The K’ Road Collection

I can still recall the very first time I stepped onto Karangahape Road. I must have been 14 or 15, and, for reasons that now escape me, my mother had brought me there on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I was immediately captivated by the sights around me: vintage stores selling cowboy boots, edgy cafés with DJs spinning vinyl, and galleries with almost empty walls. I could only look through the windows that day, since it was Sunday and all the galleries were closed, but what I saw was enough to leave me entranced.

As soon as I could, I started saving up for a set of turntables. I spent the next school holidays working at Bunnings Warehouse, handing out balloons at the front entrance, until I had enough money to buy the hardware. Then I began taking regular bus rides into the city to buy records and to explore the art scene. I never became particularly good at DJing, but I didn’t mind — it was the trips into the city that I truly relished.

One of the first exhibitions I remember visiting was Love in the Shadows at Artspace in 2002. The exhibition featured a collection of Michael Harrison’s paintings, curated by Robert Heald. Today, Robert is a leading dealer of contemporary New Zealand art, with his own eponymous gallery in Wellington. Walking into that room filled with small, exquisitely painted images, each with a precisely controlled colour palette, I knew that I had much to learn. Even though each painting was only around the size of an A4 sheet of paper, they held their own in that vast, stark ‘white cube’ of a room. Years later, I would go on to buy one of the works from that exhibition.

As the years went by, I attended countless exhibitions, some of which I revisited multiple times. After finishing high school, I enrolled at Elam School of Fine Arts, which was conveniently located just a stone’s throw away from K’ Road. Eventually, I moved into a flat underneath St Kevin’s Arcade, with a bedroom that had no windows and a view from the balcony that was breathtaking — a panoramic vista of the city from the top of Myers Park. But the most important thing about that apartment was its proximity to everything related to art. Although I had to move to one of K’ Road’s neighbouring suburbs occasionally, I never really left. To this day, I still call it home.

My memories of the exhibitions and openings I attended during my art school years remain vivid. Perhaps my recollections are tinged with youthful enthusiasm, but I can say with certainty that there were some truly great shows. One that particularly stands out was Martin Creed’s 2006 exhibition at Michael Lett. The artist had filled the entire gallery with pink balloons, which spilled out into the street. It was a bright summer day, and many people were wearing white jeans (which was the fashion at the time), so the scene was especially beautiful.

Michael Lett’s exhibitions of Michael Parekōwhai’s work also left a significant impression on me. Shows like Driving Mr Albert and The Moment of Cubism kept me pondering for weeks. I always felt that Michael’s space towards the west end of K’ Road was the perfect format for a gallery. It had a small window at the front, ideal for an installation, sculpture, or picture on the wall, followed by a long rectangular gallery, and an office at the back, which could accommodate something small. It made for perfectly crafted shows. They were meteorites of inspiration that lit up the grey, cloudy city.

There was always a lot of anticipation and artschool chatter leading up to the opening of a ‘big show’, but none more so than Peter Robinson’s Ack at Artspace in 2006. It was a fantastic exhibition, and I remember the opening being packed, with the beers running out quickly. The entire gallery was occupied by a single sculpture carved out of polystyrene. The artist didn’t paint it or cover it in fiberglass or anything else — it was simply raw polystyrene, the complete opposite of Parekōwhai’s work. It blew my mind. I was also impressed by the fact that Peter Robinson wore a suit to the opening. The dark suit and the white sculpture looked great together and signalled that it was indeed a ‘big show’.

I was still living on K’ Road when I started working at Webb’s, a job that gave me an opportunity to meet and converse with dealers, artists and others in the industry. As I visited galleries on Saturdays, I began having longer conversations with people who shared my passion for art. This was an entirely new experience for me, as I had always been an ardent follower of the art scene but never had an opportunity to engage in meaningful conversations with those who were involved in it. Each gallery on the K’ Road strip was like a microcosm, with its own unique aims, ideals and spiritual truths. Every art dealer was a figurehead, and I remember my first conversation with Ivan Anthony. I was floored by his enlightened comments about Colin McCahon. He said something along the lines of how, to truly understand the cultural context that created McCahon, you need to transport yourself back to the 1940s or 50s and put a paintbrush in the hands of a New Zealand farmer. It was one of the most profound things I had ever heard said about the artist.

At the age of 28, I decided to branch out with a partner and open an auction house and gallery on K’ Road, which we named Bowerbank Ninow. We rented a shopfront in a historical building on the corner of K’ Road and East Street, and our first auction was in November 2015. I was hard on myself, but I managed to put together a good catalogue, with works that would be highly sought after by auction houses today, such as a big Colin McCahon Muriwai painting from 1972, a classic 1970s Gretchen Albrecht with overlapping bands of colour, a big Shane Cotton diptych from 2005 with stencilled tūī and colourful target symbols, and a little green Bill Hammond from 1999.

On the day of the auction, I learned an important lesson — that the people who support you in the early stages of a business are the people who truly care about you in this world. The collectors who consigned this suite of artworks, which are presented over the following pages, bought Lot 1 from Bowerbank Ninow’s very first auction. They were a longtime supporters of the galleries on K’ Road, and I had met them years before because they also lived in the area. It was rumoured that they had bought out entire exhibitions, and their home and offices were covered in pictures.

They never sold any of their artworks, they just bought. So I was surprised when they approached me and said they were ready to sell a portion of their collection. We decided to present the works together as a suite, as there was a central, binding quality that joined them all together, something harder to pinpoint than a historical or thematic connection. It took a few drinks before we were able to articulate what it was, but the collector hit the nail on the head when they said, “It’s just K’ Road and you’re only passing through.”

K’ Road is a place of dichotomy, where opposing forces coexist. It's an emerging suburb, housing the city’s most exciting independent restaurants and many of the country’s leading dealer galleries. While artists with studios on K’ Road are becoming a dying breed, it remains the capital of the art market. Not only are there galleries selling new artists’ works at entry-level prices, but there are also significant secondary-market deals happening here. During my time, I did many behindthe-door deals of important works by the likes of Hōtere and McCahon, among others. One day, as we sat in the fantastic K’ Road eatery Alta, I was describing the dichotomy of the neighbourhood to friends. I remarked on how interesting it was that, for the most part, all these different worlds managed to coexist harmoniously, side by side. That’s the thing about K’ Road — it’s full of possibility, both positive and nefarious, and it has its own character that isn’t changing for anyone.

1200 × 800mm

EST $12,000 $18,000

PROVENANCE

The K' Road Collection, Auckland; Acquired from Ivan Anthony, Auckland.

EXHIBITIONS

Password, Ivan Anthony, Auckland, 2006.

81 Tony de Lautour, Body Corp 8

2000 oil on canvas signed, dated and title inscribed 1500 × 900mm

EST $15,000 $25,000

PROVENANCE

The K' Road Collection, Auckland; Acquired from Ivan Anthony, Auckland.

EST

PROVENANCE

EST

PROVENANCE

In the history of New Zealand art, Julian Dashper (1960–2009) stands out as unique. He is well known for his distinctive blending of international conceptualism with tongue-in-cheek references to local artists. This combination proved compelling, and Dashper became one of the nation’s most critically acclaimed conceptual artists. His work remains sharp and incisive to this day – 14 years after his death –and it is held in public and private collections, including Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, The Chartwell Collection and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

Dashper studied at Elam School of Fine Arts in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He subsequently created paintings that engaged in a playful reimagining of abstract expressionism, employing the expressive brushstrokes but eschewing the self-seriousness of the movement. He would give such pieces quirky titles, after pop songs or locations. In the early 1990s, Dashper moved further toward conceptual art by presenting a collection of drum kits bearing the names of notable New Zealand artists, such as ‘The Colin McCahon’s’. These works wryly presented artists as rock stars. Some iterations moved further into conceptualism, without referring to any particular artist. This example is one such work. The wall-mounted piece is fashioned from a drumhead, presenting a pared-back version of one of Dashper’s most recognisable artistic themes.

In an obituary essay, writer and curator Robert Leonard states, “Dashper was often rebuked for self-promotion. He may have been the first New Zealand artist to print his own business cards, and he pumped out publications for every second show, but his work was anti-heroic. It embodied a critique of the romantic-heroic ideal of the artist, typified in New Zealand by ‘visionaries’ such as McCahon, Philip Clairmont, and Tony Fomison. But, if Dashper presented the artist, by contrast, as part of a system, he was deeply romantic about that system and its trappings — he loved the life.”1 As Leonard captures, Dashper was a unique artist who left an important and insightful legacy.

85 Ronnie van Hout, Hand with Baseball

2017 acrylic and polyurethane on Fibreglass; aluminium rod

400 × 240 × 130mm (widest points)

EST $16,000 $24,000

PROVENANCE

The K' Road Collection, Auckland; Acquired from Ivan Anthony, Auckland.

EXHIBITIONS

A Series of Bad Decisions, Ivan Anthony, Auckland, 2017.

86 Shane

2011

EST $20,000 $30,000

PROVENANCE The

EXHIBITIONS Shane

Michael Parekōwhai’s (Ngā Ariki Kaiputahi, Ngāti Whakarongo) installation piece Kapa Haka was commissioned for the exhibition Paradise Now? Contemporary Art from the Pacific (2004), held at the Asia Society Museum in New York. The 15 near-identical, lifesized, glossy fibreglass figures, posed as security guards, were originally positioned outside the museum as though guarding the precious treasures within. Measuring around six feet tall and solid in stature, each of the guards stood with legs apart and arms staunchly crossed, collectively packing a powerful punch.

This work, Kapa Haka (2014), is smaller in stature and is part of another edition of 15. The figure’s head is slightly tilted up, and even at 42 cm high and standing alone the work commands presence, strength and stature. In a similar manner to Parekōwhai’s earlier work Poorman, Beggarman, Thief (1996), which was modelled on his father, Kapa Haka is modelled on the artist’s brother, Paratene, working as a security guard.

The use of repetition in Kapa Haka draws attention to issues of identity, since Parekōwhai’s mannequins are afforded scant individuality. The various iterations of Kapa Haka are only differentiated by small features. By crafting a crowd of identical sameness, Parekōwhai invites the spectator to imagine the full spectrum of difference and individuality that quietly thrives under the pretence of an apparently indistinguishable exterior.

87 Michael Parekowhai, Kapa Haka 2014 automotive paint on Fibreglass, edition of 15 420 × 125 × 100mm (widest points)

EST $35,000 $55,000

PROVENANCE The K' Road Collection, Auckland; Acquired from Michael Lett, Auckland.