiritualism. Painted in 1961, The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version) comes shortly after McCahon’s first Gate series, a body of work that contended with the formal challenges and opportunities abstraction offered. The series reflected the artist’s meditations on the world around him and the obstacles to human progress and happiness he saw as posed by the nuclear threat of the time. McCahon described the paintings as a "way through" for humanity, presenting an abstract discourse through which to critique and construct contemporary culture. Gate 15 (1961) and another work from the same year, Here I Give Thanks to Mondrian, show strong compositional similarities with The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version), including geometric blocks, diagonal shifts, enhanced spatial dynamics and triangular corners. Here I Give Thanks to Mondrian sees McCahon paraphrasing Mondrian’s geometric shapes but with softened portions and angularity, and a muted tonal palette. McCahon has added painterly texture, the handwritten dedication in his own distinctive script, and the blended outlines seen in the first Gate series. McCahon deeply admired the abstract painter Piet Mondrian and believed that the artist had achieved paintings that “beat like, and with, a human heart.” In her book The Spirit of Colin McCahon, which focuses on the religious dimension of his art, author Zoe Alderton contends that “…Mondrian inspired McCahon to structure his
Giovanni Bellini The Alzano Madonna c1487 oil on panel 843 x 655 mm Collection of Accademia Carrara, Bergamo.
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works in a way that would give them inner life.” Spirituality and the abstract may not be the odd bedfellows first glance would have them be. Wassily Kandinsky, like other artists at the end of the 19th century, saw art as a new religion. In his 1912 essay “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”, Kandinsky equated representational art with materialism. He saw abstraction as a language that was not only capable of expressing deeper truth but also of communicating it to all five senses we possess. Indeed, in the 1986 exhibition The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890–1985, American curator Maurice Tuchman asserted that the “genesis and development of abstract art were inextricably tied to spiritual ideas current in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.” Known as a radical abstractionist, Mondrian is also regarded as a spiritual painter, and many writers have explored mystical content in abstraction, seeing grids as spiritual thresholds. Mondrian was a member of the Dutch and the French Theosophical Societies, and once said that he “got everything from the Secret Doctrine” of Theosophy, which was an attempt by its founder Helena Petrovna Blavatsky to read, digest and synthesise all religions. McCahon grappled with Mondrian, commenting, “Mondrian, it seemed to me, came up in this century as a great barrier – the painting to END all painting. As a painter, how do you get around either a Michelangelo or a Mondrian? It seems that the only way is not more ‘masking tape’ but more involvement in the human situation.” This shift from perfection to connection defined McCahon’s practice. Like Mondrian, his desire to express a spiritual essence to the viewer through his work, and communicate the universal questions and concerns of humanity, led to a simplification of composition in which line, shape and colour are significant. In this sense, The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version) is a distillation of Bellini’s Christian symbolism and an exploration of how meaning can be communicated with sparse means. Both traditionalist and radical innovator, McCahon dared to ask humanity’s big questions, those of doubt and of faith, of hope and despair, with simple form. The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version) is a remarkable work, offering substance and engagement with spiritual matters without the easy handrails offered by the figures, narratives and texts of McCahon’s earlier as well as later practice.
Colin McCahon Here I give thanks to Mondrian 1961 enamel on hardboard 1215 x 915mm Collection of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (acquired 1964).
1 Gordon H. Brown, Colin McCahon: Artist (Wellington, NZ: A. H. and A. W. Reed, 1984), 35. 2 William McCahon, “The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version),” (unpublished essay, January 2002) as quoted in Marja Bloem and Martin Browne, Colin McCahon: A Question of Faith (Nelson, NZ and Amsterdam, Netherlands: Craig Potton Publishing and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2002), np. 3
Ibid., 50.
4 Carel Blotkamp, Mondrian: The Art of Destruction (London, UK: Reaktion Books, 2001), np. Webb's
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62 Marti Friedlander Ralph Hotere & Bill Culbert with Blackwater 1999 gelatin silver print signed Marti Friedlander in graphite lower right 104 x 205mm est $4,000 — $6,000 Provenance Private collection, Wellington. Gifted by the artist, c2005. Webb's
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63 Ralph Hotere Black Window 1982-91 burnished steel, acrylic on board and leadhead nails in original villa sash window frame signed Hotere and inscribed PORT CHALMERS in graphite right edge; signed HOTERE, dated 1982 - Feb '91 and inscribed Port Chalmers in ink verso; inscribed BLACK WINDOW. in ink verso 1120 x 952mm est $100,000 — $150,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Sue Crockford Gallery, Auckland, c1995. Webb's
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Literature Kriselle Baker and Vincent O'Sullivan, Hotere (Auckland: Ron Sang publications, 2008), 220. 123
Ralph Hotere - Black Window Essay by SAMANTHA TAYLOR
Hotere’s Black Window paintings were a departure from his earlier practise because their message was not infused into lush visual heraldry. Rather than quietly persuade the viewer as to the merits of its cause, Black Window gives physical form to the unequal power relationship that is the basis of New Zealand’s nationhood. Webb's
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Hotere’s Black Window series found its impetus in a significant event in New Zealand’s cultural history: the Save Aramoana campaign that commenced in 1974 and stood in opposition to the planned construction of an aluminium smelter at the Aramoana settlement on the Otago Peninsula. The campaign was motivated by the fact that the development of the smelter would displace the communities of both Aramoana and the nearby village of Te Ngaru and it resulted in the settlement’s reactionary measure of declaring itself a sovereign state, a ‘micro nation’ with its own border posts and passports, on 23 December 1980. The campaign would eventually prevail over the movement to build the smelter and, to Hotere, the events that unfolded in Aramoana were not significant because of the fact that a small community eventually triumphed over a much larger oppressor but rather because the campaign’s central concern was the right of an indigenous community to self-determination. In Hotere’s work, the references to Aramoana do not simply refer to a conflict over an aluminium smelter. Instead, the Aramoana threat was emblematic of the plight that the tangata whenua continue to face under the system of governance imposed by the Treaty of Waitangi. Like a functional architectural window, Black Window (1982-91) seeks to present the viewer with a carefully selected vantage to a world outside of their own immediate physical environment. The work presents a bleak outlook, with the harsh metallic picture plane against a black ground. The cross form is repeated throughout the work and plays to traditional symbolic readings: it functions both as a reference to cardinal points and as a representation of the unity between divinity (the vertical line) and the physical world (the horizontal line). The colour black has a ubiquitous presence in Hotere’s practice - the artist’s friend and colleague, Hone Tuwhare, refers to its presence as a ‘visual kind of starvation’¹ – and in Black Window, the dark matter is held up like a blockade and denies the viewer any scenery or perspective. While Ralph Hotere’s practise is deeply politicized, it was not until the early 1980s, when his Black Window series was produced, that he openly engaged with contemporary political discourse. Prior to this, the concerns echoed in Black Window were still present, however, they were often hidden behind a complex set of reference points. For example, Hotere’s Black Paintings of the late 1960s and early 1970s engaged with the aroha of the tangata whenua by constructing a waiata from abstract visual harmonics and his Sangro series of the late 1970s engaged with the issue of self-determination by recalling the death of his brother Jack in the Second Word War. Hotere’s Black Window paintings were a departure from his earlier practise because their message was not infused into lush visual heraldry. Rather than quietly persuade the viewer as to the merits of its cause, Black Window gives physical form to the unequal power relationship that is the basis of New Zealand’s nationhood.
63 Ralph Hotere Black Window 1982-91 burnished steel, acrylic on board and leadhead nails in original villa sash window frame signed Hotere and inscribed PORT CHALMERS in graphite right edge; signed HOTERE, dated 1982 - Feb '91 and inscribed Port Chalmers in ink verso; inscribed BLACK WINDOW. in ink verso 1120 x 952mm est $100,000 — $150,000
1 Tuwhare, Hone. “Hotere.” Deep River Talk: Collected Poems (Godwit Press: Auckland, 1993), p. 51. Webb's
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64 Robert Ellis City in a Red Landscape 1963 oil on board signed Robert Ellis and dated '63 in brushpoint lower left; signed ROBERT ELLIS, dated 1963 and inscribed ROBERT ELLIS/'CITY IN A RED LANDSCAPE'/152 X 122 cms/OIL ON BOARD in brushpoint verso; printed ROBERT ELLIS/City in a Red landscape (1963)/oil on board on label affixed verso 1510 x 1205mm est $18,000 — $26,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Webb's
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65 Robert Ellis The City with Obliterated Cone 1966 oil on canvas signed Robert Ellis and dated '66 in brushpoint lower right; signed ROBERT ELLIS, dated 1966 and inscribed TITLE: "CITY WITH OBLITERATED CONE/SIZE 127 X 101 cm/AUCKLAND N.Z. in ink verso; printed Robert Ellis/The City with Obliterated Cone/soil on canvas/signed and dated 1966 on Ferner Gallery of Fine Art label affixed verso 1260 x 1010mm est $15,000 — $18,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Webb's
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66 Don Driver Carnival 2 1992 wood, acrylic, mirrorred plastic, plastic pipe, doll parts, metal tin, radio components, plastic lids, hot glue, wire, screws signed DRIVER, dated 1992 and inscribed CARNIVAL 2 in ink on underside 470 x 425 x 240mm
67 Terry Stringer untitled 1987 oil on aluminum, bronze signed TERRY STRINGER and dated ‘87 in brushpoint lower edge 630 x 630 x 100mm (widest points)
est $4,000 — $6,000
est $6,000 — $8,000
Provenance Private collection, New Plymouth.
Provenance Private collection, Auckland.
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68 Estate of L Budd & Chris Heaphy untitled oilstick, acrylic, graphite on paper inscribed fig a/fig b - c in graphite 535 x 1005 mm
est $3,000 — $5,000
est $2,000 — $3,000
Provenance Private collection, Wellington. Gifted by the artist, c2010.
Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Webb's
69 Marti Friedlander Garden of Remembrance 2003 gelatin silver print signed Marti Friedlander, dated 2003 and inscribed ‘Garden of remembrance’/Jewish Museum Berlin in graphite lower edge 295 x 200mm
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70 Ralph Gibson Untitled (Building Exterior with Arrow....) 1968 gelatin silver print signed Ralph Gibson and dated 1969 in graphite verso 235 x 155mm
71 Inge Morath A Llama in Times Square 1957 gelatin silver print signed Inge Morath in ink verso 230 x 220mm
est $1,000 — $1,500
est $2,000 — $3,000
Provenance Private collection, Melbourne. Acquired privately, 2019; private collection, Melbourne. Passed by descent, 2019; collection of Martin Lum, Australia.
Provenance Private collection, Melbourne. Acquired privately, 2019; private collection, Melbourne. Passed by descent, 2019; collection of Martin Lum, Australia.
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72 Walker Evans untitled 1930 gelatin silver print inscribed 7342/8057/[WALKER EVANS, 1930S, USA./PRINT FROM LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/ WASHINGTON, D.C. 1980/COLLECTION OF JOHN B. TURNER/18.6 X 240 in graphite in another hand verso 190 x 240mm est $500 — $1,000
est $500 — $1,000 Provenance Collection of John B Turner, Beijing. Note This print was produced for publicity purposes by Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Provenance Collection of John B Turner, Beijing. Webb's
73 Walker Evans Cottage at Ossining Camp Woods, New York, 1930 1930. Printed 1971. gelatin silver print stamped WALKER EVANS/The Museum of Modern Art, New York/January 27 - April 11, 1971 verso 140 x 185mm
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74 Olivia Spencer Bower Totaranui (Tasman National Park) c1970 acrylic on board signed OLIVIA SPENCER BOWER in brushpoint lower left 780 x 565mm
75 Geoff Thornley Edge & Yield 1971 acrylic on paper signed Thornley, dated 1971 and inscribed Yielding. Stupa Series. 42-28. in brushpoint verso; printed Geoff Thornley./1971/“Edge & Yield” on label affixed verso 1070 x 710mm
est $6,000 — $9,000
est $4,000 — $7,000
Provenance Collection of Tim and Helen Beaglehole, Wellington. Acquired from Elva Bett Gallery, Wellington, c1970.
Provenance Collection of Tim and Helen Beaglehole, Wellington. Acquired from Elva Bett Gallery, Wellington, c1971.
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77 Trevor Moffitt Emptying the Catcher 1982 oil on board signed Moffit and dated 82 in brushpoint lower right; inscribed No19/Emptying the Catcher/$500 in pastel verso 650 x 650mm
76 Julia Morison Flipside IV 2015 acrylic and ink on linen 1200 x 1000mm est $12,000 — $18,000 Provenance Private collection, Christchurch.
est $8,000 — $16,000
Exhibitions Omnium Gatherum, Two Rooms, Auckland, 22 April - 28 May 2016.
Provenance Private collection, Canterbury. Acquired from Canterbury Gallery, Christchurch, c1988.
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78 Evelyn Page Plate of Apples 1974 oil on canvasboard signed E PAGE in brushpoint lower right; signed EVELYN PAGE, dated Sept. 1974 and inscribed PLATE OF APPLES/$450-00 in graphite verso; inscribed Helen & Tim Beaglehole in ink in another hand verso 350 x 268mm est $12,000 — $18,000 Provenance Collection of Tim and Helen Beaglehole, Wellington. Acquired from Elva Bett Gallery, Wellington, 1974. Webb's
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Exhibitions Elva Bett Gallery, Wellington, 1974. 134
79 Evelyn Page St Mary Vedast of all Angels 1950 oil on canvasboard signed E PAGE in brushpoint lower left; signed EVELYN PAGE, dated 10-10-0 and inscribed No 1/ ST MARY VEDAST OF ALL ANGELS/THE CITY in graphite verso 220 x 310mm est $8,000 — $14,000 Provenance Collection of Tim and Helen Beaglehole, Wellington. Passed by descent; collection of John and Elsie Beaglehole. Acquired 1950. Webb's
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80 Evelyn Page untitled c1968 watercolour on paper signed EVELYN PAGE in graphite lower left 360 x 450mm est $4,000 — $8,000 Provenance Collection of Tim and Helen Beaglehole, Wellington. 135
81 Chris Heaphy untitled c2007 acrylic on linen 1300 x 1000mm est $4,000 - $8,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Webb's
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82 Chris Heaphy untitled acrylic on canvas 1650 x 2380mm est $10,000 — $16,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Webb's
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Chris Heaphy - Tracing Legacies Essay by TASHA JENKINS
Walters’ legacy continued to influence Heaphy and is evident in much of his work produced after this time. The untitled work presented in this catalogue is the final version of a rougher collage Heaphy made in the late 1990s, shortly after his time spent with Walters. Webb's
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Painter Chris Heaphy (Ngati Tahu) explores issues of identity, culture, and symbolism through his work. His approach to painting has evolved over time – shifting colour palettes, symbols and compositions – but he has maintained these themes through abstracted shapes and symbols drawn from both Māori and Pākehā iconography. The recurring symbols evade strict interpretation, which Heaphy refers to as the “slippage of meaning of the symbol.”¹ The untitled work in this catalogue employs many of these symbols, and draws on Heaphy’s close friendship with artist Gordon Walters and the collaborative works they produced together. Heaphy first discovered Walters’ work when working at Manawatu Art Gallery shortly after leaving high school. Most famous for his koru painting series, Walters was already a wellestablished artist, and his amalgamation of abstract modernism and Māori motifs appealed to Heaphy. Heaphy’s interest in the artist continued throughout his studies at Ilam School of Fine Arts, and in the early 1990s he wrote to Walters expressing an interest in his work, as they were to be paired for an upcoming exhibition in Wellington. Stop Making Sense brought together 15 pairs of Māori and Pākehā artists who were to collaborate on a work for the exhibition. Curator George Hubbard stated: “With Stop Making Sense, I am more interested in blurring the boundaries of Māori and Pākehā cultures, and curating a show where the audience will have to decide for themselves what is going on, instead of being bashed around the head by some high-flying politically correct curatorial rationale.”² Walters and Heaphy prescribed to this statement, producing an untitled diptych that seems to place painted symbols as if they are puzzle pieces the audience must put together. Untitled (1994) (one half of which is now held in the Auckland Art Gallery collection) resembles a game of symbols, with each artist seeming to take turns placing symbols that interact with each other in turn. The two panels showcase elements of both Walters’ and Heaphy’s practices, including roughly drawn koru patterns bent into heart-like formations, simplified black-and-white shapes, and an emphasis on form and lines. Walters and Heaphy continued to work together after this exhibition, producing several collaborations until Walters’ death in November 1995. Walters’ legacy continued to influence Heaphy and is evident in much of his work produced after this time. The untitled work presented in this catalogue is the final version of a rougher collage Heaphy made in the late 1990s, shortly after his time spent with Walters. Walters’ influence is obvious in the use of the iconic interlocking black-and-white koru and the heart shapes first seen in the work in Stop Making Sense, which are interspersed with precise diamond and club shapes. While Walters said he deliberately used a limited selection of forms, and that “the forms I use have no descriptive value in themselves and are used solely to demonstrate relations”,³ Heaphy seems more deliberate in his references to Māori and Pākehā symbols: the shapes used and the colour palette of black, white and red simultaneously recall traditional Māori patterns and playing cards. This painting pays homage to Walters while also utilising Heaphy’s own interest in the “slippage” of meanings.
82 Chris Heaphy untitled acrylic on canvas 1650 x 2380mm est
$10,000 — $16,000
Chris Heaphy, untitled, collage.
Gordon Walters standing with a collaborative painting by Chris Heaphy and himself.
1 “Chris Heaphy / Sea of Tranquillity,” Gow Langsford Gallery, https://web. archive.org/web/20130212011549/http:// gowlangsfordgallery.co.nz/exhibitions/ pastexhibitions/chrisheaphy2008.asp 2 George Hubbard, Stop Making Sense: Who’s Pushing the Bandwagon Anyway? (Wellington, NZ: City Gallery, 1995). 3 Michael Dunn, “The Enigma of Gordon Walters' Art,” Art New Zealand 9 (February/March/April 1978): 63. Webb's
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83 John Johns Red Beech Forest, Lake Sumner Forest Park c1972 gelatin silver print inscribed 7A 37 3/7/M11,608/Ilbo 2/Reed Beech forest/Between Lake Marion & Lake Sumner Canterbury/Lake Sumner Forest Park/[PRINT U]/ Photo by John Johns/1980's/7-90.5 in ink and graphite in another hand verso 256 x 198mm est $1,500 — $2,500 Provenance The estate of John Johns, Wellington. Webb's
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84 John Johns Flattened Larch Stands, Hamner Forest, Canterbury c1960 gelatin silver print inscribed Flattened larch stands (wind damage) Hamner Forest, Canterbury./6:025/A 2/4/M12043/ Photo & print by John Johns in ink and graphite in another hand verso 243 x 240mm est $1,000 — $2,000 Provenance The estate of John Johns, Wellington.
est $900 — $1,800
Collections Another from the edition held in the collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu (acquired 2003). Webb's
85 John Johns Golden Downs Forest, Nelson c1970 gelatin silver print inscribed Golden Downs Forest/Nelson 1970s/6F 21 1/4/M9247/Photo and print by John Johns in graphite in another hand verso 160 x 208mm
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Provenance The estate of John Johns, Wellington. 141
86 John Johns NZ Iris c1970 gelatin silver print inscribed NZ Iris/13 B 2/2/2/Photo and Print by John Johns in graphite in another hand verso 100 x 125 mm
87 John Johns Sundew Flower 1972 gelatin silver print inscribed Sundew Flower./1972/13 B 46 2/10/20.10.72/7/Photo and print by John Johns in ink and graphite in another hand verso 155 x 145mm
est $900 — $1,800
est $900 — $1,800
Provenance The estate of John Johns, Wellington.
Provenance The estate of John Johns, Wellington.
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88 John Johns Fern Frond 1972 gelatin silver print inscribed Fern Frond, 1972/13B 62 2/2/July 72/ Spare Photo 49 in graphite in another hand verso 215 x 166mm
89 John Johns Foxglove c1980 gelatin silver print inscribed [FOXGLOVE, 530, STOKES VALLEY RD.]/1980s/13A 15/ 1/2/Photo and print by John Johns in graphite verso 203 x 159mm
est $900 — $1,800
est $900 — $1,800
Provenance The estate of John Johns, Wellington.
Provenance The estate of John Johns, Wellington.
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90 John Johns Soil Erosion - Earth Pinnacles in the Harper Valley 1976 gelatin silver print inscribed [SOIL EROSION - EARTH PINNACLES IN THE HARPER VALLEY, 1976]/6c 12 2/2/24.9.76/3/Photo & print by John Johns in graphite in another hand verso 220 x 161mm
91 John Johns Harakeke 1972 gelatin silver print inscribed Harakeke (N.Z flax)/13B 49a 1/5 /12.12.72/2 (19)/5/4/2/Similar to 12.12.72/1/ Photo and print by John Johns in ink and graphite in another hand verso 250 x 135mm
est $900 — $1,800
est $900 — $1,800
Provenance The estate of John Johns, Wellington.
Provenance The estate of John Johns, Wellington.
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92 John Johns Frond of Blechnum Fern 1972 gelatin silver print inscribed [FROND OF BLECHNUM FERN] 1972/13 B 69 1/2/13.11.72/4/Photo and print by John Johns in graphite in another hand verso 260 x 190mm
93 John Johns Untouched Forest 1989 gelatin silver print inscribed “Untouched forest”/Westland's Wealth/6E 23 3/3/Photograph and print by John Johns/ NZCP14/1989/2ML in graphite in another hand verso 213 x 228mm
est $900 — $1,800
est $1,000 — $2,000
Provenance The estate of John Johns, Wellington.
Provenance The estate of John Johns, Wellington.
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John Johns - The Right Track Essay by ANDREW CLARK
84 John Johns Flattened Larch Stands, Hamner Forest, Canterbury c1960 gelatin silver print inscribed Flattened larch stands (wind damage) Hamner Forest, Canterbury./6:025/A 2/4/ M12043/Photo & print by John Johns in ink and graphite in another hand verso 243 x 240mm est Webb's
$1,000 — $2,000
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“When Daguerre announced his great invention to the public in the summer of 1893, he explained how it worked but not really what it was for.” – John Szarkowski¹ John Johns became interested in photography in his youth and bought his first camera, a Vest Pocket Kodak, before being called up for military service in 1942. In the RAF, he was trained as a wireless radio mechanic, but developed his photography skills with the help of other servicemen and later under the guidance of Tom Stobard (of Everest 1953 fame) and Douglas Woolf during forestry training at Dartington Hall, Devonshire, the Forest of Dean, and in Wales. Johns came to New Zealand in 1951. Having trained in forestry, he was able to find work as the official photographer for the New Zealand Forest service, a position he was to hold until 1984, only three years before the Forest Service itself was scrapped and its functions folded into the newlyformed Department of Conservation. As well as a talented photographer, Johns was an ardent believer in the value of sustainable forestry practices, and his works often have a conservationist message. In this regard, Johns is a unique figure in New Zealand’s photographic canon, and one whose work feels particularly relevant in the current historical moment. Rather than photographing the natural world purely for its aesthetic value, Johns’ work has a didactic purpose, seeking to educate the public about the value of forestry. These works also speak about the way the natural world enriches human life, and the intrinsic connections between people and the environment. Johns photographed with a purpose, and this strand of discourse runs through and connects all of his works, linking the beauty and simplicity of natural forms to their practical advantages and ecological functions. Johns’ work has a precision, clarity of vision and emphasis on formal composition that show clear links to the “Pure Photography” espoused by Ansel Adams, which emphasised a lack of artifice and discouraged excessive darkroom manipulation of images. Indeed, Johns attended two of Adams’ workshops, travelling to California in 1978 and again in 1980 to attend. At one of these events, Johns had his photographs critiqued by esteemed photographic curator, historian and critic John Szarkowski, who generally praised his efforts and, in the photographer’s own words, “confirmed that JJ [was] on the right track.”² Any compliment at all from Szarkowski was a considerable coup, given that he was, at the time, the Director of Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Within his close-up works, it is clear that Johns drew inspiration from Ansel Adams’ own nature studies, in which a single object such as a pine cone is isolated and becomes a kind of totem, a microcosmic encapsulation of a broader environment, and of a visual approach to that environment. The use of close-up images of plants in modernist photography has a long history, but what is noteworthy about these images is the way they navigate between the opposing poles of scientific, botanical document and abstracted modernist pattern-making. The botanical works of Imogen Cunningham, for example, use plants as a starting point for modernist subdivisions of the picture plane and compositional play, whereas Johns’ photographs retain the essential character of the natural forms in front of his camera. These are not archetypes for the idea of “fern,” or ferns as incidental contributors to modernist dialogue about the natural origins of artistic designs; rather, they are documents of the living plants themselves, multivalent images that contain within them the potential for a range of readings. Johns’ landscape photographs operate differently again; in these images, the scope of the forestry plantation becomes a pattern, but retains its didactic function. Johns described the goal of his photographic practice thus: “My job was to make forestry—long-term, sustainable forestry—digestible to the public. But I started photographing during an era when forestry in New Zealand was still strongly influenced by the ‘cut out 146
and get out’ philosophy of the logging gangs.”³ Sustainable forestry, the planting of vast tracts of pine with fire-breaks and roads accessible to logging trucks, serves as a replacement for the wholesale destruction of native bush by loggers that took place in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For Johns, showing the expansive scope of a plantation is a way of pointing out the expanses of native forest that would have needed to be felled to supply New Zealand’s need for timber. In one particularly striking image, the separate forestry plots, some felled and some still intact, evoke fields of wheat or corn in their regularity. A wisp of cloud, intruding into the corner of the frame, is a reminder that this is a photograph taken from a plane; however, the viewer’s perception of the scale of the work is constantly shifting, a property of photography that Johns exploits here to great effect. Johns work is interesting because it is a case study in what can be achieved through thinking about what photography is actually for, to borrow Szarkowski’s observation. Johns saw in photography a didactic potential that could educate the public and effect real change in the discourse around forestry and conservation, when most of his contemporaries were instead embroiled in the task of establishing the aesthetic credentials of the medium. At a time when threats to the natural world are at the forefront of public consciousness, work like Johns’, which performs the difficult task of carrying an ecological message while also carrying out the business of serious artmaking and intellectual exploration, is all the more relevant and vital.
83 John Johns Red Beech Forest, Lake Sumner Forest Park c1972 gelatin silver print inscribed 7A 37 3/7/M11,608/Ilbo 2/Reed Beech forest/Between Lake Marion & Lake Sumner Canterbury/Lake Sumner Forest Park/ [PRINT U]/Photo by John Johns/1980's/7-90.5 in ink and graphite in another hand verso 256 x 198mm est
$1,500 — $2,500
1 John Szarkowski, Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1973), 14. 2 John and Bobbie Johns, interview with Desmond Kelley, transcription from audio recording Tape 3a transcript, 3. 3 Kennedy Warne, “Vision of the Forest,” New Zealand Geographic, accessed 5/03/2019, https://www.nzgeo. com/stories/vision-of-the-forest/ Webb's
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Terms and Conditions The terms and conditions of sale listed here contain the policies of Webb’s Ltd. They are the terms on which Webb’s Ltd and the Seller contract with the Buyer. They may be amended by printed Saleroom Notices or oral announcements made before and during the sale. By bidding at auction you agree to be bound by these terms.
1. Background to the Terms used in these Conditions
property is therefore made between the Seller and the Buyer.
The conditions that are listed below contain terms that are used regularly and may need explanation. They are as follows:
3.
“the Buyer” means the person with the highest bid accepted by the Auctioneer. “the Lot” means any item depicted within the sale for auction and in particular the item or items described against any lot number in the catalogue. “the Hammer price” means the amount of the highest bid accepted by the auctioneer in relation to a lot. “the Buyer’s Premium” means the charge payable by the Buyer to the auction house as a percentage of the hammer price. “the Reserve” means the lowest amount at which Webb’s has agreed with the Seller that the lot can be sold. “Forgery” means an item constituting an imitation originally conceived and executed as a whole, with a fraudulent intention to deceive as to authorship, origin, age, period, culture or source, where the correct description as to such matters is not reflected by the description in the catalogue. Accordingly no lot shall be capable of being a forgery by reason of any damage or restoration work of any kind (Including re-painting). “the insured value” means the amount that Webb’s in its absolute discretion from time to time shall consider the value for which a lot should be covered for insurance (whether or not insurance is arranged by Webb’s). All values expressed in Webb’s Ltd catalogues (in any format) are in New Zealand Dollars (NZD$). All bids, “hammer price”, “reserves”, “Buyers Premium” and other expressions of value are understood by all parties to be in New Zealand Dollars (NZD$) unless otherwise specified. 2.
Webb’s Auctions as Agent
Except as otherwise stated Webb’s Ltd acts as agent for the Seller.
Before the Sale
1. Examination of Property Prospective Buyers are strongly advised to examine in person any property in which they are interested before the Auction takes place. Neither Webb’s nor the Seller provides any guarantee in relation to the nature of the property apart from the Limited warranty in the paragraph below. The property is otherwise sold “AS IS” 2. Catalogue and Other Descriptions All statements by Webb’s in the catalogue entry for the property or in the condition report, or made orally or in writing elsewhere, are statements of opinion and are not to be relied upon as statements of fact. Such statements do not constitute a representation, warranty or assumption of liability by Webb’s of any kind. References in the catalogue entry to the condition report to damage or restoration are for guidance only and should be evaluated by personal inspection by the bidder or a knowledgeable representative. The absence of such a reference does not imply that an item is free from defects or restoration, nor does a reference to particular defects imply the absence of any others. Estimates of the selling price should not be relied on as a statement that this is the price at which the item will sell or it’s value for any other purpose. Neither Webb’s nor The Seller is responsible for any errors or omissions in the catalogue or any supplemental material. Images are measured height by width (sight size). Illustrations are provided only as a guide and should not be relied upon as a true representation of colour or condition. Images are not shown at a standard scale. Mention is rarely made of frames (which may be provided as supplementary images on the website) which do not form part of the lot as described in the printed catalogue. An item bought “on Extension” must be paid for in full before it will be released to the purchaser or his/ her agreed expertising committee or specialist. Payments received for
The contract for the sale of the Webb's
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such items will be held “in trust” for up to 90 days or earlier, if the issue of authenticity has been resolved more quickly. Extensions must be requested before the auction. Foreign buyers should note that all transactions are in New Zealand Dollars so there may be a small exchange rate risk. The costs associated with acquiring a good opinion or certificate will be carried by the purchaser. If the item turns out to be forged or otherwise incorrectly described, all reasonable costs will be borne by the vendor. 3. Buyers Responsibility All property is sold “as is” without representation or warranty of any kind by Webb’s or the Seller. Buyers are responsible for satisfying themselves concerning the condition of the property and the matters referred to in the catalogue by requesting a condition report. No lot to be rejected if, subsequent to the sale, it has been immersed in liquid or treated by any other process unless the Auctioneer’s permission to subject the lot to such immersion or treatment has first been obtained in writing. 4.
At the Sale
1. Refusal of Admission Webb’s reserves the right at our complete discretion to refuse admission to the auction premises or participation in any auction and to reject any bid. 2. Registration Before Bidding Any prospective new buyer must complete and sign a registration form and provide photo identification before bidding. Webb’s may request bank, trade or other financial references to substantiate this registration. 3. Bidding as a Principal When making a bid, a bidder is accepting personal liability to pay the purchase price including the buyer’s premium and all applicable taxes, plus all other applicable charges, unless it has been explicitly agreed in writing with Webb’s before the commencement of the sale that the bidder is acting as agent on behalf of an identified third party acceptable to Webb’s and that Webb’s will only look to the principal for payment. 4. International Registrations All International clients not known Webb's
to Webb’s will be required to scan or fax through an accredited form of photo identification and pay a deposit at our discretion in cleared funds into Webb’s account at least 24 hours before the commencement of the auction. Bids will not be accepted without this deposit. Webb’s also reserves the right to request any additional forms of identification prior to registering an overseas bid.
should contact be unsuccessful at the time of Auction. You must advise Webb’s of the lots in question and you will be assumed to be a buyer at the minimum price of 75% of estimate (i.e. reserve) for all such lots. Webb’s will advise Telephone Bidders who have registered at least 24 hours before the auction of any relevant changes to descriptions, withdrawals or any other sale room notices.
This deposit can be made using a credit card, however the balance of any purchase price in excess of $5,000 cannot be charged to this card without prior arrangement.
7. Online Bidding Webb’s offers an online bidding service. When bidding online the buyer agrees to be bound by all terms and conditions listed here by Webb’s.
This deposit is redeemable against any auction purchase and will be refunded in full if no purchases are made. 5. Absentee Bids Webb’s will use reasonable efforts to execute written bids delivered to us AT LEAST 24 Hours before the sale for the convenience of those clients who are unable to attend the auction in person. If we receive identical written bids on a particular lot, and at the auction these are the highest bids on that lot, then the lot will be sold to the person whose written bid was received and accepted first. Execution of written bids is a free service undertaken subject to other commitments at the time of the sale and we do not accept liability for failing to execute a written bid or for errors or omissions which may arise. It is the bidder’s responsibility to check with Webb’s after the auction if they were successful. Unlimited or “Buy” bids will not be accepted. 6. Telephone Bids Priority will be given to overseas and bidders from other regions. Please refer to the catalogue for the Telephone Bids form. Arrangements for this service must be confirmed AT LEAST 24 HOURS PRIOR to the auction commencing. Webb’s accepts no responsibility whatsoever for any errors or failure to execute bids. In telephone bidding the buyer agrees to be bound by all terms and conditions listed here and accepts that Webb’s cannot be held responsible for any miscommunications in the process. The success of telephone bidding cannot be guaranteed due to circumstances that are unforeseen. Buyers should be aware of the risk and accept the consequences
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Webb’s accepts no responsibility for any errors, failure to execute bids or any other miscommunications regarding this process. It is the online bidder’s responsibility to ensure the accuracy of the relevant information regarding bids, lot numbers and contact details. Webb’s does not charge for this service. 8. Reserves Unless otherwise indicated, all lots are offered subject to a reserve, which is the confidential minimum price below which the Lot will not be sold. The reserve will not exceed the low estimate printed in the catalogue. The auctioneer may open the bidding on any Lot below the reserve by placing a bid on behalf of the Seller. The auctioneer may continue to bid on behalf of seller up to the amount of the reserve, either by placing consecutive bids or by placing bids in response to other bidders. 9. Auctioneers Discretion The Auctioneer has the right at his/ her absolute and sole discretion to refuse any bid, to advance the bidding in such a manner as he/ she may decide, to withdraw or divide any lot, to combine any two or more lots and, in the case or error or dispute and whether during or after the sale, to determine the successful bidder, to continue the bidding, to cancel the sale or to reoffer and resell the item in dispute. If any dispute arises after the sale, then Webb’s sale record is conclusive. 10. Successful Bid and Passing of Risk Subject to the auctioneer’s discretion, the highest bidder
accepted by the auctioneer will be the buyer and the striking of his hammer marks the acceptance of the highest bid and the conclusion of a contract for sale between the Seller and the Buyer. Risk and responsibility for the lot (including frames or glass where relevant) passes immediately to the Buyer. 11. Indicative Bidding Steps, etc. Webb’s reserves the right to refuse any bid, withdraw any lot from sale, to place a reserve on any lot and to advance the bidding according to the following indicative steps: Increment Dollar Range Amount $20 $0–$500 $50 $500–$1,000 $100 $1,000–$2,000 $200 $2,000–$5,000 $500 $5,000–$10,000 $1,000 $10,000–$20,000 $2,000 $20,000–$50,000 $5,000 $50,000 – $100,000 $10,000 $100,000–$200,000 $20,000 $200,000–$500,000 $50,000 $500,000–$1,000,000 Absentee bids must follow these increments and any bids that don’t follow the steps will be rounded up to the nearest acceptable bid. 5.
After the Sale
1. Buyers Premium In addition to the hammer price, the buyer agrees to pay to Webb’s the buyer’s premium. The buyer’s premium is 17.5% of the hammer price plus GST. (Goods and Services Tax) where applicable. 2. Payment and Passing of Title The buyer must pay the full amount due (comprising the hammer price, buyer’s premium and any applicable taxes and GST) not later than 5 days after the auction date. The buyer will not acquire title to the lot until Webb’s receives full payment in cleared funds, and no goods under any circumstances will be released without confirmation of cleared funds received. This applies even if the buyer wishes to send items overseas. Payment can be made by direct transfer, cash (not exceeding NZD$10,000, if wishing to pay more than NZD$10,000 then this must be deposited directly into a Bank of New Zealand branch 149
and bank receipt supplied) and EFTPOS (please check the daily limit). Payments can also be made by credit card in person with a 2.2% merchant fee for Visa and Mastercard and 3.3% for American Express. Invoices that are in excess of $5,000 and where the card holder is not present, cannot be charged to a credit card without prior arrangement. Personal cheques are accepted, but funds must be cleared before goods will be released. Bank cheques are subject to five days clearance. The buyer is responsible for any bank fees and charges applicable for the transfer of funds into Webb’s account.
rate as we shall reasonably decide. 2.
3.
to cancel the sale.
4.
to resell the property publicly or privately on such terms as we see fit.
5.
to pay the Seller an amount up to the net proceeds payable in respect of the amount bid by the defaulting Buyer. In these circumstances the defaulting Buyer can have no claim upon Webb’s in the event that the item(s) are sold for an amount greater than the original invoiced amount.
3. Collection of Purchases & Insurance Webb’s is entitled to retain items sold until all amounts due to us have been received in full in good cleared funds. Subject to this, the Buyer shall collect purchased lots within 5 days from the date of the sale unless otherwise agreed in writing between Webb’s and the Buyer. 6.
to set off against any amounts which Webb’s may owe the Buyer in any other transactions, the outstanding amount remaining unpaid by the Buyer.
7.
where several amounts are owed by the Buyer to us, in respect of different transactions, to apply any amount paid to discharge any amount owed in respect of any particular transaction, whether or not the Buyer so directs.
At the fall of the hammer, insurance is the responsibility of the purchaser. 4. Packing, Handling and Shipping Webb’s will be able to suggest removals companies that the buyer can use but takes no responsibility whatsoever for the actions of any recommended third party. Webb’s can pack and handle goods purchased at the auction by agreement and a charge will be made for this service. All packing, shipping, insurance, postage & associated charges will be borne by the purchaser.
8. 5. Permits, Licences and Certificates 6. Under The Protected Objects Act 1975, buyers may be required to obtain a licence for certain categories of items in a sale from the Ministry of Culture & Heritage, PO Box 5364, Wellington.
9.
7. Remedies for Non-Payment If the Buyer fails to make full payment immediately, Webb’s is entitled to exercise one or more of the following rights or remedies (in addition to asserting any other rights or remedies available under the law) 1.
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to hold the defaulting Buyer liable for the total amount due and to commence legal proceedings for its recovery along with interest, legal fees and costs to the fullest extent permitted under applicable law.
to charge interest at such a
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to reject at any future auction any bids made by or on behalf of the Buyer or to obtain a deposit from the Buyer prior to accepting any bids. to exercise all the rights and remedies of a person holding security over any property in our possession owned by the Buyer whether by way of pledge, security interest or in any other way, to the fullest extent permitted by the law of the place where such property is located. The Buyer will be deemed to have been granted such security to us and we may retain
such property as collateral security for said Buyer’s obligations to us. 10.
to take such other action as Webb’s deem necessary or appropriate. If we do sell the property under paragraph (4), then the defaulting Buyer shall be liable for payment of any deficiency between the total amount originally due to us and the price obtained upon reselling as well as for all costs, expenses, damages, legal fees and commissions and premiums of whatever kinds associated with both sales or otherwise arising from the default. If we pay any amount to the Seller under paragraph (5) the Buyer acknowledges that Webb’s shall have all of the rights of the Seller, however arising, to pursue the Buyer for such amount.
8. Failure to Collect Purchases Where purchases are not collected within 5 days from the sale date, whether or not payment has been made, we shall be permitted to remove the property to a warehouse at the buyer’s expense, and only release the items after payment in full has been made of removal, storage handling, insurance and any other costs incurred, together with payment of all other amounts due to us. 6.
history, literature or historical relevance. Except as required by local law any warranty of any kind is excluded by this paragraph. 7.
Limited Warranty
Subject to the terms and conditions of this paragraph, the Seller warrants for the period of thirty days from the date of the sale that any property described in this catalogue (noting such description may be amended by any saleroom notice or announcement) which is stated without qualification to be the work of a named author or authorship is authentic and not a forgery. The term “Author” or “authorship” refers to the creator of the property or to the period, culture, source, or origin as the case may be, with which the creation of such property is identified in the catalogue. The warranty is subject to the following: it does not apply where a) the catalogue description or saleroom notice corresponded to the generally accepted opinion of scholars and experts at the date of the sale or fairly indicated that there was a conflict of opinions, or b) correct identification of a lot can be demonstrated only by means of a scientific process not generally accepted for use until after publication of the catalogue or a process which at the date of the publication of the catalogue was unreasonably expensive or impractical or likely to have caused damage to the property.
Extent of Webb’s Liability
Webb’s agrees to refund the purchase price in the circumstances of the Limited Warranty set out in paragraph 7 below. Apart from that, neither the Seller nor we, nor any of our employees or agents are responsible for the correctness of any statement of whatever kind concerning any lot, whether written or oral, nor for any other errors or omissions in description or for any faults or defects in any lots. Except as stated in paragraph 7 below, neither the Seller, ourselves, our officers, agents or employees give any representation warranty or guarantee or assume any liability of any kind in respect of any lot with regard to merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, description, size, quality, condition, attribution, authenticity, rarity, importance, medium, provenance, exhibition
the benefits of the warranty are not assignable and shall apply only to the original buyer of the lot as shown on the invoice originally issued by Webb’s when the lot was sold at Auction. the Original Buyer must have remained the owner of the lot without disposing of any interest in it to any third party. The Buyer’s sole and exclusive remedy against the Seller in place of any other remedy which might be available, is the cancellation of the sale and the refund of the original purchase price paid for the lot less the buyer’s premium which is nonrefundable. Neither the Seller nor Webb’s will be liable for any special, incidental nor consequential damages including, without
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limitation, loss of profits. The Buyer must give written notice of claim to us within thirty days of the date of the Auction. The Seller shall have the right, to require the Buyer to obtain two written opinions by recognised experts in the field, mutually acceptable to the Buyer and Webb’s to decide whether or not to cancel the sale under warranty. the Buyer must return the lot to Seller in the same condition that it was purchased. 8. Severability If any part of these Conditions of Sale is found by any court to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable, that part shall be discounted and the rest of the Conditions shall continue to be valid to the fullest extent permitted by law.
possible after the sale. Results will include buyer’s premium. These results will be posted at www. webbs.co.nz. 13.
GST is applicable on the hammer price in the case where the seller is selling property that is owned by an entity registered for GST. GST is also applicable on the hammer price in the case where the seller is not a New Zealand resident. These lots are denoted by a dagger symbol † placed next to the estimate. GST is also applicable on the buyer’s premium. Overseas buyers and buyers nonresident in New Zealand will not be charged GST on both hammer price and premiums under the following conditions: 1.
The items are exported through a Webb’s approved freight company including New Zealand Post
2.
The items are exported within 60 days of the date of the sale
9. Copyright The copyright in all images, illustrations and written material produced by Webb’s relating to a lot including the contents of this catalogue, is and shall remain the property at all times of Webb’s and shall not be used by the Buyer, nor by anyone else without our prior written consent. Webb’s and the Seller make no representation or warranty that the Buyer of a property will acquire any copyright or other reproduction rights in it. 10.
Goods and Service Tax
The invoice supplied by Webb’s for purchases will be regarded as a Tax invoice for GST purposes.]
Law and Jurisdiction
These terms and conditions and any matters concerned with the foregoing fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New Zealand, unless otherwise stated. 11.
Pre-Sale Estimates
Webb’s publishes with each catalogue our opinion as to the estimated price range for each lot. These estimates are approximate prices only and are not intended to be definitive. They are prepared well in advance of the sale and may be subject to revision. Interested parties should contact Webb’s prior to auction for updated pre-sale estimates and starting prices. 12.
Sale Results
Webb’s will provide auction results, which will be available as soon as
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Index of Artists
A Aberhart, Laurence
O 102 - 107
B Bullmore, Edward
40
68 79-81, 108,
D Driver, Don Dupain, Max
128 46
38 39, 78
126, 127 129 131
Schoon, Theo 82 - 95 Spencer Bower, Olivia 132 Stichbury, Peter 51 - 53 Stringer, Terry 128 Sutton, Bill 113, 115
43 - 45 122, 129
T
G Gibson, Ralph
Rae, Jude Robinson, Peter S
F Fomison, Tony Friedlander, Marti
Page, Evelyn 134, 135 Pardington, Fiona 63 - 65 Paul, Joanna Margaret 36 Peebles, Don 116 Peryer, Peter 54 - 61 Pick, SĂŠraphine 66 R
E Ellis, Robert Estate of L Budd Evans, Walker
69 - 71
P
C Corner, Katy Cotton, Shane
O'Neill, Ani
130
H Hammond, Bill 34 Hartigan, Paul 50 Heaphy, Chris 129, 136 - 139 Hotere, Ralph 123 - 125
Thornley, Geoff
112, 132
W Walters, Gordon Weeks, John Westra, Ans Woollaston, Toss
34 72 62 41, 42
J Johns, John
140 - 147
K Killeen, Richard
35, 96 - 101
M Maddox, Allen 37 Mapplethorpe, Robert 47 - 49 Maughan, Karl 76, 77 Maw, Liz 67 McCahon, Colin 73 - 75, 109 - 111, 117 - 121 Moffitt, Trevor 133 Morath, Inge 130 Morison, Julia 133
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This Catalogue is Environmentally Friendly At Webb’s we are committed to finding the most sustainable printing options available in our industry.
FSC® is an independent, non-governmental, not for profit organisation established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests.
Our Cover is printed on an environmentally responsible paper produced using ECF (Element Chlorine Free) and manufactured under the strict ISO14001 & EMAS Environmental Management Systems. It is economical and versatile and has wood fibre from sustainable forest. Our Text is printed on an extremely white, high quality range of coated papers & boards, with excellent bulk and an outstanding smooth, even surface that delivers exceptionally vibrant print production. Produced using ECF (Element Chlorine Free) and manufactured under the strict ISO14001 & EMAS Environmental Management Systems. The catalogue was printed by Crucial Colour an FSC® certified company
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