Works of Art, 17 August 2020

17.08.20 Works of Art 0622 Auction Catalogue August 2020 Contemporary, Modern and Historical Art

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Charles Ninow Head of Art charles@webbs.co.nz +64 21 053 6504 Adrienne (AD) Schierning Manager, Art ad@webbs.co.nz +64 9 529 5609 +64 27 929 5609 Auctions Private Sales Valuations webbs.co.nz

September 2020

Richard Killeen Pause 2007 screenprint on paper, 3/20 signed, dated and title inscribed 540 Ă— 350 mm

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A Sapphire and Diamond Ring est $6,600 – $8,000 price realised incl. bp $8,225

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Marcela Jimenez-Ramirez Fine Jewels & Watches Specialist jewels@webbs.co.nz +64 9 529 5607

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September 2020

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A Garth Chester Curvesse Chaie C. 1944, bent plywood. est. $3,000 - $5,000 price realised incl. bp $6,756.25

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Entries Invited Works of Art November 2020

01 Colin McCahon

Load Bearing Structures, Series 2

1978 - 79 acrylic on board, 277 x 355mm est $65,000 — $85,000 price realised incl. bp $106,925 20 May 2020

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Charles Ninow Head of Art charles@webbs.co.nz +64 21 053 6504

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Asian Art 12th September Allen’s Library 艾倫的書房

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Works of Art

Auction Monday 17 August 6:30pm

Specialist Enquiries Charles Ninow Head of Art charles@webbs.co.nz +64 21 053 6504 AD Schierning Manager, Art ad@webbs.co.nz +64 27 929 5609 +64 9 529 5609 Condition Reports Tasha Jenkins Administrator, Art art@webbs.co.nz +64 9 529 5600 Webb's

2020

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Australasian Art & Culture

ISSUE 31 OUT NOW

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RAYNES E. BIRKBECK, JACOBUS CAPONE, SHAUN GLADWELL, ADRIAN HOBBS, NATALYA HUGHES, ROSEMARY LAING, ZAC LANGDON-POLE, PAT LARTER, DION LEE, JERRY SALTZ, RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA, BILL WHISKEY TJAPALTJARRI, HANNAH TRIBE & MORE ISSU E 31 · AUGUST to OC TOBER 2020

Raynes E. Birkbeck, Jacobus Capone, Shaun Gladwell, Adrian Hobbs, Natalya Hughes, Rosemary Laing, Zac Langdon-Pole, Pat Larter, Dion Lee, Jerry Saltz, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri, Hannah Tribe & more

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RAYNES E. BIRKBECK Dinoback riding on the Beach, 2020 oil and acrylic on canvas 61 x 76.2 cm Courtesy the artist and Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles

Table of Contents

Programme

23

List of Essays

24

Plates

25

Terms & Conditions

104

Index of Artists

108

Auctions Private Sales Valuations auction@webbs.co.nz +64 9 529 5600 33a Normanby Road, Mount Eden, Auckland 1024, New Zealand Webb's

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Programme

Preview Evening Tuesday 11 August

6pm – 8pm

Gallery Hours Wednesday 12 August

10am – 5pm

Thursday 13 August

10am – 5pm

Friday 14 August

10am – 5pm

Saturday 15 August

10am – 4pm

Sunday 16 August

10am – 4pm

Monday 17 August

10am – 1pm

Auction Monday 17 August

6:30pm

19 Jae Hoon Lee

Muriwai 2007 lightjet print on metallic paper (edition of 5) 1230 × 1220mm est Webb's

$5,000 — $8,000 2020

23

List of Essays

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Alberto Garcia-Alvarez untitled

By Nansi Thompson

34 - 35

Fiona Pardington Huia, Kani Kani

By Serena Bentley

40 - 41

Don Driver Relief with Balls and Ladder

By Tasha Jenkins

44 - 45

Gordon Walters Window II

By Samantha Taylor

50 - 51

Giovanni Intra untitled

By AD Schierning

54 - 55

Tony Fomison Wandering peoples who will not be contained

By Victoria Wynn-Jones

58- 59

Colin McCahon JUMP

By Leafa Wilson

62 - 63

Ian Scott Lattice No. 95

By Micheal Do

68 - 69

Theo Schoon untitled

By Andrew Paul Wood

72 - 73

Michael Smither Manifesto CafĂŠ

By Elliot Ferguson

76 -77

Colin McCahon still silent falls of light

By Victoria Wynn-Jones

80 - 81

Bill Hammond Zoomorphic Detail

By Priscilla Pitts

84 - 85

Max Gimblett Zeus

By Neil Talbot

88 - 89

Milan Mrkusich Painting No. 5

By Andrew Paul Wood

92 - 93

24

Plates

Specialist Enquiries Charles Ninow Head of Art charles@webbs.co.nz +64 21 053 6504 AD Schierning Manager, Art ad@webbs.co.nz +64 27 929 5609 +64 9 529 5609 Condition Reports Tasha Jenkins Administrator, Art art@webbs.co.nz +64 9 529 5600 Webb's

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2 John Reynolds

Tough Shit 2008 oil pastel on screenprint on paper signed REYNOLDS, dated 2008 and inscribed TOUGH SHIT in graphite lower edge 320 × 240mm

1 Richard Lewer

Believe Me it's Hard at the Top c2004 acrylic on sandpaper 270 × 225mm

est $1,500 — $2,500 est $800 — $1,600 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Dead Letter Office, Auckland, 2008.

Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

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3 Saskia Leek

Icecream Cake 1997 acrylic on vinyl signed S. Leek, dated 1997 and inscribed ‘Icecream Cake’ in ink verso 205 × 280mm est $2,000 — $3,000 Provenance Private collection, Wellington. Acquired from A Private Collection of Contemporary Art & Applied Arts, Art+Object, Auckland, 16 March 2017, lot 12.

Exhibitions Pink Furniture, Jonathan Smart Gallery, Christchurch, 1997.

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4 Andrew Blythe

untitled c2014 acrylic on paper 700 × 990mm est $2,000 — $3,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Toi Ora, Auckland, 2014.

27

5 Ralph Hotere

untitled 1965 screenprint on paper, 12/15 signed Hotere, dated 10/65 and inscribed 12/15 in graphite lower edge 690 × 430mm

6 Ralph Hotere

untitled c1965 screenprint on paper, 1/5 signed Ralph Hotere and inscribed 1/5 in graphite lower edge 765 × 635mm

est $3,500 — $5,500

est $4,000 — $8,000

Provenance Private collection, Northland. Passed by bequest; private collection, Bay of Islands. Gifted by the artist, c1965.

Provenance Private collection, Northland. Passed by bequest; private collection, Bay of Islands. Gifted by the artist, c1965.

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7 Ralph Hotere

Red Square Three 1965 acrylic on paper signed Hotere and dated ‘65 in graphite lower left; inscribed No 9/Red Square 3 in ink verso 385 × 560mm

8 Ralph Hotere

Red Square Four 1965 acrylic on paper signed Hotere and dated ‘65 in graphite lower left; inscribed No 4/Red Square in ink verso 560 × 770mm

est $5,000 — $10,000

est $5,000 — $10,000

Provenance Private collection, Northland. Passed by bequest; private collection, Bay of Islands. Gifted by the artist, c1965.

Provenance Private collection, Northland. Passed by bequest; private collection, Bay of Islands. Gifted by the artist, c1965.

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9 Ralph Hotere

untitled 1965 acrylic on paper signed Hotere, dated 65 and inscribed Red Square series in ink verso 495 × 510mm

10 Ralph Hotere

untitled

1965 acrylic on paper signed Hotere and dated 65 in graphite lower right 560 × 770mm

est $5,000 — $10,000

est $5,000 — $10,000

Provenance Private collection, Northland. Passed by bequest; private collection, Bay of Islands. Gifted by the artist, c1965.

Provenance Private collection, Northland. Passed by bequest; private collection, Bay of Islands. Gifted by the artist, c1965.

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11 Ralph Hotere

Songs Panel 24 c1963 acrylic and paper on board inscribed 24/Songs Panel in pastel verso 600 × 1210mm est $10,000 — $20,000 Provenance Private collection, Northland. Passed by bequest; private collection, Bay of Islands. Gifted by the artist, c1965.

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12 Allen Maddox

untitled c1990s oil on canvas 790 × 880mm est $12,000 — $16,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from John Leech Gallery, Auckland, c2002.

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13 Alberto Garcia-Alvarez

untitled 1977 oil on wood signed GARCIA-ALVAREZ, dated ‘77 and inscribed 33 in brushpoint verso 850 × 600mm (widest points) est $7,000 — $9,000 Provenance Private collection, Christchurch. Acquired from Bosshard Galleries, Dunedin, c1977.

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Alberto Garcia-Alvarez - untitled Essay by NANSI THOMPSON

Here, in this early work from a series of constructed iterations that Garcia-Alvarez has been making since the mid 1970s, we can participate in the virtuosity of his practice. The narrow painted wooden planes fold out in kinetically charged tangents, like builders’ rulers under a mathematical and philosophical upgrade. Colours that nod to Mondrian, or even to more vernacular influences such as pick-up-sticks or Cuisenaire rods, pull us in to reveal the artist as architect, common to the Dutch De Stijl movement.

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It must have been quite something to arrive in Auckland at a time when art students in their studios seemed to talk so much about rugby and so little about art.¹ When Alberto Garcia-Alvarez moved to New Zealand in 1972, as a guest lecturer at The University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts, he brought with him both extensive experience and a deeply enquiring mind. Born in Barcelona, Spain, in 1928, Garcia-Alvarez studied art at the University of Barcelona and received scholarships to study in Paris and Italy. A professor at the Escola Superior de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi, University of Barcelona, from 1946 to 1951, he was part of the artist collective FLAMMA, and painted frescoes in churches.

In 1960 he left Francoist Spain and moved to California, where he taught art for over a decade at Californian universities, including UC, Berkeley. His comprehensive history of exhibitions in the US and Europe includes shows with Frank Stella and other greats of the modern abstract movement. Arriving here as a guest lecturer, he went on to become a Senior Lecturer at Elam for the next 20 years and a significant mentor for the artists of that generation.

Now 92 Garcia-Alvarez continues to exhibit, to influence and to paint every day.

This integrity of constant practice, combined with astute intellectual depth, gave his students and New Zealand art in general an invaluable living source of expanded perspective and intellectual depth. Within the context of the predominantly Pākehā art world, particularly of that time, wrangling with the necessity to turn towards its own roots, Garcia-Alvarez’s articulation of universal abstract principles contributed rather than distracted.

He provided an existential lens to the growth of New Zealand abstract art and art thinking. Artist and former student Stephen Bambury has curated an exhibition dedicated to this kind of creative composting, by pairing Garcia-Alvarez’s abstractions with those of Judy Millar, another former student, in works from her time with him at Elam. The dialogue resulting from this triad is a fitting tribute to an artist who has so continuously shared and modelled his deep understanding of modern abstraction.

Here, in this early work from a series of constructed iterations that Garcia-Alvarez has been making since the mid 1970s, we can participate in the virtuosity of his practice. The narrow painted wooden planes fold out in kinetically charged tangents, like builders’ rulers under a mathematical and philosophical upgrade.

Colours that nod to Mondrian, or even to more vernacular influences such as pick-up-sticks or Cuisenaire rods, pull us in to reveal the artist as architect, common to the Dutch De Stijl movement. They are charged, however, with a more human, grubbier take; this is unpasteurised colour made unmistakably by the confident hands of a painter whose practice includes large Rothko-esque canvases. Paint is applied thick in pigment and the edges smudge and bleed; they conjure up extra layers in their shadows on the wall. In each rumination, these wooden glyphs of colour bring to light the rigour of the artist's mind: a piece of wood crossing colour, blue crossing the other yellow. a yellow dies when over dark at wide angle with bloody reds. wood with black; smeared pigment passing over the blue with white. the red almost touching the wall, the black absorbing its pigment.

But it’s not what I wanted to see … should be darker yellow on red as when crossing over the river. dark thoughts need black intensity! crossing over the high mountain; crossing the blue – reaching further – lighter if covered with silver; silver and red form white shadows, intersections or points of view crossing the street or the river … of my thoughts and a length of wood.

—Alberto Garcia-Alvarez, 2019

13 Alberto Garcia-Alvarez

untitled 1977 oil on wood signed GARCIA-ALVAREZ, dated ‘77 and inscribed 33 in brushpoint verso 850 × 600mm (widest points) est

$7,000 — $9,000

1 Linda Tyler talks to Alberto GarciaAlvarez in “The Everyday Existentialist,” Art News New Zealand, Autumn 2018.

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14 Stella Corkery

Feature Twice 2013 oil and spray paint on canvas 910 × 610mm

15 Judy Millar

untitled c2016 acrylic and oil on paper 1000 × 690mm

est $2,000 — $3,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

est $5,000 — $7,000

Exhibitions Caravan, Station Gallery, South Yarra, 15 March - 17 April 2014.

Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

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16 Jake Walker

Untitled (0043) 2017 oil on linen, glazed stoneware signed JW and dated 9.5.17 with incision lower right; signed JW and dated 21.5.17 with incision right edge; signed JW, dated 2017 and inscribed 0043 in graphite verso 600 × 410mm (including frame)

17 Mitch Cairns

Geranium Pots (art fair painting) 2016 oil on linen printed Mitch Cairns/Geranium Pots (art fair painting), 2016/oil on linen, framed/79 × 64 × 5 cm/TCG21020/exhibited: Painting. More Painting, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne/01/09/16 - 25/09/16 on The Commercial label affixed verso 790 × 640mm

est $4,000 — $6,000

est $6,000 — $9,000

Provenance Private collection. Acquired from Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington, 2017.

Provenance Private collection. Acquired from The Commercial, Sydney, c2017.

Exhibitions The Turps, Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington, 19 August - 9 September 2017.

Exhibitions Painting. More Painting, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 1 September - 25 September 2016.

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18 Frank Hofmann

Composition with Cactus 1952 gelatin silver print 270 × 240mm est $3,000 — $5,000 Provenance Private collection, Hawke's Bay. Acquired from Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington.

Exhibitions Another from the edition exhibited in From Prague to Auckland: The Photographs of Frank Hofmann (1916-89), Gus Fisher Gallery, The University of Auckland, 26 August - 29 October 2011.

Literature Another from the edition featured in Leonard Bell, From Prague to Auckland: The Photographs of Frank Hofmann (1916-89) (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2011), 10.

Collections Negative held in the collection of Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington (acquired 2016).

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19 Jae Hoon Lee

Muriwai 2007 lightjet print on metallic paper (edition of 5) 1230 × 1220mm est $5,000 — $8,000 Provenance Private collection, Wellington. Acquired from New Zealand & International Fine Art, Part I, Dunbar Sloane, Wellington, 11 April 2018, lot 16.

Exhibitions Another from the edition exhibited at the Victoria University Library, Wellington, 2011.

Collections Another from the edition held in Victoria University Art Collection, Wellington.

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20 Fiona Pardington

Huia, Kani Kani 2004 gelatin silver print, 4/5 signed Fiona Pardington, dated 2004 and inscribed 4/5/Huia, Kani Kani/Ot Heterolocha acuitirostris/ North Island/AV5740/Otago Museum in graphite verso 565 Ă— 440mm est

$25,000 — $35,000

Provenance Private collection, Wellington. Acquired from Nadene Milne Gallery, Arrowtown, c2004.

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Fiona Pardington – Huia, Kani Kani Essay by SERENA BENTLEY

Renowned for employing a range of diverse photographic techniques, Pardington’s slight blurring of Huia, Kani Kani animates the creature as if in motion – resurrected and returning to the forest.

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The white-tipped huia feather is iconic. Traditionally worn in the hair by high-ranking chiefs and people of mana, these taonga are sacred to Māori, symbolising wisdom, nobility and leadership.

The feathers are so precious that they are often stored in special, intricately carved waka huia and the birds themselves are tapu.

Colonisation and the resulting introduction of foreign predators, loss of habitat and an appetite for mounted specimens by overseas collectors and museums spelled the end of the huia.

The use of the feathers as fashion accessories for Pākehā also played a part. This trend was cemented in Britain when the Duke of York was photographed wearing one tucked into his hat during a visit to New Zealand in 1901. The last confirmed sighting of a huia was in 1907.

Dr Fiona Pardington (Ngāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe and Ngāti Kahungunu) feels their loss acutely. Known for her photographic still lifes, particularly of taonga (most notably of hei tiki), the artist is drawn to photographing cultural objects. She delves into museum collections to reveal sacred objects stripped of their contexts of time and place, reviving and honouring them through her camera lens.

Pardington’s Huia, Kani Kani (2004) is treated with pathos and respect. The bird’s little body is photographed from behind, allowing us to focus on its splendid fanned tail, complete with striking white tips. Renowned for employing a range of diverse photographic techniques, Pardington’s slight blurring of Huia, Kani Kani animates the creature as if in motion – resurrected and returning to the forest. There is a tenderness here. “I’ve personalised them, made portraits of them and just treated them like they were individuals,” says Pardington.¹ Viewing Huia, Kani Kani is bittersweet. We marvel at the wonder of an animal renowned for its sheer beauty, yet also grieve its loss. Close viewing of the image reveals that the tips of the tail feathers are in decay. Pardington observes: “If you look at the end of the feathers you can see that they’re slowly being worn away, for me that’s the beginning of the end, because the peculiar thing about taxidermied birds in museums… [is] that in the end, because they’re organic matter, they are just going to fall into dust.”² There were in fact attempts to preserve the huia. However protection measures introduced in the 1890s – including plans to transfer birds to Kapiti and Little Barrier Islands – were poorly enforced. Accordingly, Pardington’s work points discreetly to the importance of conservation. Resonant with deep personal and cultural meanings, Huia, Kani Kani is a warning, bridging past and present to remind us of what we have lost.

20 Fiona Pardington

Huia, Kani Kani 2004 gelatin silver print, 4/5 signed Fiona Pardington, dated 2004 and inscribed 4/5/Huia, Kani Kani/Ot Heterolocha acuitirostris/North Island/AV5740/Otago Museum in graphite verso 565 × 440mm est

$25,000 — $35,000

1 “Fiona Pardington,” Art Gallery of New South Wales, accessed July 23, 2020, https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/ collection/works/177.2006/ 2 “Fiona Pardington: Ake Ake Huia,” Auckland Art Gallery, accessed July 23, 2020, https://www.aucklandartgallery. com/page/fiona-pardington-ake-akehuia?q=%2Fpage%2Ffiona-pardingtonake-ake-huia Webb's

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21 Carl Sydow

untitled c1960s acrylic on board 1200 × 900mm

22 Carl Sydow

untitled c1960s acrylic on board 1200 × 900mm

est $6,000 — $9,000

est

Provenance Estate of Carl Sydow, Auckland.

Provenance Estate of Carl Sydow, Auckland.

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$6,000 — $9,000

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23 Don Driver

Relief with Balls and Ladder 1968 plastic balls, cans, wooden ladder and vinyl on plywood signed DON DRIVER, dated 1968 and inscribed “RELIEF WITH BALLS AND LADDER” in brushpoint verso 1430 × 930 × 140mm (widest points) est $18,000 — $26,000 Provenance Private collection, New Plymouth. Acquired directly from the artist, c1970.

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Exhibitions Don Driver - Selected Works 1968-2008, Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington, 28 May - 21 June 2008.

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Don Driver – Relief with Balls and Ladder Essay by TASHA JENKINS

The left side of the work, with its neat colourful stripes and shiny blue ladder, contrasts with the rich brown vinyl, plastic balls and rusty cans on the right – like confectionary half unwrapped to reveal colourful candy inside.

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Don Driver’s work has long evaded classification. Shifting between art movements, media and ways of working has allowed his work to engage with audiences decades after it was made. The transition from formal relief paintings to bizarre constructions has allowed Driver to continuously surprise viewers, with no object, texture or colour unable to utilised.

Don Driver’s Relief with Balls and Ladder (1968) is an excellent example of Driver’s unexpected combinations of colours, textures and objects. The left side of the work, with its neat colourful stripes and shiny blue ladder, contrasts with the rich brown vinyl, plastic balls and rusty cans on the right – like confectionary half unwrapped to reveal colourful candy inside.

The colourful composition conjures images of childhood and play: popsicle stripes, pinball, snakes and ladders, candy and vending machines. It may be no coincidence that Driver’s daughter, Justine, was born the same year this work was made.¹ The assemblage and relief works that have become emblematic of Driver’s practice are considered to be heavily influenced by his 1965 trip to America. Leaving his native New Plymouth, he embarked on a trip that would expose him to works

by American artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Barnett Newman and Jasper Johns, among many more. The palette and assemblages of these American artists, and Driver’s general experience of American life in comparison to New Zealand, have all obviously been greatly influential on his work.

Driver also had an interest in, and became a collector of, African and Asian art, which he first saw on this same American trip. While these sculptures may initially seem unrelated to Driver’s practice, the emphasis on rituals and the sacrality of objects is not dissimilar. Driver treats elements of his assemblages in a talisman-like way: a rusty discarded can is placed just as carefully as an animal skull or pair of trousers. The magpie-like nature of Driver’s assortments of objects has been noted before, and connected to the fact that Driver was once a magician – another way of “elevating the mundane.”² I can almost imagine a set of instructions or recipe for the materials of a Driver work (14 colourful plastic balls, four rusty cans, one ladder), which somehow all add up to something magically greater than the sum of their parts.

The American influences are visible in most of his works, perhaps more so than any obvious influence of his hometown.

Eschewing labels like ‘regionalist’ that a New Zealand artist, particularly one working in Taranaki, might usually receive, Driver’s work references his own country in a much more subtle way. Using local and recycled materials, his works nod to New Zealand through parts of labels, used farming tools, or familiar objects like cheap plastic balls. He recombines these general everyday objects in ways that make the banal exciting and force us to reconsider just what these objects are.

Colour always plays a significant part in Driver’s work. He creates a sense of tension through unpredictable, slightly sickly combinations and colours that are almost too bright. For example, the shocking light-blue stripe in Relief with Balls and Ladder jumps out immediately and should seem out of place next to the more subdued red, green and brown, but somehow works when paired with the neon-green plastic balls.

Driver is known for using humour and satire in his art, and while the absurd surreality is what makes his work interesting, it has also caused controversy. Michael Dunn notes this “willingness to offend in the pursuit of his goals” as one of the reasons Driver has become such a renowned figure in New Zealand art.³ In Relief with Balls and Ladder this imperviousness to judgement is evident in the use of materials that might be seen as ‘rubbish’.

Driver’s wry humour is apparent in his use and placement of the blue ladder, which becomes suspended halfway up the wall and impossible to climb onto, while also leading to nowhere – a lifesized candy board-game that no one (except perhaps Driver) knows how to win.

23 Don Driver

Relief with Balls and Ladder 1968 plastic balls, cans, wooden ladder and vinyl on plywood signed DON DRIVER, dated 1968 and inscribed “RELIEF WITH BALLS AND LADDER” in brushpoint verso 1430 × 930 × 140mm (widest points) est

$18,000 — $26,000

1 R. N. O’Reilly, ed., Don Driver (New Plymouth, New Zealand: GovettBrewster Art Gallery, 1979), 20.

2 Priscilla Pitts, ed., With Spirit: Don Driver, Retrospective (New Plymouth, New Zealand: Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 1999), 11.

3 Michael Dunn, “Don Driver and New Zealand Art,” in Don Driver (New Plymouth, New Zealand: Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 1979), 57.

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24 Ralph Hotere

Window in Spain 1978 watercolour and ink on paper signed Hotere, dated ‘78 and inscribed Window in Spain in brushpoint lower edge 325 × 220mm

25 Ralph Hotere

Window in Spain 1978 watercolour and ink on paper signed Hotere, dated 4-78 and inscribed Window in Spain in brushpoint lower edge 325 × 220mm

est $8,000 — $16,000

est $8,000 — $16,000

Provenance Private collection, Wellington. Passed by bequest; private collection, Wellington. Acquired c1970s.

Provenance Private collection, Wellington. Passed by bequest; private collection, Wellington. Acquired c1970s.

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26 Ralph Hotere

Window in Spain 1978 watercolour and ink on paper signed Hotere, dated 4-78 and inscribed Window in Spain in brushpoint lower edge 315 × 220mm est $8,000 — $16,000 Provenance Private collection, Wellington. Passed by bequest; private collection, Wellington. Acquired c1970s.

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27 Milan Mrkusich

Three Part Painting (Alchemical) Version I 1993 acrylic on canvas signed Mrkusich, dated ‘93 and inscribed THREE PART PAINTING (Alchemical) 1993 Version I/First Panel in graphite verso; inscribed THREE PART PAINTING (Alchemical) 1993/Version I/Centre Panel in graphite verso; inscribed THREE PART PAINTING (Alchemical) 1993/Version I/End Panel in ink verso 460 × 460mm (each panel) est $25,000 — $35,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Sue Crockford Gallery, Auckland, 2002.

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28 Gordon Walters

Window II 1987 gouache on paper signed Gordon Walters, dated 87 and inscribed Window II in graphite lower edge 510 × 375mm est $16,000 — $24,000 Provenance Private collection, Christchurch.

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Gordon Walters - Window II Essay by SAMANTHA TAYLOR

Just as in Walters’ koru paintings, there are virtual spatial effects created by the positive and negative interplay between the black, grey and white vertical stripes. The intent is clear and decisive, and confidently uncomplicated.

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Gordon Walters’ ‘pure’ geometric abstraction, immaculately painted with gouache on paper, Window II (1987) is an exceptional example of the work of one of New Zealand’s finest pioneers of modernism. Walters’ lifetime commitment to abstraction never wavered throughout a career that spanned more than 60 years.

Even though the climate in New Zealand was very inhospitable towards an international style of painting, Walters’ relentless discipline prevailed in a time when the wider audience for painting preferred the New Zealand landscape as subject matter. His work as a modernist abstract painter has echoed through the works of many artists succeeding him.

Even though Walters is widely known for his ‘koru’ paintings, the more minimal compositions stand on a parallel plateau of importance. The formalist qualities of Window II are ordered, severely disciplined, non-compromising and completely non-objective. The composition is compiled of vertical black and white bands, which run within the divided, window-like grey frame.

Just as in Walters’ koru paintings, there are virtual spatial effects created by the positive and negative interplay between the black, grey and white vertical stripes. The intent is clear and decisive, and confidently uncomplicated: “Gordon Walters has set the bar so high for abstract painting that few other New Zealand artists have ever come close to clearing it.”¹ Walters has eliminated the idea of depth and concentrates on harmonious compositional elements. In a letter to Michael Dunn Walters wrote: “I make a full size drawing on paper in outline and then transfer it to a prepared canvas. The canvas is prepared with three coats of lightly sanded acrylic gesso ... and then three or four coats of white acrylic or PVA or whatever colour the ground is (also sanded). After the image is transferred to the canvas, in pencil, it is carefully outlined in acrylic with a very fine ruled line and then painted in usually with four or five coats of whatever colour. The multiple coats of paint are necessary to get sufficient density of colour as I use paint very thinly. That’s about it.”² From this we can determine that Walters’ training as a draughtsman and signwriter influenced his modus operandi in his mature years. Walters systematically used a drawing board, set squares, compasses and rulers to draught up the outlines of compositions in pencil and applied paint to fill in the forms.

Walters has achieved a completely non-representational level with Window II, moving beyond the kowhaiwhai- and mokoinfluenced ‘koru’ paintings, as he felt he had completely exhausted their possibilities. “Although Walters’ paintings may look austere – like one of Mondrian’s compositions – the different formations of geometric shapes and colours convey tremendous feeling and evoke emotional responses.”³ Window II is an incredibly simple but highly complex work, the result of many years of fine tuning and exploration of a specific modern abstract style.

28 Gordon Walters

Window II 1987 gouache on paper signed Gordon Walters, dated 87 and inscribed Window II in graphite lower edge 510 × 375mm est

$16,000 — $24,000

1 Anthony Byrt, “Looking for Mr Walters: Are We any Closer to Understanding the Abstract Artist?” Metro, October 11, 2018.

2 Letter from Gordon Walters to Michael Dunn, dated October 6, 1983.

Collection of Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa 3 Julia Waite, “In the Ultra-modern Tradition,” New Zealand Herald, July 7, 2018.

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29 Bronwynne Cornish

Dryad c1987 ceramic signed BC in ink underside 360 × 160 × 120mm (widest points)

30 Dennis O'Connor

Key Stone 1983 ceramic signed O'Connor, dated July 1983 and inscribed KEY Stone/D with incision verso 450 × 530 × 60mm (widest points)

est $700 — $1,200

est $1,500 — $2,500

Provenance Collection of Dick Scott Family Trust, Auckland.

Provenance Collection of Dick Scott Family Trust, Auckland.

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31 Giovanni Intra

untitled c1990s brass, resin 1400 × 1300mm (widest points) est $10,000 — $15,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Gifted by the artist.

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Giovanni Intra – untitled Essay by AD SCHIERNING

There seems to be a dark and cynical edge to Intra’s works, riffing off religion, pain, medicine, death and punk rock. The work in the catalogue is untitled and undated; it likely sits between the focus of his undergraduate works and later master’s submission, a crossroads between the colourful Indian-influenced installations and the later large-scale dark paintings drenched in punk aesthetic.

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It seems surprising to me that the small Central North Island town of Tūrangi is the birthplace of Giovanni Intra, whose ideas were just so very large. Born in 1968, Intra moved to Auckland to attend Dilworth School and later went on to study sculpture at Elam School of Fine Arts. In 1989, and before the completion of his bachelor’s degree, Intra travelled to India and was heavily influenced by his journey. The works in his undergraduate submission were a series of sculptural reliefs displayed on both the walls and floors. Using vibrantly coloured wax, cotton, tinfoil, twigs, paper and an ephemera of low-value materials he explored Indian mysticism. The resulting works gave a sense of a shrine or the debris of some unknown ritual that had taken place.

There seems to be a dark and cynical edge to Intra’s works, riffing off religion, pain, medicine, death and punk rock. The work in the catalogue is untitled and undated; it likely sits between the focus of his undergraduate works and later master’s submission, a crossroads between the colourful Indian-influenced installations and the later large-scale dark paintings drenched in punk aesthetic. “His work first developed out of an unlikely marriage of punk and religion.”¹ This untitled and undated work is a collection of totems, seed-like forms, instruments and perhaps vessels. One element looks to be a small shield, another perhaps a weapon for some ritualistic sacrificial suffering. This spiked object and the black-and-gold palette places this work before his untitled studded suit. At the end of 1990, after he completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts, Intra’s work took a stage dive into punk, with possibly one of his most recognisable works Untitled (Studded Suit) (1990), which is now held in Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki’s Chartwell Collection.

From all accounts, Intra was influential not just as an artist but also as a part of something bigger. He immersed himself in theory and was well known for his written critique, which was included in arts publications including Flash Art, Tema Celeste, Bookforum and Artforum. He was a part of the collective of artists that founded Auckland artist-run space Teststrip, initially located in the heart of central Auckland on Vulcan Lane, then later on Karangahape Road.

After completing his master’s at Elam, Intra was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and in 1996 he moved to Los Angeles, where he focused on his writing through the programme at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Intra was awarded his Master’s in Critical Studies in 2001. During his studies he befriended Steve Hanson and they, with others, founded another influential art space, this time in LA’s Chinatown. China Art Objects was first established in 1999, breaking relatively new ground in Chinatown. The gallery continues today and plans to launch this year in Mexico, continuing to forge a unique stage for contemporary art.

Intra’s work is now housed in many major collections, including Auckland Art Gallery, Christchurch Art Gallery, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Te Papa Tongarewa and the National Gallery of Victoria. It can be noted that Intra took a holistic approach to the art world and his part in it, initially as a maker then writer and gallerist. He died tragically in 2002 at age 34, while in New York attending one of China Art Objects’ artist’s openings. Given the short time Giovanni Intra spent on earth he was incredibly influential and had an energy for change that is now archived through those who knew him, his artwork, writing and general art-world legacy.

31 Giovanni Intra

untitled c1990s brass, resin 1400 × 1300mm (widest points) est

$10,000 — $15,000

Giovanni Intra Untitled (Studded Suit) 1990 wool, polyester, metal studs 1600 × 560 mm Collection of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and Chartwell Collection.

1 Robert Leonard, “Archives Become Him: The Giovanni Intra Archive,” Reading Room 2, 2008, http://robertleonard.org/ archives-become-him-the-giovanni-intra-archive/ Webb's

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32 Cliff Whiting

untitled 1956 watercolour on paper signed C H Whiting and dated 1956 in brushpoint lower right 320 × 440mm

33 Cliff Whiting

untitled 1956 watercolour on paper signed C H Whiting and dated 1956 in brushpoint lower left 345 × 490mm

est $2,000 — $4,000

est $2,000 — $4,000

Provenance Private collection, Wellington. Passed by bequest; private collection, Wellington. Acquired c1968.

Provenance Private collection, Wellington. Passed by bequest; private collection, Wellington. Acquired c1968.

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34 Tony Fomison

Watcher on the Shore 1982-83 oil on jute on board inscribed "Watcher on the Shore." in graphite verso; printed FOMISON/Exh. no. 61/Crate no. 1 on label affixed verso, inscribed OWNER/DICK SCOTT/THE WATCHER in another hand on label affixed verso 910 × 1200mm est $150,000 — $250,000 Provenance Collection of Dick Scott Family Trust, Auckland.

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Exhibitions Paintings by Betty Curnow and Tony Fomison, Pumphouse Gallery, Auckland, April 6 - 28, 1983; Tony Fomison: What Shall We Tell Them?, City Gallery Wellington, 13 Februrary - 22 May 1994.

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Tony Fomison – Wandering peoples who will not be contained Essay by VICTORIA WYNN-JONES

"Wandering peoples who will not be contained…" ¹ An enormous head has been placed before verdant hills and a placid harbour. In Tony Fomison’s Watcher on the Shore (1982–83) this long face cannot be contained by the frame, the top of his head and the bottom of his chin seem to continue beyond the edge of the painted surface. His brow, eyes and mouth are sharp, sort of chiselled, though his nose is generous, almost bulbous. The edges of his mouth turn slightly downwards, indicating perhaps concentration or sorrow. The severity of this man’s features is accentuated by his head-gear, the front of which ends in a pointy widow’s peak. Although the accessory seems to indicate historical specificity it is also quite slippery; it is difficult to tell what era it really belongs to. Is it a medieval or Phrygian cap? Something worn by peasants in the Middle Ages or in Eastern Europe? Perhaps it is an atrophied court jester’s cap, like the surreal appendage seen in the central figure in Fomison’s iconic work What shall we tell them? from 1976.

Given this painting’s location upon a shore there are also naval connotations, a tricorne or hat belonging to a military leader in exile, perhaps, or a voyaging sea captain.

Regardless, the watcher stands on the shore looking outwards and eclipsing the landscape. What is to be made of his position? It is on beaches that multitudes of cross-cultural encounters took place across the Pacific for centuries. Such a sandy shore, in between fertile hills and pale-blue seas, is the kind of place where the indigenous meet voyagers and navigators, guests and foreigners. Such a location is liminal, a place of transition that is unstructured, one where anything can happen.² In fact, it is such a space that Fomison himself occupied throughout his life, whether as Pākehā youth camping out in a tapu cave, working as an ethnologist tracing over Māori rock art, or receiving the Sāmoan pe’a in his Gunson Street, Auckland, studio. There is no doubt that the shore was a space of colonial encounters and Fomison himself was no stranger to such thresholds; perhaps that is why this work is on a large scale, its central figure so monumental.

As the watcher stands at his vigil there are tears in his eyes, their watery hue resonating with the bay below him. In contrast with the illuminated sky and sea, the undulating landforms are shadowy and dark. The jute surface of this painting creates a cross-hatched effect, giving it an almost illustrative or schematic effect. Similarly, Fomison has modelled his figure so that his very face seems in danger of being taken over by obscurity. The radical use of blackness and unusual composition, together with the melancholy gaze of the watcher, combine to create a painted moment that seems to have been taken from a larger narrative, one that includes encounters either jubilant or troubling. * But such was his lust for light that he began to climb.³ Beneath a moon, between two mountainous crags, a figure both diabolical and angelic hovers in suspension for a moment. It seems to have been travelling at some velocity, as it has left directional streaks of paint behind, as though it has been smeared across the sky. Perhaps it is faceless, there is a shadowy void shaped like the inside of a bivalve where its face should be. Or maybe its head is tilted back in a state of ecstasy, so that only the underside of its chin can be seen. The identity of the central figure in Fomison’s Nightflight (1980) is unknowable, it is a confused hybrid of various forms. A tail curled tight like a fern frond or nocturnal worm, a long white belly like a porpoise or shark, the torso of a fine young man and long outstretched wings like a dragon or bat.

Paused mid-flight, Fomison’s pallid figure is squeezed into frame, surrounded by pointed stone forms and a semi-circle moon. One wing is so large it exceeds the picture plane and is arbitrarily cropped or cut off at the top of the canvas. The warp and weft of the jute support seems to catch the moonlight that pours from above and illuminates the sky, the stones, the flyer

35 Tony Fomison

Nightflight 1980 oil on jute on board, artist's frame signed Tony Fomison, dated 1980 and inscribed “Nightflight” in graphite verso 660 × 450mm est Webb's

$50,000 — $80,000

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until they glow white. Burnt umber contrasts with ivory and pale to evening blue. With an almost tremulous painting technique the edges of these forms seem slightly blurred, indistinct and dream-like. All is contained by the artist’s frame, which has been crafted from a piece of wooden furniture. This was common practice for Fomison, who made frames from cupboard doors, sash window frames, chair bases and even bread boards. This appropriation of available resources alludes to the artist’s Freemans Bay home and studio as photographed

by Marti Friedlander in the same year.⁴ Curators Jim and Mary Barr noted Fomison’s collection of breadboards as well as lace doilies and wire meat-covers, egg-cups, rubbings, tracings and Māori tools.

Spread across the sky, the visionary aspects of this sinuous and attenuated entity recall those of English painter and poet William Blake during the 18th century. Indeed Fomison painted Blake in his 1976 work Wm Blake Pakeha Prophet. Cultural critic Marianna Torgovnick has also associated Blake’s “triumphant male bodies, Satanic but free” with Fomison’s slender figures, ones that “suggest spirit or soul in flight from the body and from material fact.”⁵ It has often been remarked that many of Fomison’s paintings seem like stills from imaginary films, indeed the wooden framing device makes Nightflight seem like it has been taken from a story-board or animated feature. This filmic aspect is heightened by the bluish hues, which recall the cinematic technique of day-for-night in which tungsten film and underexposure are used to make daylight soften and become tenebrous.

34 Tony Fomison

Watcher on the Shore 1982-83 oil on jute on board inscribed "Watcher on the Shore." in graphite verso; printed FOMISON/Exh. no. 61/Crate no. 1 on label affixed verso, inscribed OWNER/DICK SCOTT/THE WATCHER in another hand on label affixed verso 910 × 1200mm est

$150,000 — $250,000

"A man sees a few stars at the issue of a pit and climbs towards them, and then – never can he get down again but stays up there eternally, chewing the stars…"⁶

1 Homi Bhabha, quoted in Peter Brunt, “Framing Identity,” in Fomison: What shall we tell them? ed. Ian Wedde (Wellington, New Zealand: City Gallery, 1994), 64.

2

Brunt, “Framing Identity.” Ibid.

3 Antoine Saint-Exupéry, Night Flight, trans. G. Gilbert (New York: Harcourt Inc, 1932), 53–54.

4 Jim Barr and Mary Barr, Contemporary New Zealand Painters. Volume 1, A–M (Martinborough, New Zealand: Alister Taylor, 1980), 70–79.

5 Marianna Torgovnick, “‘The Blood is One Blood’: D H Lawrence and Tony Fomison,” in Fomison: What shall we tell them? ed. Ian Wedde (Wellington, New Zealand: City Gallery Wellington, 1994), 53–54.

6 Webb's

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35 Tony Fomison

Nightflight 1980 oil on jute on board, artist's frame signed Tony Fomison, dated 1980 and inscribed “Nightflight” in graphite verso 660 × 450mm est $50,000 — $80,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired directly from the artist, 1980.

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36 Colin McCahon

Jump 1974 acrylic on jute inscribed JUMP. in brushpoint lower edge 220 × 225mm est $50,000 — $80,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

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Colin McCahon - Jump Essay by LEAFA WILSON

36 Colin McCahon

Jump 1974 acrylic on jute inscribed JUMP. in brushpoint lower edge 220 × 225mm est Webb's

$50,000 — $80,000

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Jump in this work of Colin McCahon’s seems to be more a of suggestion than a verb. Or is it a one-word statement of fact?

Or is it a noun, declaring that this is a ‘jump’ like one might perform over a hurdle?

There are 28 known works relating to this painting, Jump, by Colin McCahon. Many are small works that appear to be studies or tests for larger works that populated one of McCahon’s exhibitions. According to the McCahon Trust, many of this series of small Jump works were gifted to friends. The first iteration of the exhibition was called Jumps and Comets: Related Events in My World, at Barry Lett Galleries, Auckland from 27 May to 7 June, 1974. This was one of the last shows by McCahon during Barry Lett’s ownership of the gallery: in 1975 he sold it to Rodney Kirk-Smith.

This work belongs to that series, which is like variations on a theme, all based around a broken directional line reaching from the bottom left of the composition, diagonally to the top right, above what looks to be a solid black tower. “His own jumping off point is the local gannet colony, and the fledglings taking their first flight - their first leap - from the 'protection rock'. (The creative act - the act of releasing art into a not always hospitable world - is a leap itself, of course, and one that McCahon could agonise over at times). It's important too to not only see birds and rocks, but lines and colour - McCahon's masterfully refined and compressed visual language.”¹ It is well known that McCahon developed a personal visual language, much of which emerged from one literary source – The King James version of the Bible. To begin to understand anything about his works is to first consider this, and the genius of his ability to create timelessness and atmospheric evocations of key biblical binaries: light and dark, white and black, creator and created, the divine and the human – to name a few of the more commonly accepted readings of his oeuvre.

One of most distinctive and defining elements of McCahon’s works is his use of text. The word as text or ethereal two-dimensional subject on the picture plane. The word become object, the word as utterance bringing the viewer to Te Ao Mārama, or enlightenment. There is also the aspect of McCahon as a Pākehā New Zealander exploring Māori language and religions with which to locate his practice here – not in Europe or any other continent, but in Aotearoa New Zealand. He created numerous works relating to the manifold incarnations of Māori Christian faiths and the way the Bible was indigenised by ngā Poropito – the Māori prophets. The main prophets he focused on were Te Ua Haumēne (Te Atiawa, Taranaki, circa 1920s–1966), Rua Kēnana Hepetipa (Ngāi Tūhoe, Te Urewera, 1869–1937), Te Whiti-o-Rongomai (Te Awanuiārangi, Te Atiawa, Taranaki, 1830– 1907) and Tohu Kākahi (Te Atiawa, Taranaki, 1928–1907). While these elements may appear visually and perhaps conceptually unrelated, the question of struggle and ‘attempt’ are both evident. Not just in these but in all of McCahon’s works.

There are numerous versions of these Jump works, which were made at the same time as the Comet series. The works in both these series imply biblical signs, flight, leaps of faith and overcoming obstacles. The visual links between Jump, the biblical texts and Tau cross, the words ‘I am,’ two opposing cliffs with a chasm in between, are like seeing parts of a whole. Jump possesses the heavy-duty black upright of a Tau cross (a T-shaped cross symbol commonly associated with Saint Anthony and Saint Francis). This monolith seems dense and performs a barrier-like role in the composition. What is easy to miss, after the focus on the triangulation of the broken line, the word ‘JUMP’ and the thick black shape, is the other side of the wall. This is an important and almost tacit part of the work, as it is the classic McCahon balance of negative to positive space. The balance is part of the metaphysical dimension present in all of his works, relating to both Māori and Pākehā sacred space. The space that is tapu (sacred) and the space that is noa (for all). One might ask: If the jump is not up to, or down from, is it meant to be a jump over? Over the cross, or is it an ‘I’?

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Colin McCahon Confrontation of the prophets Te Ua and Te Whiti 1972 synthetic polymer on board 725 × 1090mm Collection of Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato.

Part of the I of the I AM or the post of the Tau cross, which is often found in McMahon’s visual lexicon as chunky capital ‘T’.

It often doubles as a chasm between land masses, between which ‘planes’ or birds sometimes fly. Or a space of challenge, as in Confrontation of the prophets Te Ua and Te Whiti (1972) (collection of Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato).

The small broken line suggests connection, conversation, some kind of engagement.

Jump is suggesting a similar connection to a space that is not defined or, rather, not visible to the viewer. The stark, contrasting dark tones in McCahon’s works are always compositionally balanced with the light or white tones. There is always a full complement of balanced elements in a McCahon picture plane. In this case, the word JUMP is written in capital letters, not in his cursive hand. Capitals in written text have always alluded to some kind of emphatic expression of the word.

If one wrote a text message, in the 21st century, in capitals, it would be construed as shouting. Here, there is no exclamation mark, just caps lock and a full stop. No instructions or directional arrows for us, simply McCahon gesturing to us to consider a proposition.

1 Courtney Johnston, “McCahon’s Jump,” Digital NZ, accessed 20 July 2020, https://digitalnz.org/ stories/50506b8f125757bb2d000002 Webb's

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37 Tony Fomison

untitled 1986 ceramic signed Fomison, dated 9.3.86 and inscribed Driving Creek in brushpoint verso 200 × 120 × 50mm (widest points)

38 Tony Fomison

untitled c1986 ceramic 190 × 60 × 80mm (widest points)

est $800 — $1600

Provenance Collection of Dick Scott Family Trust, Auckland.

Provenance Collection of Dick Scott Family Trust, Auckland.

est $600 — $900

39 Philip Clairmont

Portrait of Tony Fomison 1969 wax crayon on paper laid on canvas signed CT, dated 69 and inscribed Tony F./37 in ink right edge 720 × 510mm est $7,000 — $12,000 Provenance Collection of Thelma Clairmont, Motueka.

Gifted by the artist, c1970s.

Exhibitions Philip Clairmont: Portraits and Self-Portraits, from the Thelma Clairmont Collection, Suter Art Gallery, Nelson, 30 July - 24 August 1997.

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40 Mary McIntyre

Tony with Flowers 1996 oil on canvas signed Mary McIntyre and dated ‘96 in brushpoint lower edge 1070 × 1100mm

41 Mary McIntyre

untitled 1996 acrylic on canvasboard signed Mary Mc and dated ‘96 in brushpoint upper left 120 × 195mm

est $4,000 — $7,000

est $2,000 — $3,000

Provenance Collection of Dick Scott Family Trust, Auckland.

Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

Literature Robin Woodward, Mary McIntyre: Painter (Auckland: Whitespace, 2010), 80.

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42 Philip Clairmont

Still Life with Window 1980 dye, acrylic and oil pastel on paper signed CLAIRMONT and dated 80 in brushpoint lower right; signed CLAIRMONT, dated 1980 and inscribed (2)/STILL-LIFE WITH WINDOW in oil pastel verso 1210 × 805mm est $25,000 — $35,000 Exhibitions No Tour, Denis Cohn Gallery, Auckland, August 31 - September 11 1981.

Provenance Estate of Philip Clairmont, Auckland.

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43 Ian Scott

Lattice No. 95 1982 acrylic on canvas signed IAN SCOTT, dated 82 and inscribed 218/ 60” × 60” November, 1982/“LATTICE NO. 95.” in ink verso est $25,000 — $35,000 Provenance Private collection, Wellington. Acquired from Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington, 1983.

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Exhibitions Ian Scott: Recent Paintings, Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington, 10 - 28 May 1983.

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Ian Scott - Lattice No. 95 Essay by MICHEAL DO

By echoing the physical structure of the canvas in the contents of the painting, the Lattice works are a self-referential intellectual puzzle of sorts, commenting on the relationship between painting, abstraction and the canvas.

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43 Ian Scott

Lattice No. 95 1982 acrylic on canvas signed IAN SCOTT, dated 82 and inscribed 218/ 60” × 60” November, 1982/“LATTICE NO. 95.” in ink verso est

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2020

Unceasingly for nearly 40 years until his death, English-born New Zealand artist Ian Scott produced abstract paintings of the grid. The representation of the grid, as described by American art critic Rosalind Krauss, is a defining principle of 20th-century modern art. From cubism to De Stijl, and from American minimalist Donald Judd to American abstract painter Agnes Martin, the reoccurring motif enabled artists to detach their work from the imperfect happenings of the 20th century. Rather than represent the chaos, trauma and inequity of their world grappling with technological, economic and political change, abstraction and the grid presented an opportunity for artists to cage narrative and emotion behind unyielding bars of nonrepresentational lines – offering artworks as not-yet-imagined spaces to reconceive the world anew.

Following this lineage, Scott’s Lattice series represents an important contribution to the history of abstraction in New Zealand. Each work in the series forms part of Scott’s larger mission to explore the potential of formal qualities in painting, such as colour, line, form and pattern, to shape meaning and perception in art. Appearing as if interwoven, the repeated diagonal bands of colour operate as extensions of the canvas.

The angularity, flatness and repetition of these bands replicate the weave of the canvas fabric. By echoing the physical structure of the canvas in the contents of the painting, the Lattice works are a self-referential intellectual puzzle of sorts, commenting on the relationship between painting, abstraction and the canvas.

To the viewer, Scott’s compositions contain a fictive depth; there is a 3D illusionistic space within these paintings despite their flat surfaces. This challenge to the viewer’s perception forces a ‘moving back’ of the viewer in order to understand the ambiguities and spatial illusions of Scott’s grid. This second moment of viewing and comprehension forms part of the pleasure of these works.

Painting in West Auckland for most of his career, Scott incorporated subtle references to architecture and objects such as deckchairs and fences into his paintings. Part ode to his surroundings, this decision also reflected his desire to localise and contextualise the utopian vocabulary and culture of EuroAmerican modernism that informed his practice. Artworks of this genre, including those by American abstract expressionist Kenneth Noland, are also typified by the lack of physical brushwork, the use of acrylic paint, paper or canvas supports, and masking tape used to ensure the machine-like accuracy of the paint application – steadfast qualities of Scott’s series.

Through this interest in these global artistic dialogues, Scott’s abstraction came to represent an important thread in New Zealand art history, offering a unique, geometric and bold-coloured counterpoint to the work of his contemporaries, including the successful painting practices of Ralph Hotere (1931–2013) and Colin McCahon (1919–1987) – the latter his teacher while Scott studied at Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland – who tended to use darker colour palettes and more expressive line work.

Examples of Scott’s Lattice works are held in New Zealand institutions such as Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

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44 Ralph Hotere

Acre of Wounds (from Pine a Poem by

Bill Manhire) 1974 woodblock print and ink on paper signed Hotere, dated ‘74 and inscribed 10/from PINE a Poem by Bill Manhire/ACRE of WOUNDS in graphite and ink lower edge 560 × 420mm est $7,500 — $12,500 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired directly from the artist, 2000.

Exhibitions Hotere: Out the Black Window, City Gallery Wellington, Wellington; 6 July - 14 September 1997; Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 6 December 1997 - 25 January 1998; Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch, 5 February - 19 April 1998; Auckland Art Gallery, 30 May - 16 August 1998; Rotorua Museum of Art and History, 22 October - 17 January 1999.

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45 Ralph Hotere

Pine; a Tree (drawing for Pine a Poem by

Bill Manhire) 1972 watercolour and ink on paper signed Hotere and inscribed 6/PINE a tree/from Pine a poem by Bill Manhire in ink lower edge 530 × 370mm est $12,000 — $16,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired directly from the artist, 2000.

Exhibitions Hotere: Out the Black Window, City Gallery Wellington, Wellington; 6 July - 14 September 1997; Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 6 December 1997 - 25 January 1998; Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch, 5 February - 19 April 1998; Auckland Art Gallery, 30 May - 16 August 1998; Rotorua Museum of Art and History, 22 October - 17 January 1999.

Literature Gregory O'Brien, Ralph Hotere: Out the Black Window (Auckland: Godwit Publishing Ltd, 1997), 50.

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46 Theo Schoon

untitled c1960 graphite on paper 1270 × 290mm (each panel) est $10,000 — $15,000 Provenance Private collection, Wellington. Acquired from Antiques & Art, Cordy's, Auckland, 20 May 2014, lot 815.

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Theo Schoon - untitled Essay by ANDREW PAUL WOOD

Schoon believed that a century of colonisation had damaged MÄ ori artistic traditions to the point of their nearly being lost and he set out on an epic personal mission to document rock drawings and other MÄ ori art forms, intending to revitalise them with Bauhaus design principles.

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Theo Schoon (1915–1985) was born to Dutch parents in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. Deeply immersed in the indigenous cultures of Java and Bali from a young age, Schoon possessed an unusual openness to the artistic traditions of non-Western cultures and was eventually sent to Rotterdam to train as an artist, where he became fascinated with the German Bauhaus. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, the Schoon family migrated to New Zealand. Here Schoon became fascinated with Māori rock drawings and other traditional art forms.

Schoon believed that a century of colonisation had damaged Māori artistic traditions to the point of their nearly being lost and he set out on an epic personal mission to document rock drawings and other Māori art forms, intending to revitalise them with Bauhaus design principles.

This set of five drawings is the final design draft for the 1957 painting Basic Arawa Pattern and Bird Motif (Schoon himself informally called it Bird in the Bush), currently in the Bank of New Zealand collection in Wellington. The painting was made

by Schoon while staying with landscape gardener Graham Miller in New Plymouth. It was most recently exhibited in the exhibition Split Level View Finder: Theo Schoon and New Zealand Art, curated by Damian Skinner and Aaron Lister, which showed at City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi in 2019 and at Te Uru, Titirangi, in 2020.

As the title suggests, the elaborate kōwhaiwhai/pītauderived ornamentation is based on those made by Te Arawa confederation of iwi and hapū based in the Bay of Plenty and Rotorua areas. The design of the bird seems to combine both Māori and Indonesian elements. The shape and scale of the drawings suggest the painting may have originally been conceived as a vertical composition, like tukutuku panels.

Arawa was the waka that brought Te Arawa to Aotearoa.

It is closely associated with the waka of Tainui iwi, and they are sometimes together called Ngā Māhanga-a-Tuamatua (the twins of Tuamatua), so perhaps the bird is a reference to the sacred bird guardians Mumuhou and Tākeretou put ashore at Rēpanga (Cuvier Island). There is also some similarity to depictions of Garuda, the mythical national bird of Indonesia. This may, however, be purely coincidental.

While Schoon’s project seems problematic, paternalistic and appropriative to modern sensibilities, and his irascibility – largely a product of the alienation he experienced as an eccentric artist, homosexual and foreigner – could come across as egotistical and inappropriate, influential Māori at the time regarded him as useful and cautiously supported him. They, too, were concerned about the loss of Māori artistic traditions. As a result, Schoon was the only non-Māori artist invited to participate in the first Māori Arts Festival, held at Tūrangawaewae, Ngāruawāhia, in 1963, and prominent Māori like Maata Hirini, a president of the Māori Women’s Welfare League, commissioned pounamu carvings from him in the 1970s.

For all his complicated nature, Schoon was an artist of singular vision and ingenuity, leaving a legacy we are only now beginning to understand.

46 Theo Schoon

untitled (detail) c1960 graphite on paper 1270 × 290mm (each panel) est

$10,000 — $15,000

Theo Schoon Basic Arawa Pattern and Bird Motif 1957 oil on hardboard 1728 × 1425mm Collection of Bank of New Zealand, Wellington.

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47 Michael Smither

Red Yacht 2015 alkyd on canvas signed M.D. Smither in brushpoint verso; inscribed RED YACHT (From Gone Fishing Series) Exhibited Feb-Mar 2018/Signed: M.D. Smither/Alkyd on canvas/2015/Inscribed, signed verso beneath frame in ink in another hand on Diversion Gallery label affixed verso est $18,000 — $26,000

Exhibitions Pleasure Boats – Michael Smither 2018, The Diversion Gallery, Picton, 14 February - 10 March 2018.

Provenance Private collection, Wellington.

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48 Michael Smither

Manifesto Café 2001 oil on board signed MDS and dated 2001 in brushpoint lower left 790 x 1200mm est $75,000 — $125,000 Provenance Private collection, Waikato. Acquired from Fine Art Auction, Dunbar Sloane, Auckland, 18 August 2004, lot 33.

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Literature Trish Gribben, Michael Smither: Painter (Auckland: Ron Sang Publications, 2004), 236-237; Don Milne, “Range Keeps Art Buyers Spoiled for Choice”, New Zealand Herald, 29 September, 2004.

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Michael Smither – Manifesto Café Essay by ELLIOT FERGUSON

The Manifesto Café and Wine Bar was a renowned institution on Auckland’s Queen Street, in the mid-to-late 1990s. Hosting weekly jazz sessions in its downstairs bar, the Manifesto attracted visionaries such as Mark de Clive Lowe, performing with Jan Hellriegel, Kevin Haines and his talented son Nathan, among many others. Living in the Auckland suburb of Ponsonby at the time, Michael Smither was a regular attendee, sketching the performers and the audience from his corner vantage point.

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Michael Smither is a painter and printmaker best known for his unidealised realism in both figurative scenes and landscapes.

Many of his works depict faithful records of a specific time and place, carefully observed, such as Sea Wall and Kingfisher (1967) or Large Kitchen Composition (1965).

The Manifesto Café and Wine Bar was a renowned institution on Auckland’s Queen Street, in the mid-to-late 1990s.

Hosting weekly jazz sessions in its downstairs bar, the Manifesto attracted visionaries such as Mark de Clive Lowe, performing with Jan Hellriegel, Kevin Haines and his talented son Nathan, among many others. Living in the Auckland suburb of Ponsonby at the time, Michael Smither was a regular attendee, sketching the performers and the audience from his corner vantage point.

The scene depicted in Manifesto Café (2001) is of a couple seated in the window of the upstairs café area. Smither tells it as a proposal of marriage “witnessed in a sidelong glance”¹ with the other elements combining to flesh out the story. The parking meter marks time passing, the water symbolises the purity of the ‘sacramental act’ of betrothal and the woman opposite signifies loneliness.

Within this composition we see an undeniable reference to Edward Hopper’s 1942 painting Nighthawks. Hopper’s most famous work depicts a similar meeting of a couple at a café although set in the evening and with a very deserted street scene. The feeling in Smither’s Manifesto Café is far more joyous, brighter in palette and in its content, while Hopper’s couple sit impassively in the quiet moment they share.

The use of blocks of colour in Manifesto Café further aid us in our reading of the work. The back of the blue sign points like an arrow, focusing the gaze on the joined hands, the focal point of the physical and emotional drama. The street cleaner is decked out entirely in bright yellow: hat, clothing and equipment.

The lonesome figure is in green, possibly symbolising jealousy; the betrothed woman mirrors the blue of the arrow-like sign with her dress. There is a shot of red in the expired meter; the adjacent vehicle is vibrant in red and white. The Volkswagen Kombi van has its own art history, coming from a series of sketches made in Pat Condon’s Merivale, Christchurch, driveway, and is transplanted into the scene. Pat Condon was the former director of the Canterbury Gallery, and a lifelong friend of Smither’s; the plate number of the van is true to the original.

48 Michael Smither

Manifesto Café 2001 oil on board signed MDS and dated 2001 in brushpoint lower left 790 × 1200mm est

$75,000 — $125,000

Edward Hopper Nighthawks 1942 oil on canvas 841 × 1524mm Friends of American Art Collection, Art Institute of Chicago.

1 Trish Gribben, Michael Smither: Painter (Auckland, New Zealand: Ron Sang Publications, 2004), 236.

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49 Colin McCahon

Waterfall 1964 oil on board signed Colin McCahon, dated June July ‘64 and inscribed Waterfall./N.F.S in ink verso 300 × 250mm est $40,000 — $60,000

Exhibitions Colin McCahon, Small Landscapes and Waterfalls, Ikon Fine Arts, Auckland, 14 - 25 September 1964.

Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Important Works of Art, Webb's, Auckland, 6 December 2011, lot 18.

Note Colin McCahon Online Catalogue (www.mccahon.co.nz) number: CM000349.

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50 Colin McCahon

Waterfall 1964 oil on board signed McCahon, dated May June 1964 and inscribed Waterfall in ink verso 385 × 290mm est $40,000 — $60,000 Provenance Private collection, Wellington.

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Colin McCahon - still silent falls of light Essay by VICTORIA WYNNE-JONES

It was into a place of utter exhaustion that Colin McCahon’s Waterfall series of paintings exuberantly fell. As writer and longtime friend of the artist Gordon H. Brown testified, after the concerted effort required to finish the two large-scale works Landscape Theme and Variations, McCahon was left drained and spent.¹ Then, following an itinerant exhibition, several paintings

by William Hodges – official painter for Captain James Cook’s second voyage to Aotearoa (1772–1775) – were hosted by the Auckland City Art Gallery. This meant that McCahon was able to scrutinise Hodges’ paintings of waterfalls at Tamatea Dusky Sound and it was these that inspired his new series. He reflected: Hodges and I eventually realised we were friends over the years and got talking about his painting. He was dead and I was about the same. We conversed, through paint (about Naples yellow to start with) – and in 1964 I painted my first waterfall.² Indeed once the waterfalls started flowing they become something of a deluge. According to Brown these multiple depictions of the Fairy Falls in the Waitakere Ranges form a loose chronology. In earlier versions, such as the larger of these two works Waterfall, (May June 1964), the upper flow of water is spread across adjacent pieces of land between which it then falls, with foliage indicated in the surrounding areas. In this domestic-sized painting the waterfall itself is crafted from brushwork in silver, grey, white and perhaps even Naples yellow. These variously laden brushstrokes rush in from either side of the frame before meeting and tumbling downwards. Heightened by sometimesheavy outlines or delineations in black, the water forms a central uterus-like shape. Straggly brush and vegetation are conjured by shadowy patches in ochre, mustard and grey. In the depths of the top left corner appears what may be a smaller fall of water, earlier along the water-course.

Later waterfalls, such as Waterfall, (June July 1964) were refined until they become a mere vertical shaft dropping suddenly with or without a pool to catch them. Plashing water transmigrates into what Brown has called a “line of white… curving through the darkness.”³ McCahon’s use of pictorial space became highly formalised, abstract, then “deliberately flattened so that the only movement is the optical to-and-fro of white over black.”⁴ Eventually, the diminuendo of the white line become calligraphic; in fact McCahon explained that the waterfalls were heavily influenced by Japanese and Chinese paintings of landscapes.⁵ Brown summarised that with his waterfalls, McCahon “converted and contracted” landscape imagery “into a symbolic shorthand.”

In this second waterfall the palette is limited to inky black together with the wide, milky white of cascading water and a heavenly orb – boulder or moon – that drifts above.

There have been speculations that this reduced palette and use of black was inspired by works by Buster Black, a painter from Taumarunui of Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Rangi descent. As Martin Edmond explains, Black and McCahon met in painting classes the artist gave at the Auckland City Art Gallery in 1956, then quickly became close friends and spiritual confidants. Black made a series of “night paintings” that involved “pinpoints of lights from cities and towns – picked out from the surrounding blackness.”⁶ Together with Hodges’ landscapes, Black’s work Ngauruhoe at night (1963–64) with its directional and dynamic brushstrokes is considered to have influenced and inspired McCahon’s waterfalls. Also of note is a vision Black had of the volcanic mountain Ngauruhoe weeping, “exuding light that streamed and pulsated up and down its white flanks while clouds rose from its base.”⁷ Black’s affiliation with Ngāti Rangi, the sky people, also involves an association with Māramatanga – a movement derived from the prophetess Mere Rikiriki – which means light, enlightenment and knowledge. Thus evident in McCahon’s Waterfall series is this legacy of textured darkness or blackness accompanied by streams of divine light.

The Waterfalls were first exhibited publicly at Auckland’s Ikon Gallery in September 1964. It was in the same month that

49 Colin McCahon

Waterfall 1964 oil on board signed Colin McCahon, dated June July ‘64 and inscribed Waterfall./N.F.S in ink verso 300 × 250mm est Webb's

$40,000 — $60,000

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McCahon left his position at the Auckland City Art Gallery to lecture in painting at Elam, the School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland, a post he would hold throughout the 1960s.⁸ The series would go on to fuel further artworks and commissions. In 1966, at the encouragement of his Dunedin friends, McCahon submitted a design based on his Waterfall paintings for a mural commissioned for the new library at the University of Otago. The result was Waterfall Theme and Variations, 12 panels painted in his Auckland studio before being packed and dispatched to Dunedin.

The waterfall motif made another appearance within the artist’s Stations of the Cross series in 1966. Following his commission at the chapel of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions in Upland Road, Remuera, Auckland, McCahon executed his Fourteen Stations of the Cross, a series of acrylic landscape paintings on paper. This highly abstracted depiction of Christ’s procession to Calvary harks back to the Waterfalls as single white lines of paint, created via economical acts of mark-making, evoke the figure of Christ as he rises, falls and proceeds.

Above all, the Waterfalls present a rejuvenating energetics.

Their dynamism had a nourishing and re-vivifying effect upon McCahon at a time when he felt his creativity had been diminished.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons he evoked the waterfalls when depicting Christ’s progress. Indeed, such “falls and flows of white” as described by art historian and curator Justin Paton might recall ecstatic blood pouring from Christ’s wounds as well as less spiritual and more erotic emanations.⁹ Whether falling water, blood, milk, rain or light are what has been depicted, there is no doubt that painting the Waterfalls represented progression and innovation for McCahon, a time in which:

50 Colin McCahon

Waterfall 1964 oil on board signed McCahon, dated May June 1964 and inscribed Waterfall in ink verso 385 × 290mm est

$40,000 — $60,000

... waterfalls fell and raged and became as still as silent falls of light for a long time. I look back with joy on taking a brush of white paint and curving through the darkness with a line of white. ¹⁰

1 Gordon H. Brown, Colin McCahon: Artist (Wellington, New Zealand: Reed, 1984), 102–105.

2

Ibid., 75.

3 Gordon H. Brown, Towards a Promised Land: On the Life and Art of Colin McCahon (Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland University Press, 2010), 18.

4

Ibid., 117.

5

5Ibid., 137.

6 Martin Edmond, Dark Night: Walking with McCahon (Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland University Press, 2011), 13–14.

7 Ibid.

8 Marja Bloem and Martin Brown, Colin McCahon: A Question of Faith (Nelson, New Zealand: Craig Potton Publishing; Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Stedelijk Museum, 2002), 202.

9 Justin Paton, McCahon Country (Auckland, New Zealand: Penguin Random House; Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2019), 137.

10 Brown, Colin McCahon: Artist, 104.

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51 Séraphine Pick

Sea of Love 2009 acrylic on canvas signed Séraphine Pick and dated 2009 in brushpoint lower right; signed SP and inscribed Sea of Love in graphite verso 1120 × 1520mm est $28,000 — $34,000 Provenance Private collection. Acquired from Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington.

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52 Bill Hammond

Zoomorphic Detail 1999 acrylic on canvas signed W D Hammond, dated 1999 and inscribed ZOOMORPHIC DETAIL in brushpoint upper edge 595 × 400mm est $60,000 — $80,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Fine New Zealand Paintings, Jewellery & Decorative Arts, Webb's, Auckland, 23 September 2003, lot 66.

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Bill Hammond - Zoomorphic Detail Essay by PRISCILLA PITTS

These transformations always signal an unhinging of the natural order of things. In Hammond’s idiosyncratic bestiary, it’s never clear whether the greater danger lies with the human or the animal form – or something in between.

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Zoomorphic Detail is one of a handful of works with this title, painted by Bill Hammond in the late 1990s. In one, a solitary, winged bird–human seated on a tree stump seems lost in thought; in another particularly macabre image a gnarly-taloned bird– human and two skull-headed creatures seem inextricably melded together in a deathly embrace.

Like Hammond’s other ‘birdland’ works of this period, Zoomorphic Detail lies somewhere between the throbbingly discordant images of the 1980s and early 1990s and his later, more intricately elegant, paintings. This work is dominated by two unnaturally elongated seated humanoid figures with birds’ heads.

They are alike but different. The ramrod posture of the figure on the left is familiar from many of Hammond’s ‘birdland’ works, while the sinuous curves of the right-hand figure echo those of the posturing creatures in All Along the Heaphy Highway (1998) and Brick Waltz, from the same year. There’s a kind of familial tenderness – a rare commodity in Hammond’s imagery – in the close snuggle of the two figures on the left and the way one small figure piggy-backs on the plump shoulders of the right-hand bird–human. Though they face away from one another, the bird– humans’ shoulders touch, and the figures seem somehow akin, a group. An air of eerie calm prevails.

For all this, the image is disquieting. The verdigris background, familiar from many of Hammond’s paintings of this period, seeps and drips, a swampy life-generating ooze. The figures are a murky, unhealthy grey. There is something creepy about the way the bird–humans’ legs dwindle flabbily away to vestigial claws or melt into thin air. Unnerving, too, is the way the left-hand bird–human’s back is encircled by the monkey’s tail – which curls like a seeking tentacle – and an attenuated, snaking sinew with a tiny animal’s head. And what of the ectoplasmic humanoid facial features on the knee of one bird-human, or on the bicep of the other? Are they tattoos? Masks? Faces made in flesh, wrongly located, coming into being as part of a change from one form to another?

Hybridity and metamorphosis have featured large in Hammond’s work from the outset, and make a crucial contribution to the uneasy feel of so many of his images. In the mythology of shapeshifters, the transformation of beast to beast (human to wolf, seal, cat) is seen as at best disturbing, at worst terrifying, or, as with the Egyptian bird- and wolf-headed deities, as awe-inspiring and transcendent. These transformations always signal an unhinging of the natural order of things. In Hammond’s idiosyncratic bestiary, it’s never clear whether the greater danger lies with the human or the animal form – or something in between.

Hammond’s works almost always carry a sense of narrative, however elusive or inexplicable they may be. So what’s the story here? Is the tale Hammond spins a form of creation myth, in which these creatures exist in a pre-lapsarian condition, when all are innocent and guileless? Does he propose a glimpse of an as-yet-unforeseen form of evolution, perhaps some hideous, post-nuclear state, seething with unsettling mutations? Or are we witnesses to a nascent divinity? The fascination and the beauty of Hammond’s world is that we will never really know.

52 Bill Hammond

Zoomorphic Detail 1999 acrylic on canvas signed W D Hammond, dated 1999 and inscribed ZOOMORPHIC DETAIL in brushpoint upper edge 595 × 400mm est

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53 Karl Maughan

Waverly 2016 oil on canvas signed KM, dated 2016 and inscribed Waverly in brushpoint verso 1000 × 2000mm est $25,000 — $35,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

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54 Max Gimblett

Zeus 2008-09 acrylic, epoxy resin and gold leaf on canvas signed MAX GIMBLETT, dated 2008/09 and inscribed NOON GOLD/“ZEUS” in brushpoint verso 1260 × 1260mm est $35,000 — $45,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Gow Langsford, Auckland, 2009.

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Max Gimblett - Zeus Essay by NEIL TALBOT

When his brush touches the paper, he very deliberately does not think about his actions whatsoever, he simply executes marks as they flow through his body. Thus, rather than using his hand to knowingly depict form, Gimblett allows form to emerge from his brush marks in an almost residual manner.

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Max Gimblett’s career as a professional artist can be broadly divided into two periods that are separated by one distinct turning point. Just over a decade after he held his first solo exhibition at Dave Hickey’s A Clean Well-Lighted Place in Austin, Texas, Gimblett chose to cease his painting practice for a twoyear period, from 1982–83. Gimblett has referred to these years as ‘a mid-life transformation’.¹ While it could be said that the central concerns of Gimblett’s practice have been consistent throughout his career, the artist used this period to broaden his frame of reference. The timing of this respite is particularly important because for he unilaterally dedicated his attention to working on his newly developed, quatrefoil-shaped canvases.

Gimblett’s approach to painting is directly informed by his identity as a practising Rinzai Zen monk: his works have an obvious emergence and energy. Akin to the principles of Buddhism, his mark making is both simplistic and natural. “Chronologically he might be described as on the edge between Modernism and post-Modernism, and though he sees himself, correctly, I think, as primarily a Modernist artist, he has chosen, like a postModernist, to redefine and recombine historical elements from different times and places as his personal, rather than historical, mandate decrees. These elements may be Eastern or Western, ancient or modern….”² There are clear parallels between this Bhuddist-inspired process and those of the action painters of the mid-20th century such as Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock.

However, unlike the practices of these antecedents, the painting that Gimblett participates in has a very specific intended output.

Gimblett describes his methodology with the phrase – also used to express a mental state – ‘mushin no shin’ or ‘all mind/ no mind’. When his brush touches the paper, he very deliberately does not think about his actions whatsoever, he simply executes marks as they flow through his body. Thus, rather than using his hand to knowingly depict form, Gimblett allows form to emerge from his brush marks in an almost residual manner.

Metaphysical concerns have always been at the heart of his practice; even though his works appear to be focused on colour relationships, the contrast between the colours is of more importance than the specific qualities of the colours themselves.

Gimblett seeks to give a literal, physical form to a presence that previously could only be felt in his work.

In a conversation with Sarah Caldwell for The New Zealand Herald the artist stated, "I'm going to cry. I had a dream in 1983.

It was a quatrefoil. It said, 'Paint me and I'll heal you'. No one else was painting them. It's the signature shape.”³ Indeed this dream of a shape has formed the artist’s visual identity. When we see the quatrefoil we see a Gimblett, likewise the uninhibited, entirely free gestural marks signify the artist’s work.

54 Max Gimblett

Zeus 2008-09 acrylic, epoxy resin and gold leaf on canvas signed MAX GIMBLETT, dated 2008/09 and inscribed NOON GOLD/“ZEUS” in brushpoint verso 1260 × 1260mm est

$35,000 — $45,000

1 Thomas McEvilley, “The Transition of Three to Four,” in Max Gimblett, Wystan Curnow, Thomas McEvilley, and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Max Gimblett: The Brush of All Things (Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland Art Gallery, 2004) 2 Ibid.

3 Sarah Catherall, “Kiwi Star of the Art World: Max Gimblett on Keeping the Faith and Wearing the Silver Fern,” The New Zealand Hearald, September 8, 2018.

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55 Mervyn Williams

Free Fall 1982 oil on canvas signed MERVYN WILLIAMS, dated 1982 and inscribed “FREE FALL” in brushpoint verso 1220 × 1220mm

56 Leigh Martin

Register III 1999 oil on linen signed Leigh Martin, dated 1999 and inscribed Register III in ink verso 1220 × 1220mm

est $6,000 — $10,000 est $3,000 — $5,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired directly from the artist, 1986.

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Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

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57 Milan Mrkusich

Painting No. 5 1961 oil on canvas signed Mrkusich, dated ‘61 and inscribed No/5 in brushpoint lower right; dated 1961 and inscribed PAINTING NO. 5 in brushpoint verso 790 × 540mm est $35,000 — $45,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

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Milan Mrkusich – Painting No. 5 Essay by ANDREW PAUL WOOD

This painting is a product of Mrkusich’s transition to full-time painting. Here, the freely brushed colour shimmers and thrills, brought under the control of Mrkusich’s absolute, logical, rational precision. Although the artist was completely uninterested in the landscape tradition, suggesting that people who wanted that should take a drive in the country, one might argue that the composition contains suggestions of mountainous landscape tilted on its side.

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Milan Mrkusich’s Painting No. 5 (1961) does not immediately suggest the geometric, constructivist abstraction the artist is best known for, but those works did not begin to emerge until two years later with the Emblem paintings. At this point in his career, Mrkusich was still very much working through a loose, gestural abstraction that looks sideways and back a little way to Woollaston, but seems very aware of what Rothko, Pollock, Kline, de Kooning and Barnett Newman were up to in the US – abstract expressionism and colour field painting. There are also hints of British painters John Tunnard and Ben Nicholson, French artist Nicolas de Staël, and Portuguese abstractionist Vieira da Silva at their most spontaneous, and these influences would eventually coalesce into Mrkusich’s geometric style.

Mrkusich was born in Dargaville in 1925 to Dalmatian immigrant parents. His formal training in art was minimal. He entered an apprenticeship in pictorial arts with Neuline Film Studios and took night classes at Seddon Technical College, where he learned life drawing. Early on he became interested in the art of Mondrian and the Bauhaus. Mrkusich had his first exhibition at the architecture school at Auckland University in 1949, and his work was included in Object and Image at Auckland Art Gallery in 1954.

Almost entirely self-taught, throughout his slow maturation over the 1940s and 50s Mrkusich worked his way through most of the tricks and experiments of modernist abstraction. The most extraordinary thing about him is that he didn’t travel overseas until 1981; his understanding of modernism – American art especially – when he painted this work was largely second-hand, observed from dubious published reproductions. This is certainly not unusual in New Zealand art, where innovations frequently arrived late and second-hand, and distance looked our way.

Such abstraction occupies a rather strange position in a period of New Zealand art when even modernism was dominated by nationalism and the Kelliher Art Award for landscape was one of the country’s most prestigious art prizes. In the 1960s Mrkusich gained national recognition. He stopped painting in 2008, and shortly before his death in 2018 his works were setting record prices at auction.

In Painting No. 5 the grid and the hard geometries have yet to materialise. The chromatic exploration, subtle surface, intelligence and good taste is all there. Design is a strong component. During the 1950s Mrkusich was a colour consultant and partner at Auckland architectural and design firm Brenner Associates, working on interiors and furniture, where much of his formal aesthetic framework has its origin.

This painting is a product of Mrkusich’s transition to fulltime painting. Here, the freely brushed colour shimmers and thrills, brought under the control of Mrkusich’s absolute, logical, rational precision. Although the artist was completely uninterested in the landscape tradition, suggesting that people who wanted that should take a drive in the country, one might argue that the composition contains suggestions of mountainous landscape tilted on its side. There’s a wonderful mastery of warm and cool tones in the palette – colour remains central to Mrkusich’s approach throughout all his stylistic explorations.

57 Milan Mrkusich

Painting No. 5 1961 oil on canvas signed Mrkusich, dated ‘61 and inscribed No/5 in brushpoint lower right; dated 1961 and inscribed PAINTING NO. 5 in brushpoint verso 790 × 540mm est

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58 Pat Hanly

Child Afraid 1961 oil and graphite on canvas signed Hanly and dated 61 in brushpoint lower right 605 × 545mm est $28,000 — $36,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Fine New Zealand & Foreign Paintings, Webb's, Auckland, 1 July 1999, lot 1214.

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Literature Gregory O'Brien, Pat Hanly (Auckland: Ron Sang Publications, 2012), 47.

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59 Alex Schaefer

Chase Burning: 7th & Figueroa 2012 oil on canvas signed A Schaefer in brushpoint lower right; signed Alex Schaefer, dated 2012 and inscribed Chase Burning: 7th & Figueroa in ink verso 560 × 710mm

60 Alex Schaefer

Riot: Wall St. 2011 oil on canvas signed Alex Schaefer, dated 2011 and inscribed Riot: Wall St. in ink verso 920 × 450mm

est $8,000 — $12,000

est $5,000 — $8,000

Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

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61 John Reynolds

That Words Are Dust 2004 paint marker and acrylic on canvas, 1/10 signed Reynolds, dated 2004 and inscribed That Words Are Dust, oil paint marker on acrylic/225 × 300 in ink verso 300 × 225mm

62 Simon Denny

Untitled 2006 plastic sheet, woollen blanket, static electricity dimensions variable

est $1,000 — $2,000 est $4,500 — $7,500 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Auction No. 7, Bowerbank Ninow, Auckland, 30 November 2017, lot 16.

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Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired directly from the artist.

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63 Allen Maddox

Untitled (75) 1976 acrylic on canvas signed AM and inscribed 4.76 in brushpoint lower right 600 × 850mm est $10,000 — $12,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Michael Lett, Auckland, 2007.

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64 Dick Frizzell

Pakiri Still Life #3 1983 enamel on board signed FRIZZELL, dated 1/2/83 and inscribed PAKIRI STILL LIFE #3 with incision and in brushpoint lower left 305 × 360mm est $4,000 — $7,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Denis Cohn Gallery, Auckland, 1983.

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65 Paul Cullen

Recent Discoveries #5, #8, #11 1995 glass flasks, plaster, aluminium lids, wire, copper, map segments, paper labels, painted boxes inscribed Science in brushpoint on glass flask 175 × 100 × 100mm each (flasks, widest points) est $1,200 — $1,800 Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

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66 Nigel Brown

A Conversation between Te Whiti and Te

Kooti at Tolaga 1993 oil on canvas signed Nigel Brown and dated '93 in brushpoint lower right; signed Nigel Brown, dated 93 and inscribed A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TE WHITI AND TE KOOTI AT TOLAGA/OIL ON CANVAS in brushpoint verso 745 × 610mm est $4,000 — $8,000 Provenance Collection of Dick Scott Family Trust, Auckland.

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67 Philip Trusttum

Yours 1973-74 oil on jute signed P.S.T and dated 73 4 in brushpoint lower right; dated 1973-1974 and inscribed No (1)/OIL ON JUTE/TITLE "YOURS" in brushpoint verso 1350 × 1200mm est $8,000 — $14,000 Provenance Private collection, Wellington. Acquired from Fine New Zealand Paintings, Webb's, Auckland, August 1986, lot 195.

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68 Chris Heaphy

Inside 2008 acrylic on canvas signed Chris Heaphy, dated 2008 and inscribed INSIDE in ink lower edge 751 × 570mm

69 Chris Heaphy

Internal 2008 acrylic on canvas signed Chris Heaphy, dated 2008 and inscribed INTERNAL in ink lower edge 751 × 570mm

est $2,000 — $3,000

est $2,000 — $3,000

Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

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70 Jeffrey Harris

Two Figures 1974 oil on board signed J.H and dated ‘74 in ink lower edge; dated 1974 and inscribed 2 Figures in ink verso 295 × 350mm

71 Jeffrey Harris

untitled 1981 ink on paper signed J.H and dated ‘81 in ink lower right 565 × 770mm

est $4,000 — $8,000 est $1,500 — $2,500 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from New Zealand Historical and European Paintings, Webb's, Auckland, 9 July 1992, lot 530.

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Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Ferner Galleries, Auckland, c2004.

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Terms and Conditions The terms and conditions of sale listed here contain the policies of Webb’s Ltd. They are the terms on which Webb’s Ltd and the Seller contract with the Buyer.

They may be amended by printed Saleroom Notices or oral announcements made before and during the sale. By bidding at auction you agree to be bound by these terms.

1.

Background to the Terms used in these Conditions

property is therefore made between the Seller and the Buyer.

The conditions that are listed below contain terms that are used regularly and may need explanation.

They are as follows:

3.

“the Buyer” means the person with the highest bid accepted by the Auctioneer. “the Lot” means any item depicted within the sale for auction and in particular the item or items described against any lot number in the catalogue. “the Hammer price” means the amount of the highest bid accepted by the auctioneer in relation to a lot. “the Buyer’s Premium” means the charge payable by the Buyer to the auction house as a percentage of the hammer price. “the Reserve” means the lowest amount at which Webb’s has agreed with the Seller that the lot can be sold.

“Forgery” means an item constituting an imitation originally conceived and executed as a whole, with a fraudulent intention to deceive as to authorship, origin, age, period, culture or source, where the correct description as to such matters is not reflected by the description in the catalogue.

Accordingly no lot shall be capable of being a forgery by reason of any damage or restoration work of any kind (Including re-painting). “the insured value” means the amount that Webb’s in its absolute discretion from time to time shall consider the value for which a lot should be covered for insurance (whether or not insurance is arranged by Webb’s).

All values expressed in Webb’s Ltd catalogues (in any format) are in New Zealand Dollars (NZD$). All bids, “hammer price”, “reserves”, “Buyers Premium” and other expressions of value are understood by all parties to be in New Zealand Dollars (NZD$) unless otherwise specified.

2.

Webb’s Auctions as Agent

Except as otherwise stated Webb’s Ltd acts as agent for the Seller.

The contract for the sale of the Webb's

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Before the Sale

1.

Examination of Property Prospective Buyers are strongly advised to examine in person any property in which they are interested before the Auction takes place. Neither Webb’s nor the Seller provides any guarantee in relation to the nature of the property apart from the Limited warranty in the paragraph below.

The property is otherwise sold “AS IS” 2.

Catalogue and Other Descriptions All statements by Webb’s in the catalogue entry for the property or in the condition report, or made orally or in writing elsewhere, are statements of opinion and are not to be relied upon as statements of fact.

Such statements do not constitute a representation, warranty or assumption of liability by Webb’s of any kind. References in the catalogue entry to the condition report to damage or restoration are for guidance only and should be evaluated by personal inspection by the bidder or a knowledgeable representative. The absence of such a reference does not imply that an item is free from defects or restoration, nor does a reference to particular defects imply the absence of any others. Estimates of the selling price should not be relied on as a statement that this is the price at which the item will sell or it’s value for any other purpose. Neither Webb’s nor The Seller is responsible for any errors or omissions in the catalogue or any supplemental material.

Images are measured height by width (sight size). Illustrations are provided only as a guide and should not be relied upon as a true representation of colour or condition. Images are not shown at a standard scale. Mention is rarely made of frames (which may be provided as supplementary images on the website) which do not form part of the lot as described in the printed catalogue.

An item bought “on Extension” must be paid for in full before it will be released to the purchaser or his/ her agreed expertising committee or specialist. Payments received for such items will be held “in trust” for 104

up to 90 days or earlier, if the issue of authenticity has been resolved more quickly. Extensions must be requested before the auction.

Foreign buyers should note that all transactions are in New Zealand Dollars so there may be a small exchange rate risk. The costs associated with acquiring a good opinion or certificate will be carried by the purchaser. If the item turns out to be forged or otherwise incorrectly described, all reasonable costs will be borne by the vendor.

3.

Buyers Responsibility All property is sold “as is” without representation or warranty of any kind by Webb’s or the Seller. Buyers are responsible for satisfying themselves concerning the condition of the property and the matters referred to in the catalogue by requesting a condition report.

No lot to be rejected if, subsequent to the sale, it has been immersed in liquid or treated by any other process unless the Auctioneer’s permission to subject the lot to such immersion or treatment has first been obtained in writing.

4.

At the Sale

1.

Refusal of Admission Webb’s reserves the right at our complete discretion to refuse admission to the auction premises or participation in any auction and to reject any bid.

2.

Registration Before Bidding Any prospective new buyer must complete and sign a registration form and provide photo identification before bidding.

Webb’s may request bank, trade or other financial references to substantiate this registration.

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.

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.

International Registrations All International clients not known to Webb’s will be required to scan

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

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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.

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.

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.

8. Reserves Unless otherwise indicated, all lots are offered subject to a reserve, which is the confidential minimum price below which the Lot will not be sold. The reserve will not exceed the low estimate printed in the catalogue. The auctioneer may open the bidding on any Lot below the reserve by placing a bid on behalf of the Seller. The auctioneer may continue to bid on behalf of seller up to the amount of the reserve, either by placing consecutive bids or by placing bids in response to other bidders.

9.

Auctioneers Discretion The Auctioneer has the right at his/ her absolute and sole discretion to refuse any bid, to advance the bidding in such a manner as he/ she may decide, to withdraw or divide any lot, to combine any two or more lots and, in the case or error or dispute and whether during or after the sale, to determine the successful bidder, to continue the bidding, to cancel the sale or to reoffer and resell the item in dispute. If any dispute arises after the sale, then Webb’s sale record is conclusive.

10.

Successful Bid and Passing of Risk Subject to the auctioneer’s discretion, the highest bidder accepted by the auctioneer will be the buyer and the striking of his hammer marks the acceptance of

the highest bid and the conclusion of a contract for sale between the Seller and the Buyer. Risk and responsibility for the lot (including frames or glass where relevant) passes immediately to the Buyer.

11.

Indicative Bidding Steps, etc.

Webb’s reserves the right to refuse any bid, withdraw any lot from sale, to place a reserve on any lot and to advance the bidding according to the following indicative steps: Increment Dollar Range Amount $20 $0–$500 $50 $500–$1,000 $100 $1,000–$2,000 $200 $2,000–$5,000 $500 $5,000–$10,000 $1,000 $10,000–$20,000 $2,000 $20,000–$50,000 $5,000 $50,000 – $100,000 $10,000 $100,000–$200,000 $20,000 $200,000–$500,000 $50,000 $500,000–$1,000,000 Absentee bids must follow these increments and any bids that don’t follow the steps will be rounded up to the nearest acceptable bid.

5.

After the Sale

1.

Buyers Premium In addition to the hammer price, the buyer agrees to pay to Webb’s the buyer’s premium. The buyer’s premium is 17.5% of the hammer price plus GST. (Goods and Services Tax) where applicable.

2.

Payment and Passing of Title The buyer must pay the full amount due (comprising the hammer price, buyer’s premium and any applicable taxes and GST) not later than 5 days after the auction date.

The buyer will not acquire title to the lot until Webb’s receives full payment in cleared funds, and no goods under any circumstances will be released without confirmation of cleared funds received. This applies even if the buyer wishes to send items overseas.

Payment can be made by direct transfer, cash (not exceeding NZD$10,000, if wishing to pay more than NZD$10,000 then this must be deposited directly into a Bank of New Zealand branch and bank receipt supplied) and EFTPOS (please check the daily limit). Payments can also be made 105

by credit card in person with a 2.2% merchant fee for Visa and Mastercard and 3.3% for American Express. Invoices that are in excess of $5,000 and where the card holder is not present, cannot be charged to a credit card without prior arrangement. Personal cheques are accepted, but funds must be cleared before goods will be released. Bank cheques are subject to five days clearance.

The buyer is responsible for any bank fees and charges applicable for the transfer of funds into Webb’s account.

2.

3.

to cancel the sale.

4.

to resell the property publicly or privately on such terms as we see fit.

5.

to pay the Seller an amount up to the net proceeds payable in respect of the amount bid by the defaulting Buyer. In these circumstances the defaulting Buyer can have no claim upon Webb’s in the event that the item(s) are sold for an amount greater than the original invoiced amount.

3.

Collection of Purchases & Insurance Webb’s is entitled to retain items sold until all amounts due to us have been received in full in good cleared funds. Subject to this, the Buyer shall collect purchased lots within 5 days from the date of the sale unless otherwise agreed in writing between Webb’s and the Buyer.

6.

to set off against any amounts which Webb’s may owe the Buyer in any other transactions, the outstanding amount remaining unpaid by the Buyer.

7.

where several amounts are owed by the Buyer to us, in respect of different transactions, to apply any amount paid to discharge any amount owed in respect of any particular transaction, whether or not the Buyer so directs.

At the fall of the hammer, insurance is the responsibility of the purchaser.

4.

Packing, Handling and Shipping Webb’s will be able to suggest removals companies that the buyer can use but takes no responsibility whatsoever for the actions of any recommended third party.

Webb’s can pack and handle goods purchased at the auction by agreement and a charge will be made for this service. All packing, shipping, insurance, postage & associated charges will be borne by the purchaser.

8.

5.

Permits, Licences and Certificates 6. Under The Protected Objects Act 1975, buyers may be required to obtain a licence for certain categories of items in a sale from the Ministry of Culture & Heritage, PO Box 5364, Wellington.

9.

7.

Remedies for Non-Payment If the Buyer fails to make full payment immediately, Webb’s is entitled to exercise one or more of the following rights or remedies (in addition to asserting any other rights or remedies available under the law) 1.

Webb's

to hold the defaulting Buyer liable for the total amount due and to commence legal proceedings for its recovery along with interest, legal fees and costs to the fullest extent permitted under applicable law.

to charge interest at such a rate as we shall reasonably decide.

August

to reject at any future auction any bids made by or on behalf of the Buyer or to obtain a deposit from the Buyer prior to accepting any bids. to exercise all the rights and remedies of a person holding security over any property in our possession owned by the Buyer whether by way of pledge, security interest or in any other way, to the fullest extent permitted by the law of the place where such property is located. The Buyer will be deemed to have been granted such security to us and we may retain such property as collateral security for said Buyer’s obligations to us.

10.

to take such other action as Webb’s deem necessary or appropriate.

If we do sell the property under paragraph (4), then the defaulting Buyer shall be liable for payment of any deficiency between the total amount originally due to us and the price obtained upon reselling as well as for all costs, expenses, damages, legal fees and commissions and premiums of whatever kinds associated with both sales or otherwise arising from the default.

If we pay any amount to the Seller under paragraph (5) the Buyer acknowledges that Webb’s shall have all of the rights of the Seller, however arising, to pursue the Buyer for such amount.

8.

Failure to Collect Purchases Where purchases are not collected within 5 days from the sale date, whether or not payment has been made, we shall be permitted to remove the property to a warehouse at the buyer’s expense, and only release the items after payment in full has been made of removal, storage handling, insurance and any other costs incurred, together with payment of all other amounts due to us.

6.

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 nonrefundable. 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

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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.

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.

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.

Overseas buyers and buyers nonresident in New Zealand will not be charged GST on both hammer price and premiums under the following conditions: 1.

The items are exported through a Webb’s approved freight company including New Zealand Post

2.

The items are exported within 60 days of the date of the sale

9. Copyright The copyright in all images, illustrations and written material produced by Webb’s relating to a lot including the contents of this catalogue, is and shall remain the property at all times of Webb’s and shall not be used by the Buyer, nor by anyone else without our prior written consent. Webb’s and the Seller make no representation or warranty that the Buyer of a property will acquire any copyright or other reproduction rights in it.

10.

The invoice supplied by Webb’s for purchases will be regarded as a Tax invoice for GST purposes.]

Law and Jurisdiction

These terms and conditions and any matters concerned with the foregoing fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New Zealand, unless otherwise stated.

11.

Pre-Sale Estimates

Webb’s publishes with each catalogue our opinion as to the estimated price range for each lot.

These estimates are approximate prices only and are not intended to be definitive. They are prepared well in advance of the sale and may be subject to revision. Interested parties should contact Webb’s prior to auction for updated pre-sale estimates and starting prices.

12.

Sale Results

Webb’s will provide auction results, which will be available as soon as possible after the sale. Results will include buyer’s premium. These results will be posted at www. webbs.co.nz.

13.

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Index of Artists

B

P

Blythe, Andrew Brown, Nigel

27 99

C 37 64, 66 36 52 94 98

D 96 43-45

F Fomison, Tony Frizzell, Dick

39-41 82, 95

R

Cairns, Mitch Clairmont, Philip Corkery, Stella Cornish, Bronwynne Cotton, Shane Cullen, Paul

Denny, Simon Driver, Don

Pardington, Fiona Pick, SĂŠraphine

Reynolds, John S Schaefer, Alex Schoon, Theo Scott, Ian Smither, Michael Sydow, Carl

G Garcia-Alvarez, Alberto 33-35 Gimblett, Max 87-89

95 71-73 67-69 74, 75-77 42

T Trusttum, Philip

57-60, 64 98

26, 96

99

W Walker, Jake Walters, Gordon Whiting, Cliff Williams, Mervyn

37 49-51 56 90

H Hammond, Bill 83-85 Hanly, Pat 94 Harris, Jeffrey 101 Heaphy, Chris 100 Hofmann, Frank 38 Hotere, Ralph 28, 29, 30, 31,

46, 47, 70 I Intra, Giovanni

53-55

K Lee, Jae Hoon Leek, Saskia Lewer, Richard

38 27 26

M Maddox, Allen Martin, Leigh Maughan, Karl Maw, Liz McCahon, Colin McIntyre, Mary Millar, Judy Mrkusich, Milan

32, 97 90 86 67 61-63, 78-81 65 36 48, 91-93

O O'Connor, Dennis

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This Catalogue is Environmentally Friendly At Webb’s we are committed to finding the most sustainable printing options available in our industry.

FSC® is an independent, non-governmental, not for profit organisation established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests.

Our Cover is printed on an environmentally responsible paper produced using ECF (Element Chlorine Free) and manufactured under the strict ISO14001 & EMAS Environmental Management Systems. It is economical and versatile and has wood fibre from sustainable forest.

Our Text is printed on an extremely white, high quality range of coated papers & boards, with excellent bulk and an outstanding smooth, even surface that delivers exceptionally vibrant print production. Produced using ECF (Element Chlorine Free) and manufactured under the strict ISO14001 & EMAS Environmental Management Systems.

The catalogue was printed by Crucial Colour an FSC® certified company

33a Normanby Rd Mount Eden Auckland, 1024 New Zealand webbs.co.nz