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New Zealand’s Premier Auction House
IMPORTANT PAINTINGS & CONTEMPORARY ART 31 JULY 2014 CONSIGN NOW
Webb’s
IMPORTANT PAINTINGS & CONTEMPORARY ART INCLUDING WORKS FROM THE COLLECTION OF HELENE QUILTER
31 JULY 2014
CONSIGN NOW ENTRIES CLOSE 25 JUNE 2014
Webb’s Auction House. 18 Manukau Road, Newmarket, Auckland 1149, New Zealand Ph: 09 524 6804 E:auctions@webbs.co.nz www.webbs.co.nz
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New Zealand’s Premier Auction House
Webb’s
Following a six-month period which has seen Webb’s generate a number of milestone results, such as the highest price achieved for a living New Zealand artist in half a decade, the highest turnover of the 2013 calendar year and the highest price of the first auction season for 2014, we are now inviting entries for the next flagship sale of fine art.
Cover: Michael Stevenson Mother of Harlots, 760mm x 5560mm. Estimate $8,000 - $12,000 Inside cover: Julian Dashper Chain Frame, 1760mm x 1060mm (overall). Estimate $3,000 - $6,000 From the collection of Helene Quilter.
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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New Zealand’s Premier Auction House
Webb’s
Our winter catalogue is an in-depth walk through the history of art-making in New Zealand. Touching upon defining moments, the catalogue begins with Colin McCahon’s seminal Elias, delves into abstraction from the ’60s and ’70s, surveys painting and conceptual art from the ’90s, and emerges with cutting-edge practice made during the last 10 years.
Marti Friedlander Doris Lusk 1978 (pictured before Elias and other works from her personal collection) Collection of Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tamaki. Reproduced courtesy of Auckland Art Gallery and the artist.
Throughout the New Zealand auction market’s ascendance over the last two years, the artworks that have performed best have served almost as a ledger that reflects key moments in New Zealand’s cultural history. In some instances, the results echo distant moments that influenced the trajectory of aesthetic production in our nation; this is the case with Colin McCahon’s Kauri Trees, Titirangi (1955– 1957), which achieved $412,700 in March. In other instances, such as the sale of Bill Hammond’s Farmer’s Market (2008) for $328,300 last November, the results illustrate new chapters in New Zealand’s art-historical narrative. The fact that, in recent years, the market’s buying patterns have crystallised so succinctly into a series of high-value transactions which celebrate key artistic developments demonstrates that now, more than ever, the secondary market is focused on quality works of art that are underpinned by innate cultural importance. Webb’s upcoming catalogue of Important Paintings & Contemporary Art, which heralds an auction taking place on 31 July, approaches New Zealand’s art history from a unique vantage. Beginning with Colin McCahon’s seminal Elias, painted in 1959 subsequent to a research tour of America, the catalogue moves through the development of art-making in New Zealand to the present day. A particular area of focus is a number of early forays into minimalism and concrete, non-objective abstraction from the late ’60s, with the inclusion of Euclid, the most important Relief painting by Don Driver ever presented to the market, and a rare,
Contact: Sophie Coupland Head of Fine Art Department Mobile: +64 21 510 876 DDI: +64 9 529 5603 scoupland@webbs.co.nz
shaped canvas by Ralph Hotere entitled Big Red X. Further, New Zealand painting from the 1970s, which saw its prominent proponents explore alternate world views from those which defined mainstream New Zealand society at the time, is explored from a number of different angles with the inclusion of work from McCahon’s Necessary Protection series and a painting from Pat Hanly’s celebrated Torso series, which, among others, will be presented to the market for the first time. The inclusion of works from the collection of Helene Quilter, a major private collector of contemporary New Zealand artworks, anchors the catalogue’s presentation of pieces from the 1990s. Including major works by Bill Hammond, Peter Robinson, Tony de Lautour and Seraphine Pick, the collection is a comprehensive examination of a decade in which New Zealand artists actively engaged with the notions of personal and cultural identity. The collection also includes a number of significant works by conceptual New Zealand artists who practiced in the 1990s such as Michael Stevenson, L. Budd and Julian Dashper – all of whom have developed international reputations in the years since the works were originally purchased. The majority has been on long-term loan to GovettBrewster Art Gallery since 1998 and was the subject of a major exhibition at the gallery in that year. Additionally, a number of works from the collection were included in A Very Peculiar Practice; a landmark survey of New Zealand art-making from the early 1990s held at City Gallery Wellington in 1995.
Contact: Charles Ninow Senior Specialist, Fine Art Mobile: +64 29 770 4767 DDI: +64 9 529 5601 cninow@webbs.co.nz
Moving forward, early consignments to the sale include an expansive survey of contemporary artworks made within the last 10 years. There are examples by senior practitioners such as: Dick Frizzell, whose practice will be represented by one of his most significant paintings, The Sailor Returns, which reflects on the cultural legacy of Picasso’s cornerstone Les Demoiselles d’Avignon; Max Gimblett, whose significant quatrefoil, The Hermetic Museum, is included; and Shane Cotton, whose practice will be represented by a major painting from 2010, Broken Prayer. Also presented will be works by younger artists such as Hye Rim Lee and Rohan Wealleans, and leading Australian abstractionist Dale Frank. Speaking to the market’s desire for works that relate to the core ideals of key periods in New Zealand’s art history, this publication is intended to provide early advice of the shape and focus of the upcoming catalogue. Given both the quality of the works consigned and the fact that Webb’s winter catalogue traditionally produces a significant sale total, the upcoming auction campaign is a notable opportunity for those who are considering the release of exceptional works by New Zealand artists. Leading up to the deadline for the close of entries on 25 June, Webb’s team of specialists will be available for in-person appraisals throughout the country. We encourage you to make contact today to discuss a bespoke sale strategy, tailored to suit your cultural asset.
Carey Young Head of Fine Art Services, Wellington Mobile: +64 21 368 348 cyoung@webbs.co.nz
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
Gillie Deans Resident South Island Specialist Mobile: +64 27 226 9785 gdeans@webbs.co.nz
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Webb’s
Colin McCahon Elias enamel on board 660mm x 430mm Estimate $250,000 - $300,000 From the collection of the late Doris Lusk.
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New Zealand’s Premier Auction House
Webb’s
1959
COLIN McCAHON Elias
Photograph by Grant Banbury, Doris Lusk’s Studio/Home, April 1990, handmade book, edition of two.
Colin McCahon’s Elias series includes only 13 paintings; this places those 13 among the rarest and most soughtafter of his works. All but one were first exhibited at Gallery 91 in Christchurch, October 1959, in possibly the most remarkable one-person show in New Zealand art history. Recent Paintings also included eight Northland Panels, 35 Northland drawings, the Northland Triptych, two sets of Numerals, homages to Toss Woollaston and John Caselberg, and numerous paintings that hovered between landscape and abstraction (including Cross and Tomorrow will be the same but not as this is) – in all, 92 individual works made between November 1958 and August 1959. This was one of the most prolific and outstanding periods in McCahon’s career. The primary stimulus for this flood of new work was McCahon’s four-month visit to America in 1958; it was a watershed experience, which moved his work in numerous new directions, partly inspired by Pollock, Diebenkorn, de Kooning and (in Elias) Motherwell. No direction was
MCCAHON SAID OF ELIAS: “I BECAME INTERESTED IN MEN’S DOUBTS”. IN OTHER WORDS, THESE PAINTINGS DRAMATISE EXISTENTIAL STATES OF FAITH AND DOUBT.
WHAT MOST FASCINATED MCCAHON ABOUT THIS WORLDHISTORICAL MOMENT – SHOT THROUGH WITH DOUBT AND CONFUSION – IS ITS RADICAL UNCERTAINTY. more radical and decisive for the future than were the Elias paintings. McCahon had made religious paintings before – the figurative biblical paintings of 1946–52 – and also allword paintings – such as I Am and I and Thou in 1954–55 – but here, words and religion are combined in a highly original series based on the biblical account of Christ’s Crucifixion. Most Elias paintings utilise pieces of text from St Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 27, verses 46–49: And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying Eli Eli lama sabachthani. That is to say, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? Some of them that stood there, when they heard that said, This man calls for Elias… The rest said, Let be, let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him. The paintings offer variations on these phrases, some closely repeating the biblical phraseology, others significantly diverging from it. In the presented work, for example, the words read: Elias / can he save him / will Elias save HIM. What most fascinated McCahon about this worldhistorical moment – shot through with doubt and confusion – is its radical uncertainty. Some onlookers misinterpret Christ’s plea in Aramaic (Eli Eli...) as a
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
call to Elias to save him, i.e., Elijah, the Old Testament prophet – a mistranslation. McCahon said of Elias: “I became interested in men’s doubts”. In other words, these paintings dramatise existential states of faith and doubt. McCahon wasn’t at the opening of his great Christchurch exhibition, where, unbeknown to him, the speaker was his old friend and fellow artist, Doris Lusk. He said: “The news of Doris doing the opening talk was quite new to me”. This Elias painting became a cherished part of Doris Lusk’s collection and remained with the family following her death in 1990. This Elias, painted in commercial enamel (Solpah) on board, is one of the smallest and most colourful of the series. McCahon achieves different expressive effects by dividing up the picture plane with colour and line, by the size, placement and differential colouring of words, by switching from cursive script to capital letters, and other devices. In this work, there is a strong horizontal banding, modified by diagonal corners, and an unusual curving line running to the bottom-right corner. The brightness in the upper part of this lovely painting suggests, in this case, a positive resolution to the conflict of doubt and faith. PETER SIMPSON
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WHILE ABSTRACTION HAD BEEN PRESENT IN NEW ZEALAND SINCE THE 1950S, DRIVER’S WORK WAS THE FIRST TO FOCUS SPECIFICALLY ON THE FORMAL POETICS OF HIS CHOSEN MATERIALS. 1968
DON DRIVER Euclid
Don Driver’s Euclid belongs to a body of works that the artist made in the late 1960s, which are collectively referred to as Relief paintings. While relatively few are in existence (compared to the number of works of other artists, such as Ralph Hotere and Milan Mrkusich, who made ambitious minimalist paintings at around the same time), these works have come to be regarded as some of the most important examples of concrete abstraction in New Zealand’s history. Given that no Relief paintings of Euclid’s quality have ever been presented at auction, the public perception and knowledge of such works has essentially been shaped by the few that are held in public collections such as Horizontal Relief (1973 – Chartwell Collection) and Painted relief no.14: three blues (1972 – Te Papa Tongarewa). Relating to the practice of American artists such as Donald Judd and Frank Stella, Euclid, with its three-dimensional wooden surfaces, solid colour and unpainted planes of reflective stainless steel, is an investigation into the harmonics and physical dynamics of the given materials. While New Zealand painters had been experimenting with formal abstraction since the late 1950s, Driver’s Relief paintings were a significant development in that they were not intended to have a codified meaning that extended beyond the formal poetics of the materials themselves.
Don Driver Euclid enamel on steel on plywood support 1450mm x 1120mm Estimate $25,000 - $35,000
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New Zealand’s Premier Auction House
Webb’s
1968
RALPH HOTERE Big Red X
RELATING TO THE WORKS EXHIBITED AT THE ARTIST’S FIRST SOLO EXHIBITION AT BARRY LETT GALLERIES IN 1965, BIG RED X SPEAKS TO THE FORMATIVE INFLUENCE OF MID-CENTURY AMERICAN ABSTRACTION ON DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ZEALAND PAINTING THROUGHOUT THE ’60S AND ’70S.
Ralph Hotere’s Big Red X relates to a body of shaped paintings, entitled New Paintings, which the artist first exhibited in his inaugural exhibition at Barry Lett Galleries upon his return from an extended period of travel and study in Europe in 1965. During the artist’s time in Europe, he was exposed to novel approaches to artmaking such as colour field painting, op art and pop art, and Big Red X clearly reflects
these influences. The vertical band of blue paint applied to the shaped strip of Perspex in the centre of the work is reminiscent of Barnett Newman’s linear imagery (vertical lines would later become a major motif in the artist’s practice). Further, the work’s physically affronting proportions, three-dimensional elements and use of found commercial materials (the work’s framework is made from crates originally
used to transport television sets) call on strategies employed by Claes Oldenburg. Mid-century American abstraction had a profound impact on the development of New Zealand painting throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and, as a rare, early example that speaks directly to this dynamic, Big Red X is an important cultural document.
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
Ralph Hotere Big Red X acrylic on shaped Perspex, oil on canvas on board 1730mm x 1730mm, widest points Estimate $50,000 - $ 60,000
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Webb’s
1970
RALPH HOTERE Black Painting No. 39
Painted in 1970, this strikingly clean and lucid painting by Ralph Hotere belongs to his iconic Black Painting series that was executed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These paintings are unified by their reductive formalism, by the use of a pristine, glossy and depthless black ground, and by the presence of meticulous ribbons of colour. Here, in Black Painting No.39, glimmering threads of colour trace the immemorial form of the circle. Significantly, Hotere began almost all of the works in the Black Painting series, with a glossy black ground, before moving to apply thin threads of colour. In this way, light penetrates and illuminates the darkness, casting references to both Māori and Christian stories of Creation, to the birth
of the Universe and to the beginnings of mankind. This exploration of existential truths is continued in the formal elements of the work, for the circle that dominates the painting is a traditional symbol of new life, of new beginnings and, also, of God and/or the Universe. As well as looking backwards, Hotere’s work also engages with the contemporary international art scene. The flawless lustre, meticulous execution and geometric reductivism firmly ground the painting in the minimalism of the 1960s and ’70s. As such, Hotere’s Black Painting series is indicative of the artist’s outward, international focus, and they conjure up the work of Reinhardt, Malevich and Newman.
BLACK PAINTING NO.39 SHOWS HOTERE’S CHROMATIC MASTERY TO GREAT EFFECT: EFFORTLESSLY MANIPULATING AND TEASING OUT THE MYRIAD POSSIBILITIES OF BLACKNESS – ITS HIDDEN DEPTHS, ITS SEDUCTIVE POTENTIAL AND ITS NUANCED TONALITIES.
Ralph Hotere Black Painting No. 39 brolite enamel on board 900mm x 600mm Estimate $50,000 - $70,000
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Webb’s
1971
COLIN McCAHON Light Falling through a Dark Landscape
IN THIS SERIES, McCAHON SOUGHT TO DESCRIBE BOTH THE SPIRITUAL AND THE PHYSICAL CONNECTIONS BETWEEN HUMAN BEINGS AND THE LAND ON WHICH THEY SUBSIST.
McCahon’s observations and experience of the cliff formations at Muriwai Beach were central to the Necessary Protection series to which this work belongs. By rendering variations of this environment with the use of a single format – the fissure of a single block of dark, negative space to create a central Tau cross capital I shape flanked by two land masses – McCahon sought to describe both the spiritual and the physical connections between human beings and the land on which they subsist. The constant central alphabetical motif presents itself as an uncompromising, metaphysical figure formed by the effortless manipulation of the delicate Muriwai coastline: a divine entity represented by the midsection of a crucifix that continues both upwards
towards the heavens and downwards into the earth, ad infinitum. Each work in the two-year Necessary Protection project is a variation of this format; between each work, a slight movement and erosion of the cliff faces takes place, causing the central beam of light’s aperture to contract and expand. In the large majority of paintings in the series, light prevails. In others, such as in this 1971 example, access to the sky is thwarted by the darkness, causing it to split in two directions.
Colin McCahon Light Falling through a Dark Landscape charcoal on paper 448mm x 598mm Estimate $40,000 - $50,000
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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Webb’s
1979
PAT HANLY A Young Love
On first glance, Hanly’s A Young Love from 1979 appears to be a wholly abstract panel HANLY’S ABILITY TO COLLAPSE comprising patches, pools and threads of colour. In fact, belonging to the Torso THE FIGURATIVE AND THE series, the painting is a portrait. Each work ABSTRACT INTO A SINGLE in the Torso series presents an anonymous sitter, identified only by a capitalised letter LUCID AND ENGAGING WORK concealed somewhere in the composition – in A Young Love, the identifier (P) IS LARGELY RESPONSIBLE FOR appears in dark red in the upper-left THE SUCCESS OF THE TORSO corner. As a whole, the series is executed in a wide gamut of colour and, in each SERIES AS A WHOLE. painting, the palette choice is connected to the individual sitter: offering an insight into her personality, her emotions and her spirit. In terms of both colour and line, A Young Love offers up a raw and unbridled energy, which speaks to a dynamic, animated and youthfully exuberant sitter. The gestural mark-making testifies to Hanly’s familiarity with the subject. An intimacy, an understanding and a familiarity come through in the fluidity and poise of Hanly’s brush.
Pat Hanly A Young Love enamel on board 550mm x 540mm Estimate $ 60,000 - $80,000
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Hanly’s line seems to etch out a heart in the centre of the painting, crafting a symbolic shorthand for love, while simultaneously being evocative of the female form. Because the form is topped by a triangle, which is, in turn, topped by a diamond, the viewer has a sense of a head, shoulders and breasts. But the focus is not on providing a photographic record of a specifically identifiable person. Rather, it looks to capture something of the memory of a past encounter, a past lover. Indicated in the title, and confirmed by Hanly in numerous interviews, is the fact that the paintings in the Torso series all commemorate previous lovers, with the artist stating that “we all went through that period of sexual liberation in the sixties and seventies”. A strong part of the success and allure of the Torso paintings is that they deftly combine the figurative and the abstract. Importantly, too, while the painting delineates the female figure, it concurrently holds a mirror to the artist’s own nature and, in Hanly’s own words, the series would not have the same resonance or meaning if you were to “take out the lust”.
Webb’s
1982
TONY FOMISON #226
NUANCES OF LIGHT AND SHADE ARE DOMINATING FORCES IN FOMISON’S COMPELLING RESPONSE TO ONE OF THE MOST COMMON ADAGES OF THE WESTERN WORLD: “HEAR NO EVIL, SEE NO EVIL, SPEAK NO EVIL”.
With hands pressed over the eyes, the figure in #226 sees nothing, while the viewer is privileged to see all. By having the eyes of the figure covered, the work is immediately and indelibly linked to the proverbial principle to “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”. That Fomison was interested in the maxim is indicated by his
earlier work of 1976 See No Evil (#127), which was originally owned by the late New Zealand artist Ralph Hotere. In that painting, as in #226, a large face dominates the canvas as two arms reach in to cover the eyes, protecting the figure from any and all improprieties. Although ostensibly a portrait, #226 does not record a particular
person but presents a generic and nonspecific human form. Disembodied heads regularly drift through Fomison’s artistic practice, speaking to the revered place of the head in Polynesian culture, which was a constant and profound source of influence and inspiration for the artist.
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
Tony Fomison #226 oil on jute on board 300mm x 900mm Estimate $25,000 - $35,000
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The upcoming catalogue of Important Paintings & Contemporary Art includes 35 works from the collection of Helene Quilter. The majority has been on long-term loan at Govett-Brewster Art Gallery since 1998 and was the subject of a major exhibition at the gallery in that year. Fig. 1-12 by L. Budd and GST by Bill Hammond, from the collection, were also included in A Very Peculiar Practice: Aspects of Recent New Zealand Painting, City Gallery Wellington, 1995: a pivotal and highly important survey of New Zealand art-making from the early 1990s.
Lillian Budd Fig. 1 - 12 2600mm x 3600mm (overall), Estimate $25,000 - $35,000
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The exhibition has different layers to it but follows a cohesive visual argument. We believe this exhibition shows how painting makes its own type of sense of the world and in the process adds to the aesthetic vocabulary of our time.
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PAULA SAVAGE Quoted from the exhibition catalogue published on the occasion of A Very Peculiar Practice: Aspects of Recent New Zealand Painting, City Gallery Wellington, 1995.
Webb’s
FINDING IT’S IMPETUS IN THE REFERENCES TO MUSIC THAT HAVE PERMEATED THE ARTIST’S PAINTINGS OF THE LAST 15 YEARS; SOUNDTRACK IS EARLY-SURREAL HAMMOND AT HIS BEST. 1993
BILL HAMMOND Soundtrack
From the grotesquely contorted singing forms painted in the mid-’80s to the graceful cello-wielding zoomorphic figures of later work, references to music have constantly permeated Bill Hammond’s paintings. This painting, titled Soundtrack and painted in 1993, represents a midpoint between these two stages in Hammond’s oeuvre. At the top of the painting, a Frankenstein fiddles with some kind of apparatus as if conducting a transformation-inducing cacophonic experiment. Nearby, a fish tank under the supervision of a lunging lead singer with a flat-top produces some kind of mermaid ghost. Behind them, a portal reveals an audience of Edvard Munch-inspired heads peering in horror. Vacuous red human forms watch aimlessly as a distorted head sings sideways into a row of microphones while his colleague manically bashes a drum kit with a pair of hammers. In the bottom-right corner of the painting, a mostly human body playing an acoustic guitar and an inverted centaur leaning coolly against a wall seem to be in midmetamorphosis. Soundtrack is earlysurreal Hammond at his best and provides a glimpse of things to come.
Bill Hammond Soundtrack acrylic on four canvas panels 1200mm x 800mm Estimate $ 60,000 - $ 80,000
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Webb’s
1995
BILL HAMMOND GST
Designed and executed in a tripartite format, Bill Hammond’s GST traces its lineage back to the religious altarpieces of the European Renaissance, which were commonly completed using a triptych layout. The use of such a time-honoured and sacred format to host the well-known acronym for taxable goods and services is indicative of Hammond’s satirical and ironic response to the world around him. Beneath the literal meaning of the letters, however, Hammond’s GST offers a sequence of self-reflexive, figurative and
symbolic forms. The ‘G’ that is stamped out in the first panel, is crafted in the manner of the blocky angularity that defined much of Hammond’s graphic imagery of the 1980s. A single drip of paint is the only clue to the gestural lyricism that was to characterise his later pictorial language. Moving to the middle painting, the viewer is greeted with a double-headed serpentine form whose curved beaks and beady eyes belong to the ornithological-humanoid crossbreed of Hammond’s unique vision. Hammond’s shape-shifting creatures
occupy the third panel too but, here, the triptych pays homage to its roots. The final figurative letter ‘T’ possesses a sacrosanct and sacrificial quality for, here, one of Hammond’s primordial avian hybrids is strung up in the manner of the Crucifixion. Encompassing elements of European Christian art, the artist’s own distinctive visual semantics and the banality of everyday economics, Hammond’s GST is much more than a mere acronym.
EXECUTED ON ROUGHHEWN SEGMENTS OF CANVAS, HAMMOND’S MONOCHROMATIC GST DRAWS ATTENTION TO THE MATERIALITY OF THE WORK, TO THE ARTISTIC PROCESS AND TO THE ARTIST’S OWN HANDS.
Bill Hammond GST oil on canvas 600mm x 400mm (each panel) Estimate $30,000 - $40,000 From the collection of Helene Quilter.
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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Webb’s
1998
BILL HAMMOND Flight Recorder
By the late 1990s, a distinctly unique pictorial language made up of zoomorphic creatures had taken up a dominating role in the art practice of Bill Hammond. The artist’s trip to the sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands in 1989 has become something of folklore, for it was that journey that transformed Hammond’s artistic vision and catapulted him to the forefront of New Zealand art history. The decade of the ’90s 18
saw Hammond forge, distill and refine his vision of the country’s primordial past: a vision that is pictorially transcribed in Flight Recorder. True to their title, the six canvas panels that make up Hammond’s Flight Recorder, from 1998, record a multiplicity of flight modes that encompass the natural, the man-made, the religious and the mythological. World War II biplanes are New Zealand’s Premier Auction House
seen alongside flying fish, bats and soaring eagles, the figure of Pegasus is presented with hooves delicately outstretched and a trumpet-blowing winged figure draws parallels to the Archangel Gabriel or Saint Michael, while a chalkboard bears witness to the progress of several flights. Amongst it all, Hammond’s idiosyncratic avian creatures walk, dance, huddle and fly. The pictorial and painterly language of
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SHOWCASING THE STRENGTH AND BREADTH OF HAMMOND’S COMPOSITIONAL BALANCE AND PROFICIENCY, THE SIX CANVASES COMBINE TO CREATE ONE COHERENT WHOLE, YET EACH ONE ALSO MANAGES TO STAND ALONE AS A COMPLETE AND RESOLVED PAINTING.
Flight Recorder is uniquely, and instantly recognisably, Hammond. Employing a restricted palette, Hammond relies on his deft handling of paint and graphite to impart the work with a poetic narrative that is both metaphorical and historical. In Flight Recorder, each canvas segment is branded with the title of the painting and, in some cases, with other pieces of signifying text. The words inscribed on
one panel locate the painting in the early 20th century, for the fighter planes are identified as examples of the British-built Gloster Gladiator that was used in the 1930s. Reference is also made to cigarettes and biscuits that were popular at the time: the cork-tipped Capstan navy cut and Griffin’s. Stretching further back in time, another of the panels pays homage to the Victorian era of collecting, offering up a Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
Bill Hammond Flight Recorder acrylic and graphite on six canvas panels 1800mm x 2600mm (overall) Estimate $120,000 - $160,000 From the collection of Helene Quilter.
wooden chest complete with eggs or bones, and topped with a stuffed ornithological specimen in a glass cloche. Here, as with much of Hammond’s work, the saturnine and the beautiful collide, producing visual forms that challenge and stimulate the viewer.
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Webb’s
1990/1993
L. BUDD Fig. 1 - 12
L. Budd, who is believed to have passed away in 2005, was a New Zealand artist who exhibited widely throughout the 1990s and 2000s and was an active member of et al. collective which won the prestigious Walters Prize for the installation restricted access in 2004 and represented New Zealand at the 51st Venice Biennale with the exhibition the fundamental practice in 2005. Fig 1–12 sees Budd use material strategies that have become somewhat synonymous with the artist’s practice. While the work’s 12 elements are robustly and carefully constructed from epoxy resin and fibreglass sheeting, the only familiar imagery with which the viewer is confronted is glimpses of vintage wallpaper from beneath generous washes of white gesso, obviously applied with a wide, indiscriminate brush. Coupled with its imposing scale (the work extends to over three metres in width), the nature in which the work pushes the viewer towards appreciating the formal intricacies of the artist’s chosen materials is reminiscent of
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“THERE ARE ONLY TWO PATHS OPEN TO MENTAL RESEARCH, WHERE OUR DESIRE BRANCHES: AESTHETICS ON THE ONE HAND AND, ON THE OTHER, POLITICAL ECONOMY. EVERYTHING WHICH BY ITSELF, PURE, FOR LACK OF MEANING, AS IT WERE, BEFORE THE APPEARANCE OF THE VIEWER, MUST BE RESTORED.� L. BUDD NOTEBOOK, 2003 the strategies employed by minimalists such as Robert Morris, Carl Andre and Robert Ryman. Much of Budd’s practice is concerned with the political function and influence of the organisational structures that govern everyday life and, accordingly, the fact that,
in Fig 1–12, pieces of wallpaper covered in layers of paint are suspended almost as specimens intended for examination (which also is suggested by the title) could be read as an insinuation that the viewer should examine the seemingly innocuous boundaries that shape their existence.
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L.  Budd Fig. 1 - 12 JHVVR YLQWDJH ZDOOSDSHU žEUHJODVV  and  epoxy  resin 2600mm  x  3600mm  (overall) Estimate  $25,000  -  $35,000 From  the  collection  of  Helene  Quilter.
Webb’s
1998
PETER ROBINSON The Queen is Dead! Long Live the King!
IN THIS WORK, ROBINSON PROMPTS THE VIEWER TO CONSIDER BOTH THE LEGACY OF BICULTURALISM AND THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES TO SELF-DETERMINATION. Peter Robinson’s The Queen is Dead! Long Live the King! relates to the key concerns that permeated the artist’s practice throughout the 1990s. In this work, Robinson depicts a manaia-like face (usually depicted in side-profile, a manaia is an entity that is widely featured in the art of tangata whenua) wearing a crown: a traditional adornment of European origin. He prompts the viewer to consider both the legacy of biculturalism and the rights of indigenous peoples to self-determination. The works of this period are notable because, shortly after this time, the artist would radically change his method of working, opting for industrial methods of fabrication and a conceptual vantage grounding in post-structuralism. Works such as The Queen is Dead! Long Live
the King! see the artist master the ability to prompt a sophisticated, multifaceted discourse using imagery that, on first reading, appears to adopt a polemic stance; this is a strategy that he refined over almost a decade.
Peter Robinson The Queen is Dead! Long Live the King! oil stick and acrylic on paper 1270mm x 1120mm Estimate $18,000 - $25,000 From the collection of Helene Quilter.
2000
TONY DE LAUTOUR Masterplan 1
USING CLOUD-LIKE CLUSTERS OF LAND AND HERALDIC LIONS AND STAGS WHICH FLOAT AGAINST A PITCH-BLACK BACKGROUND, MASTERPLAN 1 COMMENTS ON POWER AND COLONISATION.
Tony De Lautour Masterplan 1 oil and acrylic on linen 1200mm x 800mm Estimate $15,000 - $20,000 From the collection of Helene Quilter.
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
Tony de Lautour first came to critical attention in the early 1990s as a result of his Bad White Art exhibition. Last year, he won the Arts Foundation’s annual Laureate Award, solidifying his position as one of New Zealand’s most significant contemporary painters. Masterplan 1 originates from the period for which de Lautour is most highly regarded; the works that de Lautour produced during this period are widely considered to be commenting on power and colonisation. In this example, cloud-like clusters of land float against a pitch-black background. Numbers quantify and catalogue various regions of the mountains while schematic lines display trees and foreign items such as heraldic lions and stags. In the bottom lefthand corner of the work, a semi-transparent title, Masterplan 1, is tellingly written with a ghostly McDonald’s ‘M’.
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Webb’s
2003
RALPH HOTERE White Drip II
FIRMLY ANCHORED IN NEW ZEALAND’S PROTEST CULTURE AND IN HOTERE’S POLITICAL PAINTINGS, WHITE DRIP II IS REPRESENTATIVE OF THE POWER OF IMAGES AND THEIR ABILITY TO ENCAPSULATE COMMON EXPERIENCE AND TO PRESERVE HISTORY.
Executed in 2003, Hotere’s White Drip II was created in response to the late broadcaster Sir Paul Holmes’ reference to the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan as a “cheeky darkie”. The remark drew widespread outrage from the New Zealand public, spawning an invective commentary, which spread across emails, letters, interviews and newspaper editorials, and a host of formal complaints. On the other hand, however, a number of New Zealanders were inspired to publicly defend Holmes, thereby highlighting the continuing polemic that is New Zealand race relations. It was this heated moment of racial judgement, social responsibility and public condemnation that the White Drip series answered. In terms of palette choice, White Drip II responds directly to the chromatic dichotomy that had polarised the country. Here, a flawless black ground hosts a central dividing line of opaque white paint. Extending down the length of the panel, the white pigment finally wobbles and terminates in a flurried splatter that is overlaid with an evocative blood-red cross. The echoes of racial polemics, sacrifice, bloodshed and transgression are carried through the use of cruciform nail heads that punctuate the top and bottom edges of the work. However, Hotere’s use of colour, form or the written word, is never simple or one dimensional. In addition to being an indictment, the title is also a direct description of the white pigment that runs, dribbles and drips down the centre of the panel, while the palette choice is one that runs through the entirety of the artist’s oeuvre. In Hotere’s work, black, in particular, holds a myriad of meanings that span the metaphysical, the cosmic, the existential and the mythological. While White Drip II is firmly anchored in a specific moment of 2003, the types of material that Hotere employs link the work to his earlier protest pieces. Most specifically, it recalls the corrugatediron works that made up the politically and environmentally charged series of the early 1980s: Aramoana and Baby Iron. Then, as in 2003, Hotere raised his brush to cast a poignant and powerful comment on the divisive issues that were gripping the country.
Ralph Hotere White Drip II lacquer and acrylic on corrugated iron with cast pewter moldings 1845mm x 850mm Estimate $70,000 - $90,000 From the collection of the late Sir Paul Holmes.
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New Zealand’s Premier Auction House
Webb’s
2003
HYE RIM LEE Mesh 2, The Birth of TOKI
Hye Rim Lee Mesh 2, The Birth of TOKI digital print on canvas 1100mm x 1100mm Estimate $10,000 - $15,000
TOKI, HYE RIM LEE’S HYBRID BUNNYWOMAN IS A SYNTHESIS OF IDEALS AND ASSOCIATIONS INTENDED TO QUESTION MALE-ORIENTATED REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN IN POPULAR CULTURE.
TOKI was first introduced to the public in a solo exhibition, entitled Hello TOKI ;), at Auckland’s now defunct Moving Image Centre in 2002. In the following year, TOKI made her second public appearance in The Birth of TOKI: hundreds and thousands, Hye Rim Lee’s first solo exhibition at the Starkwhite gallery. Together, these exhibitions unveiled the creation of an ostensibly female character that has subsequently been at the centre of Lee’s practice for over a decade. Named after the Korean word for rabbit, TOKI is a malleable, hybrid bunny-woman who has spent the last 12 years having her virtual frame pinched, pulled, moulded, shaped and rendered into a series of progressively more sexualised forms. Throughout this process, Lee’s hybrid bunnywoman has traversed and evolved into a complex synthesis of ideals and associations: the hyper-cuteness of Bambi’s Thumper; Hugh Hefner’s Playboy bunnies; the Japanese conflation of cuteness with beauty; the prevalent culture of plastic surgery in South Korea; and the male-orientated representations of women in computer games.
2008
ROHAN WEALLEANS Untitled
THIS IS A PRIME EXAMPLE OF WEALLEANS’ SIGNATURE METHOD OF CULTIVATING LAYERS OF ACRYLIC HOUSE PAINT INTO DYNAMIC THREE-DIMENSION COMPOSITIONS.
Rohan Wealleans Untitled acrylic & polystyrene on board 1000mm x 600mm x 400mm Estimate $9,000 - $12,000
Rohan Wealleans was the winner of the Waikato Art Awards in 2003 and then of the 15th Annual Wallace Art Awards in 2006; subsequently, his monstrous, innuendo-laden work has generated a number of successful exhibitions in galleries as prestigious as London’s Sadie Coles gallery, CFA Berlin and C24 Gallery in New York. This metre-long untitled specimen from 2008 – purchased from Hamish McKay Gallery in 2008 – is a prime example of Wealleans’ signature method of cultivating multiple layers of acrylic house paint, of assorted colours and consistencies, into large bulbous growths. These layers often propagate onto objects, covering chairs, sticks and other objects to transform them into seemingly shamanistic items of ambiguous, perhaps extraterrestrial, origin. Across the surface of this work, fields of indentations – the results of a process by which Wealleans deftly farms the exterior of his paintingsculptures with a knife in order to produce material to use in other such works – reveal cross-sections of the inside of its multicoloured acrylic skin while striped chunks of paint, harvested from earlier sculptures, rudely extrude from orifices that lead to the work’s cavernous interior.
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
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Webb’s
2006
DICK FRIZZELL The Sailor Returns
IN THE SAILOR RETURNS, FRIZZELL SHOWS US, ONCE AGAIN, WHY HE IS CONSIDERED TO BE THE MASTER OF PASTICHE AS HE ADROITLY REWORKS ONE OF THE MOST CELEBRATED AND NOTORIOUS PAINTINGS OF THE 20TH CENTURY: PICASSO’S LES DEMOISELLES D’AVIGNON.
Painted in 2006, Dick Frizzell’s The Sailor Returns offers a satirical remaking of one of the most renowned and controversial paintings of the early 20th century: Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Frizzell has long been celebrated as a master of parody and reinvention, and the present work is no exception. The Sailor Returns retains much of Picasso’s original compositional structure, the stiff angularity of the figures and the fractured planar treatment of form. However, Frizzell makes a few significant changes that locate the painting in the realm of the South Pacific and counter the gravity of the original with a humorous twist. Where the seated figure in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon had a face that was famously inspired by African masks, in The Sailor Returns, the figure is directly influenced by Māori carving, while the female figure on the far left is attired in a hibiscuspatterned lava-lava. Frizzell’s most radical departure, however, is to replace one of Picasso’s women with a male sailor who sports an outfit that is strongly reminiscent of the New Zealand naval uniform. The incongruity is underscored by Frizzell’s treatment of form; where the women are executed in the style and approach of Picasso’s original, the sailor is painted in the comic-book style that is common in Frizzell’s art practice. With The Sailor Returns, Frizzell seamlessly integrates international modernism into the New Zealand present, offering a nod to the old, while presenting something that is wholly new.
Dick Frizzell The Sailor Returns oil on canvas 2445mm x 2335mm Estimate $70,000 - $90,000
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New Zealand’s Premier Auction House
Webb’s
2006
DALE FRANK Pensive worms keep me believing/ specialize in hard to qualify borrowers/ Thames Landscape
REFLECTING ON THE VACUOUS NATURE OF POP CULTURE, DALE FRANK’S VARNISH PAINTINGS INTENTIONALLY AVOID PRESENTING THE VIEWER WITH A CLEARLY DEFINED MESSAGE; THEY USE HYPNOTIC, SWIRLING COLOUR TO CRITIQUE THE ASPIRATIONS OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL PRODUCTION. Pensive Worms keep me believing… belongs to a period in Dale Frank’s practice that has come to be highly sought-after by the secondary market. The artist first began to make paintings using only poured, pigmented varnish circa 2001. Initially, each work consisted of only a single colour but, over the last 13 years, the artist has evolved his paintings into compositions of sharp, angular pours and strong
confronting colour. It is because the works achieved a perfect balance between fluid and delicately controlled movement that the artist’s practice of 2004 to 2006 is now highly prized; it is a work from this period that holds the artist’s all-time auction record. Dale Frank’s varnish paintings, with their long titles constructed out of found text from unattributed sources, reflect
upon the vacuous nature of the type of cultural production that most readily captivates the attention of society at large. The works were made during the rise of reality television and socially driven internet media, and, in a manner intended to mirror the aspirations of these new modes of cultural production, Frank’s paintings are intentionally un-objective.
Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
Dale Frank Pensive worms keep me believing/ specialize in hard to qualify borrowers/ Thames Landscape varnish on acrylic on canvas 2000mm x 1800mm Estimate $35,000 - $45,000
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Webb’s
2007
MAX GIMBLETT The Hermetic Museum
USING THE QUATREFOIL FORM, A PARED-BACK PALETTE OF BLACK AND GILDED GOLD AND REFINED ELEMENTS OF GEOMETRIC ABSTRACTION, THIS WORK ADVANCES THE METHODOLOGY THAT THE ARTIST FIRST PIONEERED IN THE MID-1980S.
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Max Gimblett’s The Hermetic Museum is a painting which relates to the core ideals of the artist’s practice. Using the quatrefoil form, a pared-back palette of black and gilded gold and refined elements of geometric abstraction, the work advances the methodology that the artist first pioneered in the mid-1980s with his large-scale, shaped canvasses of glistening metallic pigment. It was a work from this period that was chosen to represent the artist’s practice when he was included in the exhibition at the Guggenheim in New York, The Third Mind, 2009. The quatrefoil form – i.e. four equally sized, overlapping circles – is an ancient Christian symbol that appears throughout the history of Western cultural production whereas the artist’s abstract gestural markings are grounded in Chinese calligraphy. Using both predetermined and chance imagery, The Hermetic Museum contrasts human intent with the laws of chance.
New Zealand’s Premier Auction House
Compared with works from other leading New Zealand artists who have enjoyed an enthusiastic following in the primary market, significant paintings by this artist are seldom made available to the auction market. While a number of smaller works have been offered during this time, it has been close to four years since a major quatrefoil has been presented.
Max Gimblett The Hermetic Museum gesso, acrylic and vinyl polymers, epoxy, palladium leaf, Japanese leaf/wood panel 1015mm x 1015mm Estimate $30,000 - $40,000
Webb’s
2010
Shane Cotton Broken Prayer
SHANE COTTON
acrylic on canvas 1400mm x 1400mm Estimate $55,000 - $75,000
Broken Prayer
Originally exhibited in Shane Cotton’s 2010 solo exhibition of new work at SUPERIMPOSED ONTO A Michael Lett’s first Karangahape Road gallery, Broken Prayer relates to the body DELICATELY DESCRIBED, DARK, of works that was recently the focus of PULSATING SKY, THE IMAGE OF the artist’s mid-career survey exhibition, Hanging Sky. The 2010 exhibition THE BIRD SERVES AS A POWERFUL The was widely acclaimed and one of Broken ALLEGORY ABOUT THE FRAGILITY Prayer’s sister paintings, Back Bone, is now held in the collection of Te Papa AND PRECARIOUSNESS Tongarewa. The central focus of Broken Prayer is a OF HUMAN EXISTENCE. falling bird. Painted in a hue which possibly connotes violence, the image of the bird has been inverted so that it appears battered by invisible, external forces and unable to fly against an oppressive, turbulent sky. The early 2000s witnessed a shift in the artist’s working methodology, signalling the increased utilisation of airbrush pigments. The use of this technique serves to create the dense and immersive backdrop, against which the brush marks of the bird’s plumage, Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
seemingly painted in a frenetic, yet controlled, staccato pattern, provide a formal counterpoint to the dramatic skyscape. In a similar way to that of his fellow contemporary Bill Hammond, Cotton employs the symbol of a bird to address concepts of nationhood: with the implication and acknowledgement of violence to native flora, fauna and people, within New Zealand’s history. The bird could be interpreted in a number of ways: as a ghost, a soul falling to the underworld (or, in this case, to the heavens); as a symbol of the loss of spirituality through the conversion of Māori to Christianity; and as an allegory to the ongoing challenges facing tangata whenua in a post-colonial society. In utilising the iconography of the bird, which repeats in differing permutations throughout the artist’s practice of the last decade, Cotton offers a connecting thread which serves as a powerful allegory about the fragility and precariousness of human existence.
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