The Kiwi Art Trail is a collection of 26 kiwi sculptures that have been turned into bespoke pieces of art by talented New Zealand artists. Brought to you by Gallagher Insurance and Save the Kiwi, the Kiwi Art Trail is a free, family-friendly public art trail for all to enjoy. When the trail ends, the sculptures will be auctioned and proceeds will go towards kiwi conservation.
“Prosperity” by Jing Liu
This sculpture has been painted freehand in the traditional Chinese claborate style which flourished during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). It features extensive symbolism around the number nine which symbolises ‘longevity’ in Chinese culture.
“Buzzy Kiwi” by Weston Frizzell
“Buzzy Kiwi” created by Mike Weston and Otis Frizzell, pays homage to the iconic Buzzy Bee. The sculpture combines the nostalgic heart of Aotearoa’s collective childhood with our beloved national icon, the kiwi.
Secure your favourite sculpture for $10,000 or register for the auction at www.kiwiarttrail.nz/buy
QUEENSTOWN LAKES
6 BENDEMEER LANE | LAKE HAYES
This magnificent eight-bedroom alpine estate, nestled in the exclusive gated community of Bendemeer near Lake Hayes, shares more in common with a luxury lodge than a private residence. Explore this and other distinctive, high-value Queenstown properties in our ‘24 Spring Collection - online now.
Opening Season
9 Nov 2024 – 11 May 2025 Free entry
Works from the collection alongside newly commissioned artworks, with solo projects by Matthew McIntyre Wilson, Tia Ranginui and Alexis Neal, and a major survey of works by Edith Collier.
Edith Collier Boy Against Landscape 1914-1915. Collection of the Edith Collier Trust, in the permanent care of Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery.
Restaurant Äng, Sixth Case Study by Karimoku Case.
Photography
Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen.
SANTA MONICA ARMCHAIR POLIFORM.IT
The Twilight Collection
Hello Hands Yulepine
Twice As Lippy Companion Cracker
This year, Ashley & Co. draws inspiration from twilight ––– the magical moments before sunrise and after sunset when the sky is adorned with a delicate, luminous aura. This collection celebrates the optimism of a new day and fresh beginnings.
ashleyandco.co We also offer a bespoke Corporate Gifting Service, tuned for your individual requirements. Get in touch ––– corporate@ashleyandco.co.nz
30th Anniversary Special Event
Thursday 27th February, 7pm
Under The Dome, Auckland Museum
Join Black Grace as we commence our 30th Anniversary celebrations with this exclusive event.
To reserve your table/seats, please contact abby@blackgrace.co.nz
@blackgracedanceco blackgrace.co.nz
Perched above the vines of their boutique Northland vineyard and just steps from
their award-winning One Hat Restaurant, Sage Experience local luxury in the Bay of Islands.
The Transfer Of Wealth.
The Next Generation.
The largest wealth transfer in history is underway.
As the next generation to continue the family legacy, it is important to be prepared.
This includes understanding the best structure to receive and protect your family’s wealth, what your position is within your family’s estate plan and the expectations that will be placed on you as an emerging family leader. Give your family peace of mind that their legacy is in safe hands. Talk to our Private Wealth Team today.
The Art of Storage.
Artlink has elevated art storage to an art form in itself. Our purpose-built facility maintains optimal conditions in temperature, humidity, and lighting. When you store your art with us, you can be assured that it is protected from environmental and human factors, with a controlled climate and 24/7 monitored security.
REQUEST A QUOTE
contact@artlink.co.nz
021 279 1106
www.artlink.co.nz
SUNLIGHT FREE INDOOR ENVIRONMENT
55% MANAGED HUMIDITY LEVEL
18C MANAGED TEMPERATURE LEVEL
24/7 MONITORED SECURITY SYSTEM
Interest rates are dropping!
Now is the time to act on your home loan.
With the recent OCR cut and falling interest rates, there’s never been a better time to review your home loan options. Whether your loan is due to refix or you’re exploring new mortgage opportunities, we can help you secure the most competitive rates in the market.
As New Zealand’s top boutique brokerage for three years running, we specialize in tailoring mortgage solutions that suit your individual needs. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to save on your home loan.
Gretchen Albrecht Liquid States
3 NOV 2024 – 2 FEB 2025
Gretchen Albrecht, Golden Sky Stream, 1973. Courtesy of the artist.
Offset printed, 120 pages 113gsm Matt Art 100gsm Laser Offset
Paul Evans Managing Director paul@webbs.co.nz +64 21 866 000
Caolán McAleer Head of Marketing caolan@webbs.co.nz +64 27 929 5603
Freely distributed to subscribers or available at select public art spaces and hospitality venues.
Olivia Woodgate Creative Director design@webbs.co.nz +64 22 323 4919 head office advertising press design
Karen Rigby Business Manager karen@webbs.co.nz +64 22 344 5610
Elizabeth Boadicea Snow Marketing Manager elizabeth@webbs.co.nz +64 22 029 5611
Art Department
auckland
Emily Gardener Director of Art emily@webbs.co.nz +64 9 529 5609
Georgina Brett Specialist, Art georgina@webbs.co.nz +64 27 929 5609
Georgia Clapshaw Administrator, Art art@webbs.co.nz +64 9 529 5609
Tasha Jenkins Head of Art tasha@webbs.co.nz +64 22 595 5610
Hannah Owen Registrar, Art hannah@webbs.co.nz +64 22 068 4932
Charles Tongue Valuations Specialist valuations@webbs.co.nz +64 22 406 5514
Stephanie AuYeung Manager, Art stephanie@webbs.co.nz +64 22 301 8259
Jo Bragg Logistics & Inventory Coordinator, Art jo@webbs.co.nz +64 21 113 5001
Mark Hutchins-Pond Senior Specialist, Art mark@webbs.co.nz +64 22 095 5610
Sean Duxfield Specialist, Art sean@webbs.co.nz +64 21 053 6504
CO LO UR F ORE CAST 2025
The Dulux Colour Forecast 2025 has arrived. Explore the latest in colour and interior trends designed to help you refresh your space with. Distilled into three distinct palettes – Still, Recollect and Emerge – are a collection of soothing and uplifting colours to evoke a sense of nurture and positivity.
V iew the new palettes and order free A4 Colour Swatches at dulux.co.nz
Dulux Shelly Beach
Dulux Darfield
Sell With Us.
We are currently seeking entries for upcoming live and online Fine Wines & Whiskies auctions. With long summer nights and festive celebrations just around the corner, this is a great time to sell Champagne. Highly sought-after are top vintages from prestige houses like Dom Pérignon, Krug, Bollinger, and Louis Roederer. We also have growing interest in examples from boutique producers such as Cedric Bouchard and Domaine Selosse.
As always, we also welcome interesting single bottles and cases of New Zealand, Australian, and European wines and whiskies. This is an opportune time to make room in your cellar or offer up those unopened bottles of spirits in your cupboard — you never know what you could be sitting on. Email or call us now for a complimentary appraisal.
Introducing: Emily Gardener Director of Art, Webb’s
Emily Gardener Director of Art
emily@webbs.co.nz
+64 9 529 5609
Webb’s is pleased to announce the appointment of Emily Gardener to the role of Director of Art.
A highly skilled contemporary arts specialist, Emily arrives at Webb’s with twenty years experience working in world-class Development and Sales departments within leading public and commercial arts institutions.
Emily spent over a decade living and working in London, where she gained a Master's in Contemporary Art at Sotheby's Institute and held roles at prestigious galleries such as the Serpentine Galleries, The Photographers’ Gallery and White Cube. She later moved to Sydney and took up the role of Head of Development at the Biennale of Sydney, followed by a position as Head of Philanthropy at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. More recently Emily has worked as the Director of Development at Objectspace in Aotearoa.
Emily has experience working with a broad range of artists, curators, patrons, and international delegates, and will bring to this role a confident and well-informed understanding of the local and international arts sectors, as well as a creative and entrepreneurial flare and keen eye for detail. We are thrilled to welcome her onboard.
Upcoming Art Auctions Seeking Major Artworks
Webb's is currently inviting entries for our forthcoming 2025 art auctions.
From our entry-level sales showcasing affordable works through to highly curated catalogues of museum-quality New Zealand and international art; our auction calendar showcases a wide range of artworks and price points. We are honoured to consistently bring to market striking works by artists at various stages of their career. Already this year we have offered works by iconic New Zealand artists such as Don Binney, Bill Hammond, Robin
White, Toss Woollaston, Ralph Hotere, Fiona Pardington, Frances Hodgkins, among others.
With the largest team of art specialists of any New Zealand auction house; representation in Wellington, Christchurch and Auckland; and a marketing powerhouse, Webb's is Aotearoa’s superior choice to steward your artworks into a new home.
Should you have artworks by significant artists you would like to bring to auction, please get in touch with our specialist team for an obligation free appraisal.
auckland
Tasha Jenkins Head of Art
tasha@webbs.co.nz
+64 22 595 5610
wellington
Mark Hutchins-Pond Senior Specialist, Art mark@webbs.co.nz +64 22 095 5610
christchurch
Sean Duxfield Specialist, Art sean@webbs.co.nz
+64 210 536 504
Webb’s is set to kick off the 2025 auction calendar in delightfully eclectic style, with the second instalment of Artifacts: From the Collection of John Perry being presented online in January. The first instalment of the collection, brought to auction in early 2023, was a white glove sale, and received the highest viewership for a Webb’s auction to date. We know many have been eagerly awaiting the next chapter in this extraordinary collection.
John Perry was legendary in the New Zealand art and auction scene—well known for his encyclopaedic knowledge of local and international art, as well as his charming personality. He was also an enduring friend of Webb’s, attending countless auctions over decades, from our earliest days in 1970s right through to 2021, shortly before he passed away. As well as holding important roles as Curator of the Rotorua City Art Gallery, and then Director of the Rotorua Museum, John is most remembered for being an avid collector. Over the years he was often seen driving a white Toyota Hiace between Auckland’s auction houses and antique dealerships, loading it up with weird and wonderful objects as he went. He loved finding forgotten treasures, and also loved picking out items from his collection to gift to people he interacted with.
Leah Morris Head of Decorative Arts leah@webbs.co.nz +64 22 574 5699
Florence S. Fournier Specialist, Decorative Arts florence@webbs.co.nz +64 22 499 5619
It's in this same treasure-hunting spirit that Webb’s has approached the curation and presentation of John’s life’s collection. With the support of John’s family our Decorative Arts team have been meticulously working through the 700-square metre cinema-turned-storeroom in Helensville that became home to his vast array of treasures — the space (equivalent to four tennis courts) packed wall to wall with art, antiques, and curios from Aotearoa, Asia Pacific and other parts of the world.
Part One of the collection presented a number of unearthed gems, including the painting Newtown by Selwyn Muru, a series of paintings by Dick Lyne, and an excellent model waka by Alex Coates. Excitingly, this time around John’s own family are directly assisting in selecting pieces for the sale, and Head of Decorative Arts, Leah Morris, promises wonderful examples of folk art, taonga Māori, New Zealand studio pottery, antiques, books, Asian arts, toys and collectibles, historic photography and ephemera, plus more New Zealand art from Dick Lyne, E. Mervyn Taylor, and others.
Bringing the collection of John Perry to market, and working with his family and those who knew him best, has been a privilege. We are thrilled to once again be giving you a glimpse into the unique mind and realm of a true industry icon.
Colin LEGACY PROJECT McCahon
Join us on a journey to preserve and share the work of an icon for generations to come.
The Colin McCahon Legacy Project is a unique undertaking to protect and promote the work of one of Aotearoa’s most precious taonga – Colin McCahon.
Colin McCahon, born 1 August 1919 in Timaru, Aotearoa, is one of New Zealand’s most celebrated artists. Alongside painters like Rita Angus and Toss Woollaston, McCahon helped introduce modernism to New Zealand. His work is epic, and it contributes to the way we see Aotearoa.
The Colin McCahon Legacy Project has been initiated by the Colin McCahon Trust with experts from the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, and the McCahon Family. It is endorsed by former prime ministers, internationally acclaimed contemporary artists, and communities across New Zealand.
This interactive digital platform will showcase McCahon’s remarkable life and works, significantly enhancing the beloved existing catalogue at www.mccahon. co.nz. It will continue to serve researchers, collectors, and enthusiasts by providing access to verified works by McCahon. The new platform will offer increased accessibility and functionality, creating innovative ways to engage with McCahon’s exceptional life and work.
Accompanied by an educational resource for senior secondary students, this project will provide access for millions of viewers both in Aotearoa and abroad.
New features will include:
• Visual descriptions for each of McCahon’s 1,800+ works
• Expanded catalogue entries including contextual information and literary references
• High resolution, zoomable images
• A media-rich biography of McCahon’s life and work
• Diverse perspectives on McCahon’s enduring impact and significance.
We invite you to support and celebrate McCahon’s legacy through this exciting new initiative.
LEFT
Bernie Hill, 1961. Colin McCahon photographed in the Gallery Studio E H McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
ABOVE
Colin McCahon, Angel of the Annunciation, oil on cardboard, 1947. Purchased 1980 with Special Projects in the Arts funds. Te Papa (1980-0008-3). CM001039. Reproduction courtesy of the Colin McCahon Trust.
COLIN M c CAHON | CLOUDS 3 , 1975 (2024)
EDITION OF 100
Screen-print / 640 gsm Hahnemühle cold pressed paper / 1035 x 700 mm
The Trust is excited to present a limited edition print of Clouds 3, 1975 (2024) for purchase to support the fundraising effort for this project. Proceeds will go directly to the Trust.
To discuss purchasing a print, please get in touch with Webb’s art department.
Stephanie AuYeung, Manager, Art | stephanie@webbs.co.nz
DDI (+64) 09 529 5600 | M (+64) 022 301 8259
Work is underway but we need your help to realise this very special project
Support the preservation of McCahon’s work and legacy
By purchasing a print and making a donation, you are directly supporting the Trust to preserve Colin McCahon’s work for future generations.
Contact us to discuss your contribution or to join our mailing list as this exciting project unfolds:
Jaqueline Phillips
The Colin McCahon Trust project@mccahon.co.nz
Share your artwork with us
Do you own an artwork by Colin McCahon?
We invite you to share details about your artwork to assist us in our research for the new website. Please contact:
Miri Young-Moir, Project Lead
The Colin McCahon Trust catalogue@mccahon.co.nz
The Colin McCahon Trust is a Registered Charity CC28806 www.mccahonproject.co.nz
Thank you to Webb’s, a strategic partner of the Colin McCahon Legacy Project.
ABOVE
Colin McCahon, Six days in Nelson and Canterbury, oil on canvas on board, 1950. Gift of Colin McCahon through the Friends of the Auckland Art Gallery. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (1978/12). CM000001. Reproduction courtesy of the Colin McCahon Trust.
Documentation of the installation of Colin McCahon’s Gate III at Auckland City Art Gallery for ‘Ten Big Paintings’, 1971, exhibition file 42, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.
LEFT
Colin McCahon, Clouds 3, 1975. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, on loan from a private collection. CM000105. Reproduction courtesy of the Colin McCahon Trust.
Quietly Confident
The Brands Defining Laid-Back Luxury
First there was the defiantly logo-free pouch, its dumpling-like shape formed from the softest calfskin. Then there was the winter of the simple but unusually proportioned padded bomber jacket. More recently, it was an impossibly modest leather ballet slipper—a single elastic strap its only embellishment. When it comes to the ‘it’ bags, shoes and garments of the last few years it’s somewhat ironic that the most understated styles have been the ones gaining the most attention.
While demand for the glitzy, high glamour titans of the fashion world will always be strong, Webb’s has been tracking growing interest in a new guard of fashion players—a mix of intriguing younger brands and heritage houses that have undergone something of cultural and market renaissance. What these brands have in common is an exclusive, intimate approach to both design and marketing; one that eschews excessive branding in favour of a more niche proposition. Call it ‘quiet luxury’, call it ‘stealth wealth’, or simply call it a rational response to an ever-noisy fashion landscape: this is not so much a trend as a redefining of fashion as an investment. Here are some of the top names leading the charge.
Christine Power AJP (GIA) Head of Fine Jewels, Watches & Luxury Accessories
christinep@webbs.co.nz
+64 27 929 5607
Sam Shaw AJP (GIA) Manager of Fine Jewels, Watches & Luxury Accessories
sam@webbs.co.nz
+64 27 929 5607
There has arguably been no luxury brand with a more dramatic turnaround in recent years than the Spanish maison Loewe. Established in 1846, it is considered one of the world’s oldest fashion houses, however for much of this century had been languishing in the market. Under the creative direction of wunderkind Jonathan Anderson (who was appointed to the role in 2013) Loewe has seen a surge in popularity in recent years — its innovative designs and high-quality craftsmanship capturing the attention of fashion enthusiasts worldwide. Luxury brand tracker the Lyst Index has named it the fashion’s hottest brand for two quarters in a row in 2024.
One of the key factors behind Loewe’s rise is its unique and modern approach to design. Anderson has introduced iconic pieces like the Puzzle bag—a cuboid-shaped design as practical as it is beautiful, and which has arguably become the ‘it’ bag of the decade. Webb’s has seen growing demand for the Puzzle, with two examples presented at auction earlier this year well exceeding estimates. Other coveted Loewe styles include the Puzzle Fold tote, the Flamenco clutch, and the Goya crossbody.
Celine
Celine, a renowned French luxury fashion house, was founded in 1945 by Céline Vipiana. Initially started as a made-to-measure children’s shoe business, it soon expanded into women’s shoes and leather goods, and by the 1960s had shifted its focus to ready-to-wear fashion for women, emphasising a chic, sportswear-inspired aesthetic.
The Row
If you haven’t heard of the Row you will have almost certainly heard of its founders—the former child stars Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. You will also almost certainly be familiar with their designs, as they are some of the most emulated in the trickle-down fashion ecosystem. The lug sole boot trend from a few winters ago? It can be traced back to the Row’s now iconic zip-up version. The ballet slipper you’ve been seeing everywhere for the past three seasons? The Row led the comeback with their various iterations.
Posited as the name in quiet luxury, the focus here is simple designs executed immaculately in the finest of fabrications—think the perfect wool trouser, the holy grail cashmere sweater, or the most beautifully cut blazer. The timelessness of the designs means they are increasingly being sought as investment pieces, and in fact their perpetually sold out Margaux bag has been touted as ‘the new Birkin’—absolutely a style to watch.
While it has been led by several influential creative directors over the years (including Michael Kors and Hedi Slimane) it was the mid2000s tenure of British designer Phoebe Philo that elevated it to cult status and galvanised its position as synonymous with intelligent, understated luxury. Under Philo’s stewardship (often by fans as the era of ‘old Celine’), Celine became celebrated for its minimalist designs, high-quality materials, and timeless elegance—a uniform for the modern, considered woman.
Styles from the Phoebe Philo era of Celine remain hugely coveted, in particular the Trapeze, Phantom, Belt and Classic Box bags.
Bottega Veneta
Founded in 1966 in Vicenza, Italy, Bottega Veneta (often simply referred to as ‘Bottega’) is known for its exceptional craftsmanship and innovative designs, with the brand initially gaining recognition for its artisanal leather goods—in particular its signature intrecciato weave, which involves weaving leather strips to create a distinctive, durable pattern.
The brand’s philosophy, “When your own initials are enough,” emphasises understated elegance and a focus on quality over flashy logos. This approach has garnered a loyal following among those who appreciate a more subtle take on luxury.
In recent years, Bottega Veneta has undergone a creative transformation under the direction of Daniel Lee, who served as Creative Director from 2018 to 2021, and his successor, Matthieu Blazy. Lee’s tenure brought a modern, edgy twist to the brand, while still maintaining the house’s commitment to craftsmanship. Blazy continues to build on this legacy, pushing the boundaries of contemporary fashion.
At Webb’s we see consistent demand for any of the aforementioned intrecciato styles, in particular the Pouch, Jody, and vintage Cabat bags.
Caolan McAleer Head of Single Owner Collections
caolan@webbs.co.nz
+64 27 929 5603
Tasha Jenkins
Head of Art
tasha@webbs.co.nz
+64 22 595 5610
40 Pat Hanly Doing It est $200,000—$300,000 sold $220,050
A Life in Art: The Becroft Collection
Webb’s was recently privileged to bring to market The Becroft Collection—an assemblage of close to 90 unique artworks and objects collected over many years by Genevieve and David Becroft, revered arts patrons.
The Becroft’s broad art collection was built through personal relationships with artists and their community, evidenced in the many sculptures from NZ Sculpture OnShore, as well as works by Pat Hanly, a close friend. To give context to the deeply personal and storied nature of the collection, these and other works were presented for viewing in-situ at The Becroft House— an architecturally important lakeside dwelling that was the Becroft family home for over 50 years.
Perhaps owing to the Becroft’s deep community ties and respected standing within the art world, this auction garnered significant interest from across the country. Over the week long viewing period over 900 hundred visitors were welcomed to The Becroft House, and the online auction saw close to 700 bidders vying for works from the collection.
Works by Hanly achieved fantastic results: the joyful and sensuous White Model Torso—from the artist’s iconic Torso series—reached a hammer of $94,879, while headliner Doing It achieved $220,050. The lovely acrylic on paper work Sleep also eclipsed estimates of $4,500–$6,500 to land on a final price of $11,633. Other standout results include Louise Henderson's lovely Roses which saw a final price of $27,546, Trevor Moffit’s domestic scene Podding Peas, which reached $23,261, and outdoor sculptures by Dave McCracken and Greer Twiss achieving $24,485 and $15,915 respectively.
The success of The Becroft Collection underscores the unique appeal of single owner collections. By allowing a discerning individual's treasures to take centre stage, these auctions tell a human story, imbuing a sense of intimacy and meaning that resonates with buyers. With planning for our 2025 calendar underway, we welcome further collections of this nature. If you have been contemplating bringing your own collection to market, please get in touch with us.
Top Prices: Webb's Art Highlights of 2024
Webb’s consistently achieves excellent results for Aotearoa’s renowned blue chip artists. In 2024 we have observed firsthand competitive bidding for many fantastic works which have often exceeded their expected estimates. Aotearoa’s secondary market is booming and this is an excellent time to consign your artworks with the team of specialists at Webb’s.
1 Don Binney
Malay Dove, Wooden Mansions
est $500,000—$750,000 sold $575,397
2 Ralph Hotere What’s in a Game?
est $300,000—$400,000 sold $318,305
3 Colin McCahon
The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version)
est $300,000—$400,000 sold $318,305
4 Paul Dibble
Geometric Figure 1
est $170,000—$250,000 sold $183,637
5 Andy Warhol
Mick Jagger FS IIB.147
est $140,000—$200,000 sold $171,395
6 Graham Sydney Road to Onslow 1 est $150,000—$75,000 sold $171,395
Kia ora koutou and welcome to our November Works of Art catalogue.
2024 has been a wonderful year for the Art team, beginning with our first forays into the South Island by bringing onboard our Christchurch Art Specialist Sean Duxfield. Webb's will now showcase highlights from our Works of Art sales in the Garden City. This campaign has further connected us with our Cantabrian clients, and we look forward to expanding this in the future.
Further north in Te Aro, Webb’s Wellington has been thriving, led by the extraordinary Mark Hutchins-Pond and Karen Rigby. This year alone our Wellington gallery has held a huge array of events including book launches, string quartets, fundraising exhibitions and more. Our selling exhibitions continue to reach new heights led by our talented curator Virginia Woods-Jack, with a personal favourite of the year being the wonderful solo exhibition by Julia Morison.
In May, we held our second ever live art auction in the capital, Get Back: Art of the Sixties. This lively sale was a lot of fun for the team and our clients, and we are excited about another live auction in Wellington next year.
It was a pleasure to hold Webb’s first double-owner auction, All Shook Up, in July and also bring to market the single-owner auction The Becroft Collection. Working closely with vendors and hearing the stories behind the artworks is always very enjoyable, and having the privilege to showcase The Becroft Collection in the beautiful Becroft home was a very special personal highlight.
Meanwhile our stalwart Art Online and Select sales have been helmed seamlessly by our dedicated Auckland Art team of Stephanie AuYeung, Georgina Brett, Hannah Owen, Jo Bragg and Georgia Clapshaw, who have put in an immense amount of work to achieve exeptional results.
This brings us to the final Works of Art auction of 2024. After excellent results from our last sale in August I am delighted to share this wonderful selection of works with you.
I must begin with our cover artwork: the stunning twopanel oil painting Paremata Landscape by Robin White. As seasoned art collectors will know, oil paintings by Robin White very rarely come to market, and this is a particularly special piece. Painted in 1970 while living at Bottle Creek, the work depicts what was likely the view out of White’s window to Paremata. The owner of the work lived near White and had the same view, remarking that the wooden frame created an almost window-like effect. The work has been cherished for many decades, so it is a privilege to now bring it to market and public view.
Looking at more contemporary artworks on offer, there is an excellent suite of five superb paintings by Shane Cotton. Spanning from 1998–2007, these works feature Cotton’s well-known palette of brown and black, combined with delicately painted text and imagery that speaks to his Māori heritage and the wider biculturalism of Aotearoa.
Included in the sale are five photographs by Fiona Pardington, including an early gelatin silver print from 2004
among more recent digital prints. Pihipihi, Hunter, a large scale two panel image, is particularly striking and alluring in person.
Another excellent two-panel work within the auction is a bold oil painting by Allen Maddox. Painted in 1999, only a year before his passing, the work features a strong blue background and Maddox’s typical cross marks in thick energetic brushstrokes.
We are also pleased to showcase two stunning Toss Woollaston oil paintings within the sale. The first is the magnificent landscape work Taramakau, with Woollaston’s typical expressive brushstrokes and wonderful ochres coming to the fore, as well as a lovely and evocative portrait of his daughter Anna Woollaston.
Another large-scale work is the monolithic and exuberant The New Love Logos by Bill Hammond, a threepanel work painted on wallpaper from 1989.
At almost three metres wide, the work is a sight to behold when standing before it. With an almost cartoonlike sensibility, it is a work you can keep looking at again and again to find new moments and narratives.
A special inclusion is Painted Words by Rosalie Gascoigne, an artist whose work does not come to market often in Aotearoa. Also featured in the auction are excellent works by Don Binney, Michael Parekōwhai, Max Gimblett, Pat Hanly, Frances Hodgkins and Tony Fomison.
As always, prior to the auction we look forward to showcasing highlights from the sale in Christchurch and Wellington, followed by the full catalogue viewing in Auckland. The live auction will then take place on Monday 25 November in our Mount Eden gallery.
As we draw closer to the end of the year, I want to thank the Art team for their constant hard work to pull these auctions together for you. It is a privilege to work with such an incredible team of people. 2024 has been a year of growth in the Art department, having added three new members to our team. We are also excited to be welcoming another new member in late November, when Emily Gardener joins us as Director of Art. With her wealth of experience and passion for art, I look forward to seeing what directions Emily steers the department in 2025 and beyond.
Looking ahead to a new year, I want to say thank you to all our clients for your consistent support and engagement—we look forward to another buoyant and exciting year of auctions for 2025.
Wellington Programme
Auckland Programme
auckland
33a Normanby Rd
Mount Eden
Auckland 1024
wellington
23 Marion Street
Te Aro
Wellington 6011
Launch Event
Monday 11 November 5.30pm — 7.30pm
Launch Event
Wednesday 13 November 5.30pm — 7.30pm
Wellington based art collector and writer Helen Beaglehole will be discussing a selection of highlights from this catalogue with our Senior Art Specialist, Mark Hutchins-Pond. Please RSVP to karen@webbs.co.nz.
Viewing
Thursday 14 — Friday 15 November 10am — 5pm
Saturday 16 November 11am — 4pm
Launch Event
Tuesday 19 November 6pm — 8pm
Join us at our Mount Eden gallery to hear Linda Tyler, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Auckland, share her thoughts on this fantastic catalogue. Please RSVP to art@webbs.co.nz.
Viewing
Wednesday 20 — Friday 22 November 10am — 5pm
Saturday 23 — Sunday 24 November 10am — 4pm
Viewing on Request
Monday 25 November 10am — 5pm
Live Auction
Monday 25 November 6.30pm
1982
relief print on paper, 1/10 signed Hanly, dated 82 and inscribed "Night lips" in graphite lower edge
Private collection, Napier. Acquired from James Yearbury, Russell, c1980s.
6 Pauline Yearbury
Haumai-tiketike
c1970s
acrylic on incised rimu
signed JPY with incision lower left
600 × 300mm
est $4,000 — $6,000
provenance
Private collection, Napier. Acquired from James Yearbury, Russell, c1980s.
7 Louise Henderson untitled
watercolour on paper
signed Louise Henderson and inscribed AUCKLAND in graphite lower right 380 × 380mm
est $8,000 — $12,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland.
8 Joanna Margaret Paul untitled 1983 watercolour on paper
signed JMP and dated 83 in brushpoint lower right 550 × 750mm
est $4,000 — $7,000
provenance
Private collection, Northland.
Bill
untitled (Gutless) 2006
lithograph on paper, edition of 100 signed Bill Hammond and dated 2006 in graphite lower right 585 × 430mm
est $8,000 — $12,000
provenance Private collection.
10 Paul Dibble Bird Dance bronze, edition of 5 signed Paul Dibble with incision lower edge 450 × 250 × 180mm
est $15,000 — $20,000
provenance Private collection.
9
Hammond
11 Frances Hodgkins
Arrangement of Jugs
lithograph on paper
signed Frances Hodgkins in graphite lower right 450 × 600mm
est $18,000 — $25,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland.
untitled 1961
watercolour on paper signed Mrkusich and dated 6143 in graphite lower right 375 × 560mm
est $15,000 — $20,000
from
12 Milan Mrkusich
Private collection, Wellington. Acquired
Peter McLeavey Gallery, c1975.
untitled 1961 watercolour on paper signed Mrkusich and dated 61 – no 6 in graphite lower right 375 × 560mm
est $12,000 — $18,000 provenance Private collection, Christchurch.
13 Milan Mrkusich
14 Fiona Pardington
Pamamao/Afar 2004
gelatin silver print
signed Fiona Pardington, dated 2004 and inscribed PAMAMAO/AFAR, North Island Piopio, Turnagra Tanagra (heetori), 8 September 1900, Waitetara in graphite verso 680 × 550mm
est $7,500 — $12,500
provenance
Private collection, Auckland.
15 Andy Leleisi'uao untitled 2009 acrylic on canvas signed Andy Leleisi'uao in brushpoint lower left 1120 × 910mm
$10,000 — $15,000
collection, Auckland.
est $20,000 — $30,000
16 Ian Scott
Small Lattice No. 225 acrylic on canvas
signed Ian Scott in graphite verso 810 × 810mm
17 Max Patte untitled resin, gold leaf and acrylic on board signed Max Patte in ink verso 1605mm diameter
est $18,000 — $30,000
provenance
Private collection, Wellington.
18 Max Gimblett Hive 1997–8
acrylic and gold leaf on gesso on board signed Max Gimblett, dated 1997/98 and inscribed Hive in ink verso 380 × 380mm
est $12,000 — $16,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland.
signed Reuben Paterson and dated 2012 in brushpoint verso 1200mm diameter
est $15,000 — $25,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Milford Galleries, Dunedin, 2012.
exhibitions HOUSE OF RAINBOW, Milford Galleries, Dunedin, 31 March–21 April 2012.
19 Reuben Paterson Button Up 2012
glitter and acrylic on canvas
C-type print
1480 × 1140mm
est $22,000 — $32,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland.
Michael Parekōwhai (Ngāti Whakarongo, Ngāriki Rotoawe, Pākehā) is a master of the Trojan horse. Since he graduated from the Elam School of Fine Arts in 1990, his iconic oeuvre — spanning everything from woodland bunnies to pāua-inlaid pianos — can be strongly characterised by an ability to draw the viewer in with something disarmingly mundane, but then, with a knowing sleight of hand, turns our attention to something far more biting, for those who care to take a second look. Curator and writer Justin Paton contends that “all artists are engaged to some extent in this kind of wager … a flare of recognition,” 1 and it is this exchange that Parekōwhai orchestrates so deftly.
Turk Lane belongs to Parekōwhai’s wider suite of works, The Consolation of Philosophy: Piko Nei te Matenga , the full series of which was exhibited at the Sydney Biennale in 2002. Comprising 12 monumental photographs, each work showcases a different floral arrangement prepared by Parekōwhai, who had incidentally trained as a florist’s assistant in his youth. The initial assessment is one of household pleasantries: serene, innocuously palatable, and all the more sweetened for local New Zealand audiences by the nostalgic charm of a Crown Lynn vase. But true to form, Parekōwhai hints at something stirring just beneath the surface, “appropriating images from the dominant culture, subtly recoding them to speak of Māori concerns.” 2
As with all 12 works in this series, Turk Lane takes its title from one of the many locations across Europe where soldiers of the Māori Battalion fought and died in World War I. The floral arrangement – initially a domestic delight and sign of bountiful life – quickly turns towards the funereal as we pause to consider the bloody sacrifice of soldiers who fell in a war that was not theirs to fight. When the title is considered alongside those of other works in the series — Ypres , Passchendaele and Calais among them – Parekōwhai leaves no room to question what is really at play here, tapping into a painful nerve from our nation’s collective memory. Viewers are left to contend with not a sweet floral perfume, but instead a wet rot: the effect is brutal, sickly, and we are denied the luxury of reprieve.
In The Bosom of Abraham , Parekōwhai again disarms us with the hyper-functional and everyday: a simple, fluorescent light fixture, its wire and commonplace power plug fully exposed. Its point of difference resides in the traditional kōwhaiwhai pattern that graces its surface, providing a warm glow to any room it inhabits. Originally exhibited in a set of 14, these light works were made to mirror the number of rafters traditionally built into a Māori wharenui; the rafters represent the ribs of the ancestor, whose body informs its architecture.
21 Michael Parekōwhai
The Bosom of Abraham c2000 screenprinted vinyl on fluorescent light housing 1300 × 200 × 80mm (widest points)
est $20,000 — $35,000
provenance Private collection.
1 Justin Paton, “Weighing in, Lifting off: Michael Parekōwhai in Venice,” in Michael Parekōwhai and Mary Milroy Barr, Michael Parekōwhai: On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer (Michael Lett and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2011), 27.
2 Robert Leonard, “Michael Parekōwhai,” Robert Leonard: Contemporary-Art Writer and Curator, https://robertleonard. org/michael-parekowhai/
3 Michael Parekōwhai, quoted in “The Bosom of Abraham,” Dunedin Public Art Gallery, https://collection.dunedin.art. museum/objects/8430/the-bosom-of-abraham
Parekōwhai’s light sculpture speaks in part to the legacy of Marcel Duchamp in European art history, and his found-object sculptures, but then pivots us towards cultural concerns much closer to home and, indeed, to the artist’s own life. Speaking to urbanisation and its impacts on the traditional marae for contemporary Māori, Parekōwhai recalls: “our meeting house in my iwi homeland has two sides and a ceiling. It’s got no carving. It’s just little. It’s not used any more, but it is abandoned only in the physical sense. This is because we know we belong to this place. We carry its spirit with us, wherever we go …. Our living marae is really our suburban family home.” 3
The work’s title, too, is a classic Parekōwhai-ism in its multi-faceted meaning. In biblical terms, the bosom of Abraham serves as a metaphor for the place of limbo between this life and the next, where souls await Judgement Day. It is closely aligned to a state of Paradise, and perhaps parallels the sense of self and grounding that tūrangawaewae provides — in whatever form can be fashioned or evolved — for contemporary Māori in a post-colonial and ever-urbanising Aotearoa. Here, in The Bosom of Abraham , the artist constructs a kind of mobile marae.
As in his heritage as well as his art, Parekōwhai draws from both Māori and Pākehā worlds, proffering weighty questions on colonisation and contemporary Māoritanga conveyed through deceptively ordinary means. At each opportunity he lays out his wager for us, and most certainly does the gamble pay off.
Essay by STEPHANIE AUYEUNG
22 Karl Maughan
Seaview Road, Waiheke
2015 oil on canvas
signed Karl Maughan, dated 2015 and inscribed Seaview Road, Waiheke in brushpoint verso 1200 × 1200mm
est $25,000 — $45,000 provenance
Private collection, Auckland. Acquired directly from the artist, c2015.
23 John Pule Begin Here 2009
varnish, enamels, oils, ink and resin on canvas signed John Puhiatau Pule, dated 09 and inscribed Begin Here in brushpoint lower edge 970 × 1100mm
est $25,000 — $40,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, 2019.
exhibitions John Pule, Nothing Must Remain, Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, 22 July–15 August 2009.
HEAVENS AND HORIZONS
Shane Cotton (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Hine, Te Uri Taniwha) burst onto the Aotearoa New Zealand art scene in the early 1990s with bold figurative paintings that interrogated this country’s colonial history and burgeoning cultural identity. Cotton graduated from Ilam School of Fine Arts, the University of Canterbury, in 1988, and has since become well decorated in recognition of his artistic career, including with an Arts Laureate award and an appointment to the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the visual arts. The suite of works offered here is reflective of Cotton’s historically rich and iconographic style developed across three decades of art making.
Emerging from his study of Aotearoa’s colonial past, many of Cotton’s works from the mid-to-late 1990s explore the intersection of Māoritanga and Christianity. Like all of Cotton’s works, these paintings do not present a singular perspective; rather, they offer a myriad of historical vantage points from which to approach their subject. The text in untitled (lot 25), presented here, is likely an adaptation of the translation of Revelation 22:13 found in Te Paipera Tapu , a nineteenth-century te reo Māori Bible frequently cited by Cotton.
It reads: “Ko ahau te Arepa me te Omeka, te timatanga me te whakamutunga, te tuatahi me te whakaotinga” 1 (“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End”). Cotton’s pictorial use of the words ‘Arepa’ and ‘Omeka’ may also be a reference to the British New Zealand painter Robert Ellis, who wrote the same phrasing across a number of his canvases. Ellis likely borrowed the reo translation of Alpha and Omega from the Māori Rātana Church, whose iconography he used in various paintings. During the 1990s, Cotton re-appropriated imagery from a number of Pākehā artists, including Gordon Walters and Dick Frizzell, offering his own playful provocations on the appropriation of Māori art.
Cotton’s inquiry into the intersection of Christianity and Māoritanga is largely informed by his personal research on the lives of his Ngāpuhi ancestors. Ōhaeawai, the name delicately lettered in Old English font in Blackout , is the site of both Cotton’s family marae and one of the most significant battles of the 1845–46 Flagstaff War.
Also featured are motifs common to Cotton’s practice, including kōwhaiwhai patterns,
signed S. COTTON and dated 2001 in brushpoint lower right; signed Shane W. Cotton, dated 2001 and inscribed BLACKOUT in ink verso 700 × 1000mm
est $40,000 — $60,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Hamish McKay, Wellington.
exhibitions
New Paintings – Shane Cotton, Tony de Lautour, Michael Harrison, Saskia Leek, Robin Neate, Seraphine Pick, Patrick Pound, Hamish McKay, Wellington, 6–21 April, 2001.
est $12,000 — $16,000
Private collection, Tasman.
25 Shane Cotton untitled 1998 acrylic on canvas signed SW COTTON and dated 1998 in brushpoint lower right 280 × 350mm
26 Shane Cotton untitled 1998 acrylic on canvas signed SW COTTON and dated 1998 in brushpoint lower right 280 × 350mm
est $12,000 — $16,000
provenance
Private collection, Tasman.
the narrow profile of hills and mountains, and his archetypal pot plant. Cotton’s pot plants are derived from his interest in the plant paintings in the Rongopai wharenui, built in 1886. The Rongopai paintings depict both native and introduced plants in their natural and potted states, and can be read as an early form of bicultural imagery. The sense of space in Blackout, as in much of Cotton’s work from the previous decade — including both 1998 pieces offered here — is constructed through a bold, clear horizon line that separates sea, land and sky without relying on tonal variation. Imbued with the vastness of Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, Cotton’s horizons resonate with possibility. Te reo text and Christian iconography merge into vibrant hybrid images against a backdrop of sea and sky. In untitled (lot 24), Cotton’s block text takes the form of a cross hovering over the landscape. The words are most likely an adaptation of a Ngāti Rangi pepeha meaning “the head knot plumed from the very heavens”,2 descriptive of the iwi’s descent from Ranginui, the sky father.
2 Gar y Hooker, “He Kōrero mō Tōhe,” Te Iwi o te Roroa, accessed 28 October 2024, https://www.teroroa.iwi.nz/ post/_tohe
27 Shane Cotton Archipelago 2007
acrylic on canvas
signed SWC, dated 2007 and inscribed ARCHIPELAGO in brushpoint lower edge; signed Shane W. Cotton, dated 2007 and inscribed Archipelago in ink verso 400 × 500mm
est $20,000 — $30,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Brooke/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch, 2007.
While lettering in New Zealand art is almost always deemed a Colin McCahonism, Cotton pulls his inspiration from a different source, stating, “Text featured in a lot of meeting houses that were made at the turn of the century … the text and images ran alongside each other, which is really what my interest in painting is: how that initial thing came about, and then how I’ve chosen to employ some of that, as recognition of that place and time for Māori artists.” 3
Both paintings from 1998 offered in this suite are exemplary of the restricted palette of muddy ochres, reds and sepia that Cotton employed across the 1990s. This colour palette gave his work an immediate historical quality, reminiscent of both the faded European masters of the past and the raw ochres of early Māori art. By the mid-2000s, Cotton had diverged from these earth-toned landscapes in favour of haunting and charged blue-black skyscapes, as seen in Archipelago (2007). Cotton’s provocative, airborne worlds harbour a sense of liminality and mythic realms. The birds that populate these voids don’t fly but ascend, float and plummet, reminding us of their role in Māori mythology as emissaries between heaven and earth. The hummingbirds in Archipelago encircle the mokomokai, the preserved and tattooed Māori head, at its centre. Mokomokai, which appear frequently in Cotton’s works, are vessels of genealogical stories and identity, as well as symbols of colonial violence. Cotton does not pinpoint the exact meaning of mokomokai in his works, leaving them distorted and afloat in the airbrushed depths of his skyscapes. Archipelago , as with all of the paintings offered in this suite, poses compelling questions on our national heritage and the path ahead.
3 Rob Mildon and Jeff Fox, “Take Me to the River, Dip Me in the Water,” interview with Shane Cotton, Te Manawa, 20 July 2017, https://www. temanawa.co.nz/2017/07/20/take-me-to-the-river/
bronze, edition of 4 plus 1 artist's proof signed PAUL DIBBLE, dated 2005 and inscribed NZ with incision lower edge 410 × 800 × 220mm (widest points)
est $30,000 — $45,000
provenance
Private collection, Palmerston North. Acquired from Taylor-Jensen Fine Arts, Palmerston North, 2005.
exhibitions
Parallel Strands, Taylor-Jensen Fine Arts, Palmerston North, 1-21 July, 2005.
28 Paul Dibble Flying High with Binney 2005
1976
oil on canvas on board
inscribed #142 in brushpoint lower right; inscribed #142 in graphite verso 315 × 230mm
est $28,000 — $40,000 provenance Private collection, Auckland.
29 Tony Fomison
Untitled #142 (Self portrait outside a cave in Kaikoura)
“ Photography is such a powerful medium and that is why I took it up—I could almost feel it in my bones. Especially the complications it takes on with our embodied self, issues of time, human vision, simulacra and facsimile, and the photograph's indexical character. I just knew that this medium would be extremely productive and it was only going to get more complicated and more technically exquisite.”
Fiona Pardington in Conversation with Kate Brettkelly-Chalmers, Ocula Magazine, Auckland, 2 September 2015.
est $28,000 — $36,000
Private collection.
30 Fiona Pardington Magpie Tail (below), Hunter 2022 pigment ink on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 3/10 signed Fiona Pardington in ink verso 1080 × 1460mm
The complete version of in Pursuit of Venus [infected] , by Lisa Reihana (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine, Ngāi Tū) for her exhibition Emissaries at the 2017 Venice Biennale, can be considered nothing short of monolithic: in physicality, in duration, in scope. Measuring 24 metres wide and 4 metres high, with over 1,500 individual digital layers and 33 million pixels per frame, this work was made to immerse its viewers in a “radical reclamation” of colonial history “from a trans-Pacific perspective.” 1
The work takes its cue from Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique , an 1804 woodblockprint wallpaper developed by Joseph Dufour and Jean-Gabriel Charvet for sale to wealthy clientele from across Europe, where it proved immensely popular. The wallpaper was intended as a form of ‘armchair tourism’ of its time, allowing patrons to decorate the interiors of their homes with tantalising scenes of an idealised Pacific. Dufour and Charvet’s figures leap and lounge sensually across the wallpaper expanse, robed in ethnically ambiguous, ‘exotic’ garb; the world they inhabit is “a fabulation invented in someone else’s elsewhere.” 2 By contrast, Reihana’s rebuttal takes back the power of authorship and offers us more honest — if stinging – truths, delivered through decidedly twenty-first-century means. The narrative she presents to us speaks more openly to the darker overtones of violence, cultural misunderstanding and colonial conquest that pervade many of these seemingly small and inconsequential scenes. In doing so, Reihana
distils a radically Pacific reinterpretation of events, seeking to destabilise the dominant, European narrative of colonisation “with a speculative twist.” 3
In Cook’s Transit of Venus (12520/13065), a singular frame from the panoramic video is extracted and frozen in time: Captain Cook is seated at his desk before us, lost in thought as he tracks the Transit of Venus in the skies above. As Reihana contends, Cook is a complex character: at once a “famous explorer [and] gifted cartographer,” but also “arguably the harbinger of colonisation.” 4 Adjacent to him is a hefty, ornate clock on a tripod support, which was used to create and determine Greenwich Mean Time, a distinctly European conception of time, resting at odds with the Pacific tā–vā conception of time and place. We imagine the maps and papers Cook pores over at his elegantly carved desk, emblematic of the distinctly European notions of land ownership and cultural conquest that have had immense ramifications across the wider Pacific. Perhaps most poignantly, Reihana has placed the viewer inland, gazing out to the horizon and assuming both the physical and conceptual position of tangata whenua standing ashore. Through a twenty-firstcentury perspective, the privilege of hindsight is also our burden to bear in coming to grips with the devastating scale and complexity of Aotearoa's culturally charged politics that continue to affect generations past and present. And so Reihana lays down her wero: where do we go from here?
Essay by CHRISTIE SIMPSON
1 Rhana Devenport, “Emissaries: A New Pacific of the Past for Tomorrow,” in Lisa Reihana: Emissaries (Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2017), 12.
2 Lisa Reihana, quoted in Rhana Devenport, “Emissaries: A New Pacific of the Past for Tomorrow,”19.
3 “About the Work,” in Pursuit of Venus, https:// www.inpursuitofvenus.com/about
4 Ibid.
2017 pigment print on paper on aluminium dibond, edition of 9 760 × 1625mm
est $25,000 — $35,000
provenance Private collection.
31 Lisa Reihana Cook's Transit of Venus (12520/13065)
Bill Hammond is undoubtedly one of Aotearoa’s most significant artists. An accomplished painter since he first began exhibiting in 1980, Hammond gained substantial recognition in the 1990s for his distinctive paintings featuring almost-surreal, anthropomorphic bird figures in place of humans.
Resting, flying, observing, and engaging in esoteric rituals, these creatures are Hammond’s signature motif. The bird-humans began to appear in his work in the early 1990s, following a transformative trip to the Auckland Islands in 1989. The story of this voyage is well known: after visiting the islands — inhabited solely by birds and devoid of humans or other animals — Hammond was struck by the sense that it was like Aotearoa before humans. He remarked, “You feel like a time-traveller, as if you have just stumbled upon it.” 1 The significance of this trip on his work is clear; after this experience, he began incorporating his bird-people, and they became central to his paintings for the rest of his career.
Hammond painted Wainui in the late 1990s, during his most acclaimed period of production. The work features three simple colour tones, with his typical green and gold delicately rendered against a black background. The composition leads the viewer through the painting in a delightful manner, depicting bird-people in various contorted shapes — heads thrown back, kneeling, standing and
bending over. Here, they interact with what appear to be plants or branches — pulling, leaning against and pushing. Each figure possesses unique characteristics and occupies its own space within the picture plane. Yet together, they create a tapestry-like image, interlocking harmoniously, which is integral to Hammond’s mastery.
The 1980s through to the 1990s also marked a period of increased experimentation in Hammond’s technique. He utilised a range of mediums but also a variety of unusual supports, often atypical for ‘fine’ art, such as wallpaper, blinds and musical instruments — and in this case, a wooden tray. This choice suggests that Hammond was driven by inspiration, feeling the need to express his ideas immediately, rather than waiting for a more ‘traditional’ support material. Whether this is entirely accurate is uncertain; Hammond was notoriously tightlipped about his practice and rarely explained his artistic choices.
However, the use of a wooden tray also feels apt when considering the title of the work, Wainui. This likely refers to the area in Banks Peninsula that held significance for Hammond and his family, as he had a holiday home there. He often worked while in Wainui, which does add weight to the image, whether true or not, of Hammond at his holiday retreat, struck by artistic inspiration and compelled to create using whatever was at hand.
Essay by TASHA JENKINS
1 Bill Hammond, quoted by Charlie Gates, “Funny, Generous, a Great Drummer and a Giant of New Zealand Art,” Stuff, 6 February 2021, https://www. stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/300222645/funny-generousa-great-drummer-and-a-giant-of-new-zealand-art
32 Bill Hammond Wainui 1998
acrylic on wood
390 × 550mm (widest points) est $42,000 — $52,000
Private collection, Nelson. Gifted by the artist, 1998.
PIHIPIHI, HUNTER
Essay by CONNIE DWYER
Internationally renowned creator of artwork inspired by cultural taonga of Aotearoa, Fiona Pardington’s practice is deeply grounded in her identity as a woman artist of Māori descent. Like so many New Zealanders, Pardington’s heritage is mixed, with links to three iwi (Ngāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, and Ngāti Kahungunu) as well as the Scottish clan, Cameron. This multicultural makeup enables her to clearly see both perspectives of the complications resulting from our nation’s colonising history. Her choice of taxidermized native birds in museums as the protagonists of her metaphorical tableaux provides her with a wealth of material to draw upon.
In Māori creation stories, in the beginning there was Te Kore; a gulf of unlimited potential. Then there was Te Pō; the darkness and ceaseless night from which came Te Ao Mārama; the lit world that we inhabit today. In Pihipihi, Hunter, Pardington portrays unencumbered outstretched wings, feathers aglow, emerging from Te Pō to the light, only to be frozen, locked in night.
Pardington’s contemporary art practice draws heavily on classical art tropes, such as the still life and Vanitas, contoured with Māori ancestral reference. The Vanitas archetype often presents symbolic objects such as candles, clocks and flower cuttings as a visual reminder of the fleeting nature of life and the inevitable deterioration of beauty. Pardington manipulates the Vanitas parameters here, utilising them to impart a narrative of conservation and preservation of Aotearoa's traditions and native species.
Pihipihi, Hunter is an impressive two-panel work showing the disembodied wingspan of an ornithological specimen from a museum collection, richly and reverentially depicted as a votive image. The work is electric. The repetitious layers of feathers are vivid, their brilliance lending the composition a chiaroscuro effect. There is a visual discourse between Pardington’s work and that of Charles Frederick Goldie, through their shared earthy and deep golden green palettes, and both being benevolent agents of the cataloguing process of the history of Aotearoa. The rub in Pardington’s work here comes from whether the artist’s hand is loving or eerie. The body of the bird is omitted from the work, leaving only a taxidermic breadth of feathers to be scrutinised. Pardington’s isolation of the wings is somewhat grim, lending itself to an extinction narrative. Her approach leans toward an almost clinical curiosity, like someone pinning a butterfly’s wings to a board. It is a capture of the beauty of the living bird, displayed as if in a taxidermy room, before time ravages the thing into a shadow of its former glory. Yet, this morbid fascination is alleviated somewhat by the diptych format. The diptych format bears reference to altarpieces, an elevating tactic, encouraging veneration from the viewer to the cult of the bird or an undefined deity.
Pardington’s work often functions as a memoriam, particularly in her depictions of extinct species. This work is significant in her photographic works of birds as the act of documenting is one of conservation in itself, serving as a reminder of the treasures Aotearoa still has and should protect.
est $45,000 — $70,000
provenance Private collection, Auckland.
33 Fiona Pardington Pihipihi, Hunter 2022
inkjet print on Hahnemühle
Photo Rag, 3/10 signed Fiona Pardington in ink verso 900 × 1200mm (each panel)
spray painted Masonite on wood on plywood 830 × 560mm
est $60,000 — $90,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide, 2004.
I might have a slight bias towards ordinariness. Perhaps it’s a snobbish thing, but I just like ordinary stuff. People get so exotic about everything, and ordinary stuff is so good. 1
In Rosalie Gascoigne’s assemblages, ordinary stuff is found and arranged, sliced and spliced, pulled apart and reassembled, turned extraordinary without ever straying so far from itself that the descriptor ‘ordinary’ would cease to apply. A broken yellow road-sign cut into strips and carefully recomposed is still a broken yellow road-sign, still carries the associations of the road, the car, the journey, the landscape. In utilising and reconfiguring ordinary stuff — discarded soft-drink crates, apiary boxes and corrugated aluminium — Gascoigne’s assemblages transcend the economy of their gesture, tapping into a deep poetry that can only be found in the residue of materials that have already lived at least one life.
In this particular work, old spray-painted sheets of hardboard, likely the refuse of a building site, have been cut into rectangles and stuck back together, their colour and composition resembling terracotta tiles until you look closer and see the scuffs and scratches, time and weather, paint chipped away to reveal the sturdy wood beneath. Over top is the soft sprayed blue and looping forms of letters, words written for some purpose now lost, scrambled into abstraction, cropped to the point of illegibility. They could have been prosaic instructions, the expressive tags of disenfranchised youth, or the ramblings of a poet or a prophet; we’ll never know. Instead, they appear as found words, Painted Words , words detached from their original meaning yet still engaged in the processes of visual communication.
Made just one year prior to her death, Painted Words shows Gascoigne at the height of her powers, which are as much about fossicking and finding as assembling and constructing. When asked in an interview if she ever touched up the colours of her found materials, Gascoigne interrupts — perhaps she would, if she were any good with a paintbrush. She went on to explain that what she lacked in painting skills, she made up for in dedication.
I spend a lot more energy than most people, a lot more illogical time. I search for things. I’m indefatigable. When I know I want an example … I will go after it. I will go through a country dump. Eventually you get what you want. Or you get something that works as well. 2
Contemplating Painted Words , one wonders whether Gascoigne set out to find the sheets of used Masonite that would become this piece, or whether they came to her more serendipitously, something she couldn’t resist dragging into the back of her station wagon, “something that works as well.” Gascoigne often referred to her works as “stammering concrete poetry”, and Painted Words exemplifies this sentiment: here is a work that is poetic in its treatment of words and language, and yet equally grounded in the material, the concrete fact of what it is, scratched, scoured and stammering.
Essay by LUCINDA BENNETT
1 “Rosalie Gascoigne Interview: James Gleeson Oral History Collection,” National Gallery of Australia, 8 February 1980, https://nga.gov. au/on-demand/rosalie-gascoigne-interview/ 2 Ibid.
BREAD AND BUTTER
Essay by VICTORIA MUNN
In 1949 Toss Woollaston relocated from Māpua to Greymouth to undertake a post selling healthcare products door-to-door as a ‘Rawleigh’s Man’. The decision to move was financially driven, rather than the result of artistic inspiration or an unassailable interest in studying or painting the West Coast landscape. Indeed, the landscape at first felt unfamiliar, and starkly different from Woollaston’s previous patch at Māpua. In letters written to Charles Brasch in 1950, Woollaston acknowledged that time was needed for him to assimilate to this new landscape, but it was “seeping in all the time.”1
For much of the following decade, Woollaston’s artistic production was on the back foot, overtaken by his unfulfilling Rawleigh’s round and the family’s unrelenting financial insecurity. But Woollaston slowly turned his hand to painting the West Coast, and depictions of local landscapes, including Grey River, Seventeen Mile and the Hohonu Range, populate his oeuvre from the 1950s. For Woollaston, the Taramakau River was almost certainly the jewel in the West Coast crown, providing the subject matter for his most successful compositions of the early 1960s.
Taramakau (1960), for example, is a force of nature. Mountains of intense, rich patches of colour tower over the river running below, and Woollaston’s confident use of thick, dark lines across the composition gives form and structure to the landscape. Taramakau is rendered on an impressive scale, too, measuring approximately three by four feet (910 × 1200mm), which works to envelop the viewer in the painting. Woollaston’s adoption of this larger format came at the suggestion of André Brooke, who, in 1959, had established
Gallery 91 — Christchurch’s first contemporary dealer art gallery — with Barbara Brooke. In his published meditation on landscape, The Far-Away Hills, Woollaston reflects, “I enjoyed this larger size more than I had expected I should. I found room for greatly increased physical pleasure in painting, in sweeping arm movements, painting as you might row, or fell trees.” 2 This divulgence paints a vivid picture of the new-found energy and physical strength in Woollaston’s painting practice, and in Taramakau his enhanced interest in a gestural application of paint is keenly felt. Woollaston clearly found a new artistic drive in the early 1960s. In May 1960 he received news that he had been awarded an Association of New Zealand Art Societies fellowship. Crucially, this meant he could take time off his Rawleigh’s work and devote more time to his artistic practice. A passage in his (unpublished) autobiographical manuscript recounts a discussion with his employer about him taking a step back from his dealership:
They [Rawleigh’s]: You realise, Mr Woollaston, that though art may be the cream on your coffee, Rawleigh’s is your bread-and-butter.
Myself [Woollaston]: I hope soon to be in a position to take much more cream on my coffee.
This excerpt has rightly been cited as evidence of the delicate balance Woollaston had to strike between his artistic pursuits and the demands of his employment. But it is also indicative of his self-belief and optimism at this point in his career. This was the context
1 Toss Woollaston, letters to Charles Brasch, 24 May 1950 and 19 August 1950, transcribed in Jill Trevelyan, ed., Toss Woollaston: A Life in Letters (Te Papa Press, 2004), 181, 183.
2 Toss Woollaston, The Far-Away Hills (Pelorus Press, 1962), 48.
35 Toss Woollaston
Taramakau 1960
oil on board
signed Woollaston and dated '60 in brushpoint lower left 910 × 1200mm
est $65,000 — $95,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland. Passed by bequest; Private collection, Christchurch.
exhibitions
Toss Woollaston: A Retrospective, National Art Gallery, Wellington, 7 December 1991–16 February 1992.
literature
Gerald Barnett, Toss Woollaston: An Illustrated Biography (Wellington: National Art Gallery, 1991), 71.
36 Toss Woollaston
Portrait of Anna Woollaston
1965 oil on board
signed Woollaston in ink verso
780 × 495mm
est $40,000 — $60,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Important Paintings & Contemporary Art, Art + Object, Auckland, 7 August 2014, lot 57.
exhibitions
M. T. Woollaston: A Retrospective Exhibition of Portraits, Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington, 19–30 October 1970.
in which Woollaston produced Taramakau : with an interest piqued by the West Coast landscape; with a new, physically freeing format to work with; and with a sense of optimism for the coming decade. The market success of Taramakau only continued this streak of good news: on 30 May 1961, in a letter to his wife Edith, Woollaston described his day as “surprisingly good”, with the “chief event” being the sale of his “glittering” Taramakau for 60 guineas. 4 Eventually, in early 1962, Woollaston resigned from his Rawleigh’s post, telling his customers that “painting must now claim [his] major time and attention.”5 Painting had officially become his bread and butter. But while Woollaston is most often recognised for his expressive depiction of the New Zealand landscape, portraiture also constitutes a significant part of his oeuvre. Indeed, the importance of the genre to Woollaston’s artistic practice is the subject of a forthcoming exhibition at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery curated by Jane Davidson-Ladd. Throughout his career, Woollaston painted his family and friends, as well as regularly undertaking portrait commissions. Portrait of Anna Woollaston depicts the artist’s daughter, then in her twenties, with a sense of immediacy. With the small daub of white paint under her chin, and the elongated right side of her face, Woollaston effectively suggests Anna is turning her head towards the left of the picture plane. The thick navy line bordering the top of Anna’s head reads like a horizon line, delineating the sitter from
her surroundings and imparting on her a sense of solidity. With his bold use of terracotta and mustard colours on her proper-left cheek, Woollaston creates form in his daughter’s face, while the deeper, heavier blue-brown of her shoulders and red-brown of her hair weigh her down in the composition. Larger than life-size, and reaching both sides of the picture plane, Anna is rendered with vitality and vigour.
Like all good portraitists, Woollaston’s focus was on capturing the essence of his sitter — the way they held themselves, how they occupied space, the energy they brought into a room — rather than visually describing their exact physical appearance. In a lecture delivered at the Waikato Museum of Art and History in 1973, Woollaston explained he studied his sitters for some time, observing their behaviours and movement, before picking up the paintbrush. He described his preference for a painting “that need take no account of likeness — that is, self-sustaining by virtue of its form and construction.”6 That, Woollaston explained, was not to say that there was no need for likeness, but “only such likeness as will not destroy the [painting’s] construction, but reinforce it.” This, of course, went not only for Woollaston’s portraits, but also his representations of the landscape. While paintings such as Taramakau show an interest in topography, Woollaston was never indebted to the land’s physical form. Rather, he was interested in meditating and capturing in paint his emotional response to the landscape.
3 Transcribed in Trevelyan, ed., Toss Woollaston: A Life in Letters, 224–25.
4 Toss Woollaston, letter to Edith Woollaston, 30 May 1961, transcribed in Trevelyan, ed., Toss Woollaston: A Life in Letters, 241.
5 Toss Woollaston, letter to Rawleigh’s customers, March 1962, transcribed in Trevelyan, ed., Toss Woollaston: A Life in Letters, 248.
6 Gerald Barnett, Toss Woollaston: An Illustrated Biography (National Art Gallery, 1991), 75.
Gallerist Peter McLeavey with Portrait of Anna Woollaston. Photograph by Marti Friedlander. Image provided courtesy Gerrard and Marti Friedlander Charitable Trust.
est $55,000 — $75,000 provenance Private collection, Auckland.
37 Allen Maddox untitled 1999 oil on canvas 910 × 1820mm
Allen Maddox is widely acknowledged as one of New Zealand’s most outstanding abstract expressionist painters. Born in Liverpool, at the age of 15 Maddox migrated to New Zealand with his family. He studied painting briefly at the Ilam School of Fine Arts at Canterbury University, but he found the teaching he received frustratingly conservative and at odds with what he wanted to learn, so he dropped out to pursue an advertising career while continuing to paint whenever he could.
Maddox’s precocious talent quickly attracted critical attention when he began exhibiting his work, and his choice of abstract expressionism as his visual language, rare in New Zealand art at the time, set him apart. Maddox had his first solo dealer show at the Elva Bett Gallery in Wellington in 1973, and within a few years was exhibiting extensively up and down the country.
The primary motif Maddox employed in his abstract compositions was the ‘X’ form of diagonal brush-strokes, usually in a box suspended within a grid. He rendered his captured ‘X’ forms repeatedly in apparently endless variations of density, delineation and colour, and the ‘X’ continues to be synonymous with his signature.
Maddox began producing his ‘X’ paintings around 1975, when, in a moment of despondency, he angrily defaced a painting he was working on by crossing the image out with large diagonal strokes. The motif stuck, and he began repeating his ‘crosses in boxes’ over and over on his canvases. There is a compulsiveness in Maddox’s ‘X’ paintings; at once ordered yet disordered, they demonstrate a combination of gestural boldness and neurotic energy. Maddox commented in
1977 that his intention was “to visually reproduce the little electric thought patterns that go on in your head when one is paranoiac … How I thrill to a composition resolved by ‘painterly’ means. Splashes, strokes, aesthetic errors.”1
For much of his career, the neurotic creative energy behind Maddox’s gestural boldness was fuelled by alcoholism, drug taking and attendant bouts of psychosis. Some observers saw the nuances in his renderings of his gestural crosses as autobiographical ‘performances’, reflecting how he lived for the moment. Art critic Ian Wedde said the crosses could be read “as the crazed acting out of an idiot savant; or as calculated pastiches of self-expression.”2
There is no denying that by the time he reached his fifties, Maddox’s self-destructive lifestyle was taking its toll, and the quality of his later work became uneven. Major, fully developed works in oil on canvas became rare as he devoted more time to fluidly gestural works in acrylic or watercolour.
The fact that the impressive double canvas work, that Webb’s is currently presenting for auction was painted just a year before the artist’s death makes it even more exceptional. Maddox’s employment of a densely spatial ultramarine ground as a dark foil against the vivid striations of colour he overpaints with his characteristic motifs is also strikingly unusual. Bold ochre yellows, muddy oranges, reds and electric blues appear to jump out of the picture plane in bursts of frenetic energy, barely contained by the broken grid of white crosses Maddox has applied in his final layer. The abstract expressionist dynamism of this work is mature Maddox at his very best.
Essay by MARK HUTCHINS-POND
1 Allen Maddox, quoted by Peter Vangioni in the text to accompany the exhibition marking the acquisition of Maddox’s No Mail Today by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, June 2016.
2 Ian Wedde, “Hung, Drawn and Quartered,” in Allen Maddox, exhibition catalogue (Gow Langsford Gallery, 2006), 11.
Essay by
VICTORIA MUNN
At first glance, with its horizontal panels of paper, the highly stylised imagery, and every nook and cranny of the composition filled with colour and form, Bill Hammond’s The New Love Logos (1989) reads like a comic strip. But where the text and imagery of a comic strip facilitate the telling of a story, The New Love Logos has no clear narrative. Rather, Hammond’s painting is an unsettling commentary on the chaos of the late twentieth century. The world Hammond presents in The New Love Logos is apocalyptic, yes, but it is not entirely unfamiliar. While his humanoid figures, with their stylised faces and contorted bodies, feel very much like science fiction, some of the imagery populating the painting is recognisable for the viewer. We can identify motifs such as signposts, love hearts, speech bubbles and crossbones. From daily life, we recognise the unplugged electrical cord, though in this instance it is connected to a giant, industrial love heart, surrounded by those classic Hollywood lights. This degree of familiarity serves to draw the viewer into Hammond’s world, and question what he is trying to tell us.
With their wide-leg stance and taut angular elbows, their broad shoulders and cuboid heads, Hammond’s humanoid figures feel charged and stressed. This is understandable, given the world around them. Hammond’s composition is chaotic and intense. Not only is it replete with detailed imagery that straddles the familiar and unfamiliar, the pockets of imagery are rendered with contrasting perspectives, ranging from a close-up of a brain-like form in a doorway on the upper right, to a highangle view of a streetscape of flattened buildings. This is impressively effective in creating a jarring, almost dizzying effect. Moreover, Hammond’s limited colour palette, largely restricted to shades of candy-apple red, a muted golden yellow, and black and white, imbues the work with a rhythm, like the red paint is being pumped through the work. The red veins stretching up the road in the lower
panel feel appropriate here, because this work has a pulse. And importantly, unlike a comic strip, Hammond’s imagery is not neatly defined by a rigid grid. Instead, the passages of imagery encroach on one another: the broadshouldered torso of the figure on the left of the centre panel aligns neatly with the legs atop a motorcycle in the bottom panel, and the giant love heart straddles the upper two strips. Of course, this encroachment of imagery into different sections of the composition, the limited, consistent colour palette, and Hammond’s repetition of motifs across the picture plane, also help to create unity and balance in the work — something Hammond was especially skilled at.
Owing to the white buildings with uniform windows (factories?) dotted across the composition, and the pipes spouting black and red sludge, Hammond’s imagery might be interpreted as a comment on the potential impact of industry, but his use of wallpaper as his surface suggests we are not safe in domesticity, either. This was part of a broader inquiry in the 1980s, in which Hammond used a variety of supports for his paintings, including roller blinds, metal doors and tent canvas. Certainly, Hammond’s decision to paint on wallpaper affected the texture of the work, and the way the paint interacts with its surface, but, for Justin Paton, Hammond’s use of wallpaper also functions as an effective part of his message. Paton asks, “why couldn’t fabric or wallpaper, in their turn, form a chassis for strange new art? Why couldn’t the patterns with which [Hammond] grew up be stretched and deranged to tell a truth about interior life, about the feeling of being protected by the very thing that holds you captive?”1 Indeed, Hammond emphasises his use of wallpaper: by using raggedy, ripped ends at the edges of his composition, he draws our attention to its
1 Justin Paton, “Bill Hammond’s Apocalyptic Wallpaper,” in 23 Big Pictures (Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 1999), 8.
Bill Hammond's The New Love Logos exhibited at McLeavey Gallery, Wellington, 2017.
The New Love Logos 1989 acrylic on wallpaper
signed W. D. Hammond, dated 1989 and inscribed THE NEW LOVE LOGOS in brushpoint lower edge (each panel) 1500 × 2780mm (overall; widest points)
est $80,000 — $120,000
provenance
Private collection, Wellington.
exhibitions Stop making sense, McLeavey Gallery, Wellington, 15 March–8 April 2017.
38 Bill Hammond
materiality, as if to ensure his point will get through. Of course, these torn edges, and the misaligned edges of the three strips, also heighten the sense of disorder.
With the immense scale of The New Love Logos, measuring 1.5 metres high by 2.7 metres long, we are privy to even more of the idiosyncratic detail that keeps viewers engaged with Hammond’s paintings. The eye darts around the painting, not knowing where to land, or where to start making sense of this scene. Keen-eyed viewers may notice, in the centre of the composition, a blurry silhouette of a head with a protruding beak standing out from the golden background. Perhaps this is a precursor to Hammond’s renowned bird-people that would inhabit much of his later work — after all, 1989 is the same year Hammond made that portentous trip to the Auckland Islands. Owing to this increased scale, too, Hammond does not just provide the viewer with a window into a surreal world: he invites them in. To explore the imagery, the viewer is forced to walk alongside the work and traverse this unfamiliar ground.
PAREMATA LANDSCAPE
Essay by HELEN KEDGLEY
Robin White outside her cottage at Bottle Creek, c1970.
Sarah Farrar, Jill Trevelyan and Nina Tonga; Robin White: Something is Happening Here (Wellington: Te Papa Press and Auckland: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2022), 38.
Dame Robin White (Ngāti Awa) is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most celebrated contemporary artists. Her work is included in the collections of all major art galleries in New Zealand and Australia. A major survey of her work, Robin White: Te Whanaketanga | Something Is Happening Here, toured throughout New Zealand in 2022, accompanied by an important new publication about her work.
Born in Te Puke in 1946, White was taught by Colin McCahon at the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts. In 1968, after she graduated from Elam, the poet Sam Hunt persuaded White to move to Bottle Creek, a thriving artist community on the shores of the Paremata estuary in Porirua. There, White lived in a cottage on the inlet, alongside a group of other well-known artists and writers, including historian Michael King and author Jack Lazenby. Fellow artist Don Binney was also a regular visitor.
Despite the distractions of a vibrant and creative social scene, the three years spent at Bottle Creek proved to be a stimulating and very fruitful time, artistically, for White. Inspired by the natural beauty of the Paremata Inlet, she began painting the landscape surrounding her cottage. It was here she developed her own distinct personal style that focused on the places she lived in. She produced an iconic series of paintings, drawings and screen prints of the Paremata estuary and the hills of Porirua, as well as a series of portraits of the friends she had come to know,
A party at Sam Hunt’s cottage, Bottle Creek, c1970. Back: Jerry and Prue Ursell, Honey Andersen and baby Joseph, Robin White and Bob Andersen. Front (lying down): Don Binney, Jack Lasenby, Sam Hunt.
Sarah Farrar, Jill Trevelyan and Nina Tonga; Robin White: Something is Happening Here (Wellington: Te Papa Press and Auckland: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2022), 36.
including four masterful portraits of Sam Hunt. While her early work of the 1970s is quite distinct from her later pieces, White has always maintained that, throughout her career, “a consistent thread of my work is that it is made in response to place and what’s happening around me.”1
White taught art at nearby Mana College in Porirua, where she taught herself the meticulous and time-consuming art of screen printing. This has since become a defining characteristic of her practice and she is now recognised as one of New Zealand’s most important printmakers. One of the early-established and important aspects of her practice has been finding local artists to work with. While in Bottle Creek, White worked with Hunt and her friends Honey and Bob Andersen to publish a regular poetry broadsheet with illustrations by her, known as The Bottle Press.
The large-scale, two-panel painting Paremata Landscape is an important example of White’s early regional-realist style. Painted in a crisp, clean, hard-edged style with strong light and flat areas of colour, the image, which is horizontally continuous across the two panels, depicts the once-bush-clad hills surrounding the Paremata Inlet as they were being cleared to make way for housing. The stylised landscape with its strong outlines and simplified forms has undoubtedly been influenced by White’s printmaking. Beautifully painted in muted ochres and subtle shades of green, the image is divided into three distinct areas: in the foreground a light-green strip of the Paremata harbour is overlooked by dark-green macrocarpa trees. The main focus is on the steep rolling hills surrounding the estuary that are being denuded of trees and scarred by the roads being gouged across them. The hills are silhouetted against a clear blue sky. There is no mistaking her intent: to deplore the way the beautiful Paremata landscape was being desecrated to make way for the government’s planned suburban expansion in the 1970s.
The clarity and economy of White’s early work, and her focus on the places she lived in rural and small-town New Zealand, helped establish her reputation as a key figure in the regionalist movement of the 1970s. With her distinct take on the regional New Zealand landscape, she quickly became renowned for her ‘icons of place’. Success
came early; she soon began to make a living from painting and screen printing. She had numerous exhibitions and sold a number of her works to The Dowse Art Museum and Auckland Library.
In 1972 White moved to the Otago Peninsula, where she began to paint full-time. However, after a tenyear career as a successful painter and printmaker, she moved to Kiribati, where she produced a unique series of woodcut prints. In 1996 a devastating fire destroyed her Kiribati home and studio. As a result, her work took a new direction. She began working in collaboration with i-Kiribati women, producing a series of woven pandanus-leaf mats that combined Western art practice with traditional techniques. Since then, White has worked with a number of different artists and weavers from the Pacific, creating monumental works on tapa.
White returned to New Zealand in 1999, and now lives and works in Masterton. She has recently returned from a residency in Aomori, Japan, where she worked with printmaker Yoshiko Takebayashi to produce a suite of small prints.
1 Robin White, interview with Helen Kedgley, 26 September 1999.
opposite
Robin White's cottage at Bottle Creek, c.1970, Sarah Farrar, Jill Trevelyan and Nina Tonga; Robin White: Something is Happening Here (Wellington: Te Papa Press and Auckland: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2022), 36. right
Paremata, 1975. Wellington City Libraries.
39 Robin White Paremata Landscape 1970 oil on canvas signed ROBIN WHITE and dated '70 in brushpoint lower right 745 × 1220mm (overall)
est $300,000 — $360,000
provenance Private collection.
exhibitions
Porirua Landscape and Other Paintings, Victoria University of Wellington Library, Wellington, 20 July–9 August 1970.
40 Pat Hanly Bride, Mask & Groom 1990
enamel on found board
signed Hanly, dated 91 and inscribed Bride, Mask + Groom in brushpoint lower right 1200 × 840mm (widest points)
est $35,000 — $55,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from RKS Gallery, Auckland, c1991.
exhibitions
Patrick Hanly: Bride & Groom Again, Janne Land Gallery, Wellington, 7–25 May 1991; RKS Art, Auckland, 11–28 June 1991.
Exhibition poster for Pat Hanly's 1991 'Bride and Groom Again' exhibition affixed on verso of Bride, Mask & Groom.
est $25,000 — $40,000
41 Fiona Pardington
Andrew's Huia Pair 2019
archival print on Hahnemühle
Photo Rag, edition of 10 signed Fiona Pardington in ink verso 1090 × 1588mm
42 Fiona Pardington Little Ruru and Her Waterlilies
2017
archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag signed Fiona Pardington in ink verso 1100 × 1350mm
est $25,000 — $35,000
Private collection, Auckland.
“And one day... the rubber bands and buttons (whatever) assumed a peculiarly Hans Arp/Francis Picabia-styled TIKI. A form that said ‘Tiki’ but contained not a hint of any traditional Maori art forms... All this was fascinating enough for me to attempt another — and another — until the gridded up landscape on the easle was forgotten and this Tiki idea became my central investigation.”
43 Dick Frizzell
Wacky Tiki Goes Monumental 1992
oil on canvas signed FRIZZELL, dated 29/9/92 and inscribed WACKY TIKI GOES
MONUMENTAL in brushpoint lower right 1930 × 1490mm
est $45,000 — $55,000
provenance
Private collection. Acquired from Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, 1992.
exhibitions
Tiki, Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, 1992.
literature
Hamish Keith and Dick Frizzell , Dick Frizzell – The Painter, (Auckland: Random House New Zealand, 2009), 171.
Dick Frizzell in Hamish Keith and Frizzell's Dick Frizzell – The Painter, 163.
The iconic Max Gimblett quatrefoils are found on the walls of New Zealand art collectors and gallery spaces alike. The form has been a hallmark of Gimblett’s since he first approached it in 1983. The quatrefoil, or rounded cross, pre-dates Christianity and its symbolism is recognised in many cultures. Its form speaks of femininity; it shows four quarters — a rounded Greek cross, an Irish clover, a keyhole, or perhaps a rose window? Gimblett describes its arrival in his practice as a “mandala of wholeness and unity.”1
A quatrefoil is balanced, proportionate and symmetrical in form. Gimblett tends to offset this balance and symmetry with classic abstract expressionist paint-work, inspired by the likes of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. As the White Sun Sets, however, is an example of great restraint: this work hosts a palette of only two colours and shapes that are refined and geometric, almost in tessellation. It is a perfect fluorescent quatrefoil: from its centre, four palladium ellipses emerge, taking the shape of a four-petalled flower. The metallic flower gives the illusion the quatrefoil is not its own shape, but a series of four overlapping circles, each entwined in an infinite, almost pulsating form. It is hard to imagine this work as being distinct from its title, As the White Sun Sets. The magnificent palette, its form and sheer scale seem to speak of the sun’s natural rhythm. If we consider the quatrefoil as a series of four circles, the work is symbolically cyclical, each circle a step ahead of the one before; it is a sun taking its course, always setting, always rising. There is something meditative in this
movement, which is only intensified by the acidic colours, drawing the viewer in — they could stare for hours and, just like the bright sun, it will leave an imprint on their eyes long after they look away.
Gimblett’s work has a contemplative quality, mirroring the artist’s own spiritual inclinations. Born in Aotearoa, Gimblett resides in New York, and travels extensively between New Zealand and America. A connection with the East has also been central to both his personal life and practice. The artist has made a deep and careful journey into Zen Buddhism, exploring meditation, koan study and zenga calligraphy, traces of which are found throughout his body of work.
Gimblett is an essential artist for any collector; his notable career has seen his work exhibited in prominent spaces across the globe, including in 2009 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, in The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989 ; and in 2011 he presented a solo show at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The World of God . Closer to home, Gimblett exhibited at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in The Brush of All Things and has been represented by Gow Langsford since 1989. As the White Sun Sets was painted shortly after Gimblett became an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2015, and shortly before he received his Honorary Doctorate from the University of Waikato in 2017 for his contributions as artist, teacher, scholar and philanthropist.
Essay by ELIZA ACTON-ADAMS
1 Anne Kirker, “Gimblett Reflects: Max Gimblett in Conversation,” Eyeline 35 (December 1997): 14–17.
44 Max Gimblett
As the White Sun Sets 2016 gesso, acrylic & vinyl polymers, fluorescence, oilbased gilding size and palladium leaf on canvas signed Max Gimblett, dated 2016 and inscribed As the White Sun Sets in brushpoint verso 1270 × 1270mm (widest points)
est $50,000 — $70,000
provenance
Private collection, Wellington. Acquired from Nadene Milne Gallery, Arrowtown, c2019.
exhibitions
Max Gimblett – Happy Joyous – and Free, Nadene Milne Gallery, Arrowtown, 14 July–4 August, 2016.
Laurence Stephen Lowry was fascinated by the things he saw in the industrial areas of North West England and he set about capturing workingclass people going about their everyday lives amongst a backdrop of factories, textile mills and tall chimneys.
Lowry worked as a rent collector, and it was while walking the streets and neighbourhoods of Pendlebury and Salford, in Manchester, that his appreciation of the bleak industrial landscape grew.
Despite his mother’s disapproval and her questioning his abilities, Lowry was determined to be an artist. He paid for private tuition and attended evening art classes at the Manchester Municipal College of Art to learn to paint and draw.
It was here that Lowry connected with the tutor Pierre Adolph Valette, an artist himself, who had come from Paris. Valette brought with him new techniques, a fresh way of thinking and a first-hand knowledge of the impressionists. That simple act of capturing modern life in an urban landscape, a key aspect of impressionist painting, was the thing that resonated with Lowry the most.
It was the early 1900s, and Lowry was capturing the British industrial landscape in decline with his distinctive style of drawing and painting that featured smokestacks billowing plumes of smoke into cloudless grey skies while adults, children and dogs went about their daily lives.
Lowry was never a full-time artist, but would carry his drawing materials with him while he collected rent for the Pall Mall company. He would take any opportunity to draw, on whatever materials he could find, and would work again at night after he had tended to the needs of his ailing mother.
When composing his works, Lowry stated that the buildings always came first, and that the figures were added only after the background was completed. In the drawing Factory IV, from 1960, you can see that the figures in the bottom right-hand corner have been drawn directly on
top of the curled line that defines a road or path.
In this work his ‘matchstick men’, as they were often referred to, are tall animated figures with large feet and no shadows, made using a combination of arcs and curves in quick gestural strokes, with dark spots to define the heads or shoes. His buildings, in contrast, are a series of hard, straight lines, light shading and sharp, well-defined edges.
Lowry stated that he drew or painted the figures as he imagined them and that they were merely fictional characterisations or dreamscapes. His subjects were often clothed in outfits or garments that were mismatched with the period of the time.
“I simply paint people as I see them, that’s all there is to it.”
Lowry’s work generally conveyed a playful sense of humour, but there were times when it reflected a deep personal sadness. He led a simple and quiet life without many close friends, and spent most of his time at work or looking after his bedridden mother and painting in the evenings.
An outsider by his own admission, Lowry’s point of reference was always that of an observer, as if he drew or painted his scenes from the other side of the fence or through a window. He was devastated when his mother died in 1939, and it is said that his own loneliness was reflected in his paintings of that time. “I saw in the desolate and rejected buildings the image of myself.”
Although Lowry would go on to become one of the most celebrated British artists of the twentieth century, it was years before he gained any recognition or success: “I spent 30 years painting pictures that nobody wanted.”
Lowry was a quiet and private person who shied away from the spotlight, famously turning down offers of an OBE, a CBE and a knighthood, because, according to a close friend, he didn’t want to alter his name. Sadly, his large retrospective at the Royal Academy opened six months after his death in 1976 at the age of 88.
Essay by SEAN DUXFIELD
45 L S L owry Factory Scene IV 1960 graphite on paper signed L S Lowry and dated 1960 in graphite lower right 160 × 245mm
est $45,000 — $55,000
provenance
Private collection, Christchurch. Acquired from Ilkley, West Yorkshire, 2003.
46 Alvin Pankhurst untitled 2002 oil on acrylic on canvas signed ALVIN PANKHURST and dated 2002 in brushpoint lower right 1520 × 760mm est $35,000 — $50,000
Private collection, Nelson. Acquired from Carterton, 2002.
47 Don Binney
untitled 1984 oil on canvasboard
signed DON BINNEY and dated 1984 in brushpoint upper right 245 × 195mm
est $10,000 — $16,000
provenance
Private collection, Bay of Plenty.
48 Trevor Moffitt Rakaia River Series No. 54 1984 oil on board
signed Moffitt and dated 84 in brushpoint lower right; inscribed "Rakaia River Series" No. 54 in ink verso 585 × 885mm
est $16,000 — $20,000
provenance
Private collection, Christchurch.
49 Ralph Hotere
Te Whiti Series 1972
acrylic and ink on paper signed Hotere, dated '72 and inscribed Te Whiti Series in ink lower right
580 × 390mm
est $25,000 — $40,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Gow Langsford, Auckland, c1999.
50 Andrew Beck Light Travelling Through a Fragile Structure 2016
acrylic and enamel on silver gelatin print on glass
signed A. Beck, dated 2016 and inscribed Light Travelling Through a Fragile Structure in ink verso 1050 × 1050mm
est $5,000 — $7,000
provenance
Private collection, Christchurch.
51 Martin Basher Untitled 2019
acrylic on canvas signed Martin Basher, dated 2019 and inscribed Untitled in ink verso 995 × 745mm
est $6,000 — $10,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Starkwhite, Auckland, 2019.
52 John Barr Clarke Hoyte Judges Bay, Auckland watercolour on paper signed J C Hoyte in brushpoint lower edge 240 × 450mm
est $5,500 — $8,500
provenance
Private collection.
53 Peter McIntyre untitled (Waiwera River, Albany near river mouth) watercolour on paper signed PETER MCINTYRE in brushpoint lower right 515 × 710mm
est $10,000 — $15,000
provenance
Private collection, Rotorua. Acquired from Parnham Gallery, Hamilton, c1984.
54 Francis McCracken
Still Life with Cyclamen oil on canvas
signed F. MCCRACKEN in brushpoint lower right 540 × 450mm
est $10,000 — $15,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland.
55 Peter McIntyre
Untitled Opera House Wellington c1950 oil on board
signed PETER MCINTYRE in brushpoint lower right 670 × 830mm
est $3,500 — $5,500
provenance
Private collection, Christchurch.
56 Dick Frizzell My Desert Song 1977 enamel on board
signed FRIZZELL, dated 2/8/77 and inscribed MY DESERT SONG in brushpoint lower edge 710 × 540mm
est $13,000 — $25,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from RKS Art, Auckland,1978.
57 Mark Braunias Ladez-z 2006
acrylic on canvas signed Mark Braunias, dated 2006 and inscribed Ladez-z in brushpoint verso 1200 × 1810mm
est $12,000 — $18,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland.
58 Virginia King Fern c2006
Marine Grade 316 stainless steel, hand finished and electropolished
2170 × 690 × 200mm (widest points)
est $17,000 — $25,000
provenance
Private collection. Acquired directly from the artist, c2007.
note
This work was commissioned from the artist, based on similar works previously exhibited.
59 Virginia King Undulating Leaf c2006
Marine Grade 316 stainless steel, hand finished and electropolished 2070 × 800 × 800mm (widest points)
est $17,000 — $25,000
provenance
Private collection. Acquired directly from the artist, c2007.
note
This work was commissioned from the artist, based on similar works previously exhibited.
60 Tony Lane First Light oil on board
280 × 590mm
est $4,000 — $6,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland. Aquired from The Les and Milly Paris Collection, Art+Object, Auckland, 19 September 2012, lot 210.
61 Jeffrey Harris Dead Souls 1988 oil on canvas
signed Jeffrey Harris, dated 1988 and inscribed Dead Souls in brushpoint verso 1530 × 910mm
est $15,000 — $20,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland.
62 Toss Woollaston Herne Bay 1984–85 graphite on paper signed Woollaston and dated 25/5/84 in graphite upper right; signed Woollaston and dated 25/5/85 in graphite lower right 450 × 300mm
est $2,000 — $4,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland.
63 Michael Harrison Heavy Feathers 2002 graphite and ink on paper signed MC Harrison in graphite upper edge, inscribed Heavy Feather s in graphite verso 300 × 210mm
est $2,000 — $4,000
provenance
Private collection, Tasman.
64 Toss Woollaston untitled 1986
watercolour and graphite on paper signed Woollaston and dated '86 in brushpoint lower right
290 × 445mm
est $4,000 — $8,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland.
65 Terry Stringer Fallen Figure 1982
bronze signed Terry Stringer and dated '82 with incision lower edge
630 × 565 × 380mm (widest points)
est $10,000 — $15,000
provenance
Private collection, Wellington. Acquired from Academy of Fine Arts, Wellington.
66 Dick Frizzell untitled (Chair) 2005
acrylic on upholstery; enamel on wood
signed FRIZZELL and dated 05 in brushpoint lower right
700 × 650 × 645mm (widest points)
est $4,000 — $6,000
provenance
Private collection, Auckland.
Terms and Conditions
The terms and conditions of sale listed here contain the policies of Webb’s (Webb Fine Art). They are the terms on which Webb’s (Webb Fine Art) and the Seller contract with the Buyer. They may be amended by printed Saleroom Notices or oral announcements made before and during the sale. By bidding at auction you agree to be bound by these terms.
1. Background to the Terms used in these Conditions
The conditions that are listed below contain terms that are used regularly and may need explanation. They are as follows:
“the Buyer” means the person with the highest bid accepted by the Auctioneer.
“the Lot” means any item depicted within the sale for auction and in particular the item or items described against any lot number in the catalogue.
“the Hammer price” means the amount of the highest bid accepted by the auctioneer in relation to a lot.
“the Buyer’s Premium” means the charge payable by the Buyer to the auction house as a percentage of the hammer price.
“the Reserve” means the lowest amount at which Webb’s has agreed with the Seller that the lot can be sold.
“Forgery” means an item constituting an imitation originally conceived and executed as a whole, with a fraudulent intention to deceive as to authorship, origin, age, period, culture or source, where the correct description as to such matters is not reflected by the description in the catalogue. Accordingly, no lot shall be capable of being a forgery by reason of any damage or restoration work of any kind (Including re-painting).
“the insured value” means the amount that Webb’s in its absolute discretion from time to time shall consider the value for which a lot should be covered for insurance (whether or not insurance is arranged by Webb’s).
All values expressed in Webb’s catalogues (in any format) are in New Zealand Dollars (NZD$). 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 acts as agent for the Seller.
The contract for the sale of the property is therefore made between the Seller and the Buyer.
3. Before the Sale
3.1. 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”
3.2. 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 its 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 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.
3.3. 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
4.1. 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.
4.2. 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.
4.3. 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.
4.4. International Registrations
All International clients not known 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.
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.
This deposit is redeemable against any auction purchase and will be refunded in full if no purchases are made.
4.5. 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.
4.6. 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 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.
4.7. 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. 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.
4.8. 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.
4.9. 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.
4.10. 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.
4.11. 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
$20
$50
Amount
$0–$500
$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
5.1. 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 19.5% of the hammer price plus GST (Goods and Services Tax) where applicable.
5.2.
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 2 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$5,000, if wishing to pay more than NZD$5,000 then this must be deposited directly into a Bank of New Zealand branch 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. 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.
5.3. Collection of Purchases & Insurance
Webb’s is entitled to retain items sold until all amounts due to us have been received in full in cleared funds. Subject to this, the Buyer shall collect purchased lots within 2 days from the date of the sale unless otherwise agreed in writing between Webb’s and the Buyer. At the fall of the hammer, insurance is the responsibility of the purchaser.
5.4. 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.
5.5. Permits, Licences and Certificates
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.
5.6. 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)
5.6.1. to charge interest at such a rate as we shall reasonably decide.
5.6.2. 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.
5.6.3. to cancel the sale.
5.6.4. to resell the property publicly or privately on such terms as we see fit.
5.6.5. 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.
5.6.6. 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.
5.6.7. 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.
5.6.8. 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.
5.6.9. 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.
5.6.10. 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.
5.7.
Failure to Collect Purchases
Where purchases are not collected within 2 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. 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 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. 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 non-refundable. Neither the Seller nor Webb’s will be liable for any special, incidental nor consequential damages including, without 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.
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. 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
possible after the sale. Results will include buyer’s premium. These results will be posted at www.webbs.co.nz.
13.
Goods and Service Tax
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.
Basher, Martin
Beck, Andrew 109
Binney, Don 107
Braunias, Mark 112
Cotton, Shane 42, 61–65
Dibble, Paul 46, 66
Fomison, Tony 67 Frizzell, Dick 100, 112, 115
Gascoigne, Rosalie 79 Gimblett, Max 52, 103
Hammond, Bill 43, 46, 73, 88
Hanly, Pat 42, 96
Harris, Jeffrey 114 Harrison, Michael 114 Henderson, Louise 45 Hodgkins, Frances 47
Hotere, Ralph 108
Hoyte, John Barr Clarke 110
Maddox, Allen 84
Maughan, Karl 54 McCracken, Francis 111 McIntyre, Peter 110–111 Moffitt, Trevor 107 Mrkusich, Milan 48–49
Pankhurst, Alvin 106
Pardington, Fiona 50, 69, 76–77, 98-99
Parekōwhai, Michael 55, 57
Paterson, Reuben 53
Patte, Max 52
Paul, Joanna Margaret 45 Pule, John 59
Lane, Tony 114
Leleisi'uao, Andy 50 Lowry, L S 105
Ian
White, Robin 94-95 Woollaston, Toss 81–82, 114–115
