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“You never know who is going to come into the gallery,” Olivia says. From celebrities to politicians to locals off Cuba Street, the gallery’s visitors are always diverse and often unexpected. She casually drops Cate Blanchett’s name. Frequently it’s “big shots” from Auckland scoping out art to make money. The gallery, however, refuses to sell works to people with these intentions because they want the art to go to good homes (“you get so over the fat cat clients”). It’s refreshing and reassuring to hear. Peter first started trading art from his flat on the Terrace in 1966, when the “art market” didn’t really exist. Upon returning to Wellington from overseas, where his exposure to Europe had engendered a new enthusiasm for fostering New Zealand culture, Peter struck up a friendship with artists Toss Woollaston and Colin McCahon after expressing interest in selling their paintings. Olivia recounts a story about a recent visit by a long-standing client who told her about the first time he bought a work from Peter. “He was 21 and his prospective father-in-law saw an ad in the paper for Dad selling Colin McCahon on the Terrace. They turn up and Dad pulls the McCahons out from under his bed and starts showing them to these guys… the 21-year-old is now 65 and still a client and did mention the other day that it was perhaps not the best practice.” The paintings www.salient.org.nz
salient
were avant garde and strange at the time, when the simplicity of McCahon’s style didn’t match the way art was valued. But then, Peter’s success rests significantly on an eye for talent and originality, even at times when they may not have matched New Zealand’s general vibe. A couple wander in both wearing fantastic hats and holding a map of the “Cuba Art Quarter”, which features the locations of small galleries in the area. They tell us about how they travel around New Zealand every year as part of an art group and had visited the gallery before, “when Peter was here”. We talk about Bill Hammond’s work on the wall behind me. It’s painted in green paint directly onto linen. Olivia recalls asking Bill if it was difficult; once you make a mistake there’s no going back. He explained that having done nothing but paint for a living since the age of seven, it isn’t so much of a problem for him. Just before they leave, Olivia points to the Robin White print and asks “Do you know the show Close to Home?” The woman describes her as looking tired. There’s a typewriter on the dresser. “That typewriter is a core part of this business,” Olivia told me as she pulled out a piece of green metallic flimsy papery-stuff from the dresser. I had seen carbon copy maybe twice in my lifetime and stared at it
blankly. Olivia stuck a piece of official Peter McLeavey Gallery paper and carbon copy in the typewriter then typed up my name and address. “What’s your favourite New Zealand artist?” That’s a hard question, I like a lot of them. “Let’s go with Yvonne Todd, since she’s showing here… so say you buy… for $25,000 [someday….]” She reassures me the lack of a signature or bank details means I won’t suddenly find my bank account depleted. I crack a lame, wistful joke about my student loan. The piece of paper is now taped up on my bedroom wall, kind of like a hopeful artwork in itself. Apparently when Peter would make a mistake on these invoices, such as typing your name wrong, instead of redoing the letter “like most professionals” he’d just get out a green fountain pen, scratch out the mistake and rewrite it so you’d end up with an invoice covered in green handwritten notes. Peter has Parkinson’s Disease, and one of the hardest consequences is the effect it has on his ability to write and talk to clients. The day before my visit, someone had dropped in a collection of photographs taken on Cuba Street in the 80s. There’s a photo of Peter at the opening for a leather boutique with his eyes half-closed talking to a biker dude. “So there’s all these guys in leather and Dad turns up in a tuxedo looking like Andy Warhol,” Olivia says. She shows me handwritten letters to clients from two years ago and the beautiful exhibition registers, still carefully inked in red books in blue and black pen. With no formal art history or curatorial training, Peter is first and foremost a salesman. Many of the processes and systems still used by the gallery stemmed from Peter’s experience as an auditor in banking and insurance, before he jumped ship and sailed to Europe. Many of the artists have had long-term core relationships with McLeavey, such as Richard Killeen since the 80s and Bill Hammond from the 70s. Yet Olivia