Works of Art, 9 August 2021

0633 Auction Catalogue August 2021 Contemporary, Modern and Historical Art

Tony Fomison Perriot/Dracula 1975-76

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Foreword

Right now, New Zealand art is enjoying a golden moment. Art lovers and investors alike have embraced Aotearoa’s finest artists like never before.

Auction results have been exciting to say the least, with stellar results at every turn. As much as this is encouraging, it comes as no surprise to Webb’s.

We have been in the business of championing quality New Zealand art and the unique investment potential it offers for decades. It is, no less, our core business – just as it was for our illustrious founder, Peter Webb, when he first started this enterprise in 1976.

Even from his earliest days in running a gallery, predating the auction house by several decades, Webb was a dedicated advocate of New Zealand’s foremost modernist, Colin McCahon. He continued to promote and build the market for the artist throughout his career. In keeping with this tradition, it is a special moment to bring McCahon’s Jump E4 to market. This is the first time this work has been available since it was acquired by notable gallerist Judith Gifford in 1975.

The backstory to this acquisition is fascinating. In 1974, Barry Lett Galleries presented the work in McCahon’s exhibition, Jumps and Comets: Related Events in My World. At the time, Barry Lett Galleries was under the directorship of Rodney Kirk-Smith and Kim Wright. In 1975, Barbara Brooke and Judith Gifford established Brooke/Gifford Gallery in Christchurch. Kirk-Smith and Wright sent them a consignment of important artworks as a gesture of support for their first show, including Jump E4. It caught the attention of Gifford on account of its strength as a painting. Gifford purchased the work, with Brooke encouraging the acquisition, referring to the painting as ‘standout’. It has remained in her collection until now – an enduring testament to the quality of the work.

This year, Webb’s has seen fantastic results for works by Séraphine Pick. As one of Aotearoa’s foremost painters, Pick has produced outstanding artwork for decades. In keeping with this, we are presenting a selection of three works by the artist for auction. These works span from 1999 to 2015, offering a fascinating look into the development of Pick’s painting.

Michael Smither’s 2004 painting Three Rock Pools and Lava Flow is another catalogue highlight. This work is from a golden period of the artists output that has become most sought after by collectors. It is one of the best examples out there and looks set for auction day glory.

We are privileged to have a suite of works by Tony Fomison represented in our catalogue. These works are from the estate of the artists’ mother. As such, they are excellent works that collectors will covet. Among the many discoveries of 2020 was that Tony Fomison’s star is continuing to rise. The late painter has long been recognised by institutions, curators and keen-eyed collectors as one of the greats. The broader market, however, has tended to undervalue his work. That has changed. This Works of Art auction presents compelling examples of Fomison’s finest work that will further demonstrate the market esteem his paintings now enjoy.

Charles Ninow Head of Art

Ngā mihi nui, Charles Ninow Webb's

August

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Auction Highlights

1

2

Notable recent highlights include works that achieved record prices.

1 Tony Fomison

Garden of Eden Aotearoa 1980-81, oil on jute on board, 855 × 1375mm est $300,000 — $600,000 price realised $516,537

3

2 Colin McCahon

North Otago 1969, ink on paper, 300mm × 360mm est $45,000 — $65,000 price realised $93,096

4

3 Louise Henderson

untitled 1972, watercolour on paper, 620mm × 470mm est $10,000 — $15,000 price realised $30,630 4 Séraphine Pick

High Rise 1995, oil on canvas, 2000 × 700mm est $50,000 — $70,000 price realised $90,475 5 Michael Smither

Manifesto Café 2001, oil on board, 790 × 1200mm est $75,000 — $125,000 price realised $134,540 Webb's

5

2021

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Table of Contents

Collector in Conversation

20

Auction 21 List of Essays

22

Programme 23 Plates 25

Webb's

Terms & Conditions

139

Index of Artists

142

Absentee Bid Form

143

2021

19

Collector in Conversation

Toss Grumley Business Advisor, Auckland

After visiting galleries as a child and starting his collection with Muka prints, Toss has accumulated a collection of contemporary art by both emerging and established New Zealand artists.

What do you do?

I work full-time as a business advisor at Wolf & Fox. I also sit on the boards of Emma Lewisham Skincare, Nook Homes, Powerhouse Digital, Oxen Accounting and also Youth Arts New Zealand.

How did you start collecting?

My mum used to take me around Auckland galleries as a child, so I was exposed to lots of great art at an early age.

I was also lucky enough to get taken to Muka most years to pick a work. I've accumulated ever since then.

What’s a work you feel connected to?

I have a John Pule work hanging in my dining room that I adore. It was the first bigger work I purchased and I agonised over it for a while. It’s got such a strong presence and then as you move closer it’s got these amazing details in ink, I’m constantly finding something new in it.

Image top: Stephen Bambury, Buddha's Foot Prints, 2006, chemical action, silver leaf and aluminum on MDF. Purchased from Webb's Works of Art Auction, November 2020.

Image below: John Pule, Begin Here, 2009, varnish, oils, enamels, ink and resin on canvas.

Webb's

August

Why is art important to you?

It makes me feel good! Art helps to make me think creatively, feel calm and also connects me to my space.

20

Works of Art

Auction Monday 9 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

Wellington Enquiries Carey Young Specialist, Art carey@webbs.co.nz +64 21 368 348

David Maskill Consultant, Art david@webbs.co.nz +64 27 256 0900

Condition Reports Tasha Jenkins Specialist, Art tasha@webbs.co.nz +64 22 595 5610 Webb's

2021

Connie Dwyer Administrator, Art art@webbs.co.nz +64 9 529 5600 21

List of Essays Leo Bensemann Untitled Portrait, c1934

By Peter Simpson Julian Dashper Visual Esparanto

By Victoria Munn

44

Matt Hunt Sandpits of Eternity

By Julian Mckinnon

110-112

47-50

Charles Frederick Goldie Head of a Nubian

By Neil Talbot

116

54

Banksy The Banksy Phenomenon

By JJ Harper

118-120

58

Buck Nin The Earth, the Sky, and the People

By Julian Mckinnon

123-126

Ed Ruscha Rusty Signs - Dead End 1

By Ad Schierning

62

Jaqueline Fahey “If you have nothing to say, don’t paint!”

By Elizabeth Newton-Jackson 132-134

Ian Scott Lattice No. 92

By Connie Dwyer

64

Rita Angus Portrait of Robert Erwin

By Victoria Munn Shane Cotton Veil

By Andrew Paul Wood

Séraphine Pick Are They Searching For The Same Things?

By Neil Talbot 67-70 Milan Mrkusich Dark Element

By Julian Mckinnon

72

Michael Smither Three Rock Pools and Lava Flow

By David Maskill

74

Pat Hanly Torso V, 1977

By David Maskill

78

Tony Fomison G’day Mum, Here’s Your Annual Picture

By Megan Shaw 81-84 Colin McCahon Jump E4

By Neil Talbot Colin McCahon Caltex

By Christie Simpson

91-94

96

Colin McCahon The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version)

By Kelly Carmichael 98-99 Louise Henderson A Greater Lyricism

By Victoria Munn Don Binney Lake Omapere

By Elizabeth Newton-Jackson

Webb's

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101-104

108

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Programme

Christchurch Preview Thursday 29 July

6pm - 8pm

Christchurch Viewing Friday 30 July

10am - 6pm

Saturday 31 July

10am - 4pm

Auckland Preview Tuesday 3 August

6pm - 8pm

Auckland Viewing

Christchurch Viewing Warren & Mahoney 1962 Gallery Space, 65 Cambridge Terrace, Christchurch Central, Christchurch 8013 Webb's 33a Normanby Rd Mount Eden Auckland 1024 New Zealand Webb's

Wednesday 4 August

10am - 5pm

Thursday 5 August

10am - 5pm

Friday 6 August

10am - 5pm

Saturday 7 August

10am - 4pm

Sunday 8 August

10am - 4pm

Monday 9 August

10am - 1pm

Auction Monday 9 August 2021

6.30pm 23

Contemporary Fine Art Framers Specialising in handling valuable & rare Artworks 82 Newton Road, Eden Terrace 1010 (Next to the Big Golf Warehouse)

sales@amfm.co.nz - 09 309 2020

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

Condition Reports Tasha Jenkins Specialist, Art tasha@webbs.co.nz +64 22 595 5610 Webb's

2021

Connie Dwyer Administrator, Art art@webbs.co.nz +64 9 529 5600 25

1 Gordon Walters

Kapiti 1984 screenprint on paper, 58/75 signed Gordon Walters, dated 84 and inscribed 'Kapiti' 58/75 in graphite lower edge 590 × 470mm

2 Pat Hanly

Adventurer 1978 hand coloured monoprint on paper signed Hanly, dated 78, and inscribed ADVENTURER in graphite lower edge 465 × 410mm

est $12,000 — $18,000

est $2,000 — $3,000

Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from New Zealand Traditional & Contemporary Paintings & Watercolours, lot 11, International Art Centre, Auckland, 31 March 1992.

Webb's

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3 Bill Hammond

untitled 2006 screenprint on paper, edition of 100 signed W D Hammond and dated 2006 in graphite lower right 590 × 430mm

4 Gordon Walters

Genealogy III

1971. printed 2020 screenprint on paper, 57/100 indented with Walters Estate blindstamp 1055 × 805mm est $7,000 — $10,000

est $8,000 — $10,000 Provenance Private collection.

Provenance Private collection.

Webb's

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5 Peter Stichbury

Untitled 2015 coloured pencil on paper signed PETER STICHBURY, dated 2015, and inscribed 'UNTITLED' in graphite lower edge 420 × 350mm

6 Damien Hirst

For the Love of God, Believe 2007 screenprint on paper, 208/1700 signed D Hirst and inscribed 208/1700 in graphite lower edge 325 × 240mm

est $6,000 — $9,000

est $6,000 — $9,000

Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

Webb's

August

28

7 Les Cleveland

Day of the Dead, Santa Fe 1996 gelatin silver print signed Les Cleveland in graphite verso 230 × 190mm

8 Les Cleveland

Catholic Church at Denniston 1957 gelatin silver print signed Les Cleveland in graphite verso 205 × 175mm

est $1,500 — $3,000

est $1,500 — $3,000

Provenance Private collection, Christchurch. Acquired directly from the artist, Wellington, c2000.

Provenance Private collection, Christchurch. Acquired directly from the artist, Wellington, c2000.

Webb's

2021

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9 Philip Clairmont

Corner of the Interior (Night) 1970 ink and crayon on paper signed P. Clairmont and inscribed 'Corner of the Interior (Night)' in graphite lower edge 950 × 650mm est $8,000 — $16,000 Provenance Private collection, Rotorua. Acquired from New Zealand and International Fine Art, Lot 79, Dunbar Sloane, Wellington, 25 August 2004.

Webb's

August

10 Philip Clairmont

Self Portrait acrylic on paper 610 × 570mm est $5,000 — $8,000 Provenance Private collection, Rotorua. Acquired from Important Paintings and Contemporary Art, Lot 24, Webb's, Auckland, 13 August 2013.

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11 Philip Clairmont

Chair & Corner of Cupboard 1977 acrylic and ink on paper signed P Cl, dated 77 and inscribed Chair & corner of Cupboard in ink lower edge 590 × 450mm

12 Philip Clairmont

Fireplace acrylic and ink on paper 545 × 355mm est $5,000 — $10,000 Provenance Private collection, Rotorua. Acquired from John Gower Gallery, Auckland, 1989.

est $6,000 — $9,000 Provenance Private collection, Rotorua. Acquired from John Gower Gallery, Auckland, 1989.

Webb's

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13 Allen Maddox

untitled 1996 oil on canvas signed AM, dated 11.96 and inscribed for GRETCHEN Albrecht with regards in brushpoint verso 455 × 455mm est $9,000 — $12,000 Provenance Private collection, Christchurch.

Webb's

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14 Michael Smither

Mountain with Clouds

and Hills in Foreground 1975 oil on board signed MD Smither, dated 1975 and inscribed oil/sketch/Mountain with clouds + hills in foreground in ink verso 300 × 345mm est $20,000 — $30,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Fine Art, Lot 75, Dunbar Sloane, Wellington, 29 April, 2009.

Webb's

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15 Don Binney

The Rocks at Whatipu 1985 coloured pencil on paper signed DHB and dated '85 in coloured pencil lower left 255 × 380mm est $10,000 — $15,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Important, Early and Rare, Lot 4, International Art Centre, 29 March 2021.

Webb's

August

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16 Nigel Brown

An Ark for Arama No. 5 1979 oil on board signed NIGEL BROWN, dated 1979. and inscribed AN ARK FOR ARAMA NO. 5 in brushpoint lower edge 905 × 1186mm est $15,000 — $25,000 Provenance Private collection, Rotorua.

Webb's

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17 Fiona Pardington

untitled 1996 gelatin silver print 1170 × 1170mm

18 Yvonne Todd

Turquoise 2019 c-type print, 1/3 signed Yvonne Todd, dated 2019 and inscribed 'Turquoise'/1/3 in ink verso 1500 × 1140mm

est $25,000 — $35,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired privately, Auckland, c1990s.

est $14,000 — $20,000 Provenance Private collection.

Exhibitions Darryn George & Yvonne Todd, McLeavey Gallery, Auckland Art Fair, Auckland, 1 - 5 May 2019.

Webb's

August

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19 Liz Maw

Aura; Lady Kathryn and I; Deepa

2002; 2011; 2004 giclee print on paper, 10/10 signed E Maw, dated 2002, inscribed 'Aura'/ 10/10 in graphite lower edge; signed E Maw, dated 2011, and inscribed 'Lady Kathryn and I/ 10/10 in graphite lower edge; signed E Maw, dated 2004, and inscribed 'Deepa' / 10/10 in graphite lower edge 730 × 600mm; 810 × 600mm; 715 × 600mm est $6,000 — $8,000 Provenance Private collection.

Webb's

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20 Kushana Bush

Mother & Sons 2009 gouache and graphite on paper 495 × 705mm

21 Kushana Bush

Pat-a-Cake Assembly 2010 gouache and graphite on paper signed Kushana Bush, dated 2010 June and inscribed 'Pat-a-Cake Assembly'/Gouache and Pencil on paper in graphite verso 770 × 550mm

est $4,000 — $7,000 Provenance Private collection, Rotorua. Acquired from OCULA Auckland, 2012.

est $5,000 — $8,000 est $5,000 — $10,000 Provenance Private collection, Rotorua.

Exhibitions Slump Series, Center of Contemporary Art, Christchurch, July 2007.

Webb's

22 Kushana Bush

Bedroom Scene with Dog 2012 gouache and graphite on paper signed Kushana Bush, dated 2012, and inscribed 'Bedroom Scene with Dog'/Gouache and Pencil on Paper in graphite on verso 755 × 565mm

August

Provenance Private collection, Rotorua. Acquired from Ivan Anthony, Auckland, 2012.

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23 John Reynolds

FrenchBayDarkly #2 2017 oilpaint marker on acrylic on canvas signed REYNOLDS, dated APRIL 2017, and inscribed 152 × 110cm./FrenchBayDarkly #2/oil paint marker on acrylic on canvas in ink verso 1520 × 1100mm

24 John Reynolds

FrenchBayDarkly #3 2017 oilpaint marker on acrylic on canvas signed REYNOLDS, dated APRIL 2017, and inscribed 152 × 110cm/oil paint marker on acrylic on canvas./ FrenchBayDarkly #3 in ink verso 1521 × 1100mm

est $12,000 — $18,000

est $12,000 — $18,000

Provenance Private collection. Acquired from Starkwhite, Auckland, 2017.

Provenance Private collection. Acquired from Starkwhite, Auckland, 2017.

Exhibitions John Reynolds: FrenchBayDarkly, Starkwhite, Auckland, 3 May - 10 June 2017.

Exhibitions John Reynolds: FrenchBayDarkly, Starkwhite, Auckland, 3 May - 10 June 2017.

Webb's

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25 Liz Maw

Why Must I Be the Thief 2006 oil on board signed LIZ MAW, dated 2006 and inscribed WHY MUST I BE THE THIEF in brushpoint lower right 455 × 635mm est $16,000 — $26,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from International Art Centre, Auckland, 27 May 2015; Private collection, Wellington. Acquired from Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington.

Webb's

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26 Leo Bensemann

Ex Libris Charles Spear c1934 ink on paper 190 × 135mm

27 Leo Bensemann

Will the Bird Perish, Shall the Bird Rise? c1934 ink on paper inscribed CAG in ink upper right corner; inscribed "Will the bird perish,/Shall the bird rise?" in ink lower edge 310 × 205mm

est $3,000 — $6,000 Provenance Private collection, Canterbury. Gifted by bequest, c2003; Collection of Lawrence Baigent and Robert Erwin, Christchurch.

Webb's

August

est $3,000 — $6,000 Provenance Private collection, Canterbury. Gifted by bequest, c2003; Collection of Lawrence Baigent and Robert Erwin, Christchurch.

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28 Leo Bensemann

Leo von Riensfedht c1934 graphite on paper inscribed Leo von Riensfedht in graphite lower left edge 285 × 200mm

29 Leo Bensemann

J F G Miller c1934 ink and graphite on paper inscribed 'J.F.G Miller' in graphite lower edge 280 × 220mm est $3,000 — $6,000

est $3,000 — $6,000 Provenance Private collection, Canterbury. Gifted by bequest, c2003; Collection of Lawrence Baigent and Robert Erwin, Christchurch.

Webb's

2021

Provenance Private collection, Canterbury. Gifted by bequest, c2003; Collection of Lawrence Baigent and Robert Erwin, Christchurch.

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Leo Bensemann – Untitled (Portrait) Essay by PETER SIMPSON

Someone once remarked of Bensemann that whatever he took up he was ‘expert from the word go’. Such is the case with this portrait.

If it is indeed his first ever portrait it is astonishingly accomplished.

Within the Bensemann family this painting was thought to be Leo Bensemann’s very first portrait in oils. Lawrence Baigent, Bensemann’s close friend who owned the picture, also thought so. Bensemann seldom dated his early pictures so it is impossible to fully verify this story, but assuming it is true the date of the painting is probably 1934. In Portraits Masks & Fantasy Figures (2005), by Caroline Otto, Bensemann’s daughter, the earliest dated portraits are c. 1934 and 1935, so presumably the untitled portrait is contemporary with the earlier of these, hence 1934 as an educated guess.

Prior to this Bensemann was primarily a graphic artist. He showed talent in drawing from a young age, winning a prize at Nelson College. When he moved to Christchurch around 1931 (aged 19) he attempted to establish himself first as a caricaturist, contributing pen and ink drawings to various publications such as The New Zealand Artists Annual. Another early interest was ink drawings for bookplates, in those days a popular medium for graphic artists. He also began producing narrative illustrations early on, such as his frontispiece for the Caxton Press publication, Another Argo (1934), which culminated in the masterpiece of his graphic art, Fantastica: Thirteen Drawings (Caxton, 1937). Another mode at which he excelled early in his career was watercolour landscapes strongly influenced

by Japanese woodcuts by Hiroshige and Hokusai to the extent that he even signed his name vertically in imitation of Japanese practice. Writing to Pat Lawlor, a collector of bookplates, in 1934 Bensemann signalled a new development: ‘The other branches of my art, as it were, gently but firmly progress. I hope to have some presentable paintings to exhibit as soon as possible’ ¹ And in a letter two years later in 1936, he told Lawlor: ‘nowadays I spend far more time painting than I ever did with black and white…This is not because my interest has waned at all but simply that painting when things are sorted out is my medium’ ².

The transition to painting had taken place.

Webb's

August

Within a year or two Bensemann had gravitated to painting portraits of family members and friends such as Rita Angus, Lawrence Baigent and Denis Glover, as well as many self-portraits; but there was a transitional phase, around 193437, when many of his portraits depicted imaginary figures or persons out of history or literature. Almost certainly the present portrait depicts not a ‘real’ person but someone imaginary, such as, for example, a character from a Jacobean tragedy such as Tourneur’s The Revenger’s Tragedy. This is suggested by the necklace worn by the dark and somewhat troubled-looking figure which is more like costume jewellery for a character in an historical play than everyday wear for a young man in the 1930s.

The best known of Bensemann’s ‘imaginary’ portraits are St. Francis and St. Olaf, c. 1937. After 1937 he turned exclusively to portraits of contemporaries.

Someone once remarked of Bensemann that whatever he took up he was ‘expert from the word go’. Such is the case with this portrait. If it is indeed his first ever portrait it is astonishingly accomplished. The face emerges from the dark background and clothing with extraordinary realism, the subject’s features – eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks and chin firmly and convincingly delineated. It was a brilliant beginning and a strong sign of things to come.

1 Peter Simpson, Fantastica: The World of Leo Bensemann, AUP, 2011, p. 20.

2 Ibid.

44

30 Leo Bensemann

Untitled (Portrait) c1934 oil on canvas 270 × 220mm est $25,000 — $35,000 Provenance Private collection, Wellington. Gifted by bequest, c2003. Collection of Lawrence Baigent and Robert Erwin, Wellington.

Webb's

2021

Literature Caroline Otto, Leo Bensemann: Portraits, masks and fantasy figures (Nelson: Nikau Press, 2005), 13.

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31 Colin McCahon

Jets Flying South Over Oaia Island 1973 charcoal on paper signed Colin McCahon and dated Easter '73 and inscribed Jets flying South over Oaia Island in charcoal and graphite upper edge 222 × 294mm est $35,000 — $45,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired privately; Collection of Jim and Mary Barr, Wellington.

Gifted by the Lachmann's; Collection of Hans and Martha Lachmann, Wellington.

Webb's

August

Exhibitions 2007 Reboot: The Jim Barr and Mary Barr Collection, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Christchurch, 17 March - 1 July 2007.

Literature Peter Simpson, Colin McCahon: Is This the Promised Land? Vol. 2 1960-1987 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2020), 204. (cited only).

Notes Colin McCahon Online Catalogue (www.mccahon.co.nz) number: CM000972 46

Julian Dashper – Visual Esparanto Essay by VICTORIA MUNN

Peter McLeavey pictured with Julian Dashper's Anglican Church at Matauri Bay (Lot 32).

Dashper embraced — even advertised — connections between his work and pop culture, and likened the language of abstraction to that of pop music, similar in their generic nature. Instead of separating abstraction from the everyday world, then, Dashper amalgamates the two, simultaneously fusing popular and high cultures.

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Te Tou o Taki - Samuel Marsden Memorial Church. Matauri Bay is the place where missionary Samuel Marsden first landed in New Zealand in 1814.

Having described it as ‘visual Esperanto’, Dashper’s artistic output embraces abstraction from his standpoint as a New Zealand artist.1 Dashper plays an important role in New Zealand’s art history, brokering a move from the mid-century regionalist artists keen to establish a distinctive artistic identity for New Zealand, to an outward perspective, and a new generation of artists engaging with global discourses and embracing a variety of media. Rather than feeling suppressed or limited

by New Zealand’s remote place in the south Pacific, Dashper embraced this isolation in his practice, in which the topic of internationalism consistently appears, and the international language of abstraction is spoken fluently.

In his c1985 oil painting (Lot 32) and 1986 watercolour (Lot 34), both entitled Anglican Church at Matauri Bay, Dashper’s painterly, gestural strokes are reminiscent of the Abstract Expressionists’ action paintings. Yet in providing a place name in his title, Dashper simultaneously undermines the movement’s rejection of conventional descriptive titles. Dashper often used his artwork titles to state his subject, and respond to his specific environment, whether locations, buildings or landscapes.

In both the watercolour and oil painting, the composition’s relation to the Matauri Bay church is not clear or direct. But the title gives the viewer space for imagination and response, to reconcile the visual with the lexical. Dashper’s outlook is not exclusively international, either. His title also engages with New Zealand art history, potentially commenting on New Zealand artists’ predilection for the landscape as subject matter and the doctrine of New Zealand regionalism, and his responses to New Zealand sites certainly diverge from the landscape traditions of our art history. With this approach, early in his artistic career, Dashper introduced a new generation of New Zealand art that was experimental, consequential, and embraced quotation of other artists.

Both paintings of Anglican Church at Matauri Bay (Lot 32 and Lot 34) read as riotous networks of lines and colours.

Dashper’s strong green and purple lines do not neatly divide the painting into clean blocks of colour, but traverse the canvas, and seem to continue beyond it. The translucency of forms in the screenprint enable Dashper to overlap them, creating a greater sense of depth or distance. Rather than the varying blocks of colours employed in the oil painting, Dashper’s watercolour relies heavily on forms of primary colours. While some lines travel across the picture plane, from top to bottom, white lines connect to form misshapen crosses, a more figurative nod to his subject matter. Dashper’s acrylic painting on paper, It’s All So Beautiful (Lot 36), also includes bold sections of bright colours, though they are consciously contained and without the severe overlapping.

These three works all retain evidence of the painterly process, whether the obvious brushstrokes of thin paint, the uneven cuts of paper, or the block letters spelling PURPLE in an unpainted strip across the picture plane.

34 Julian Dashper

Anglican Church at Matauri Bay 1986 watercolour on paper 460 × 320mm est Webb's

$4,000 — $6,000 August

48

32 Julian Dashper

Anglican Church at Matauri Bay c1985 oil on canvas 1810 × 1500mm est $35,000 — $55,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Hamish McKay, Wellington.

Webb's

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But where Anglican Church at Matauri Bay generously bestows the viewer with Dashper’s subject, untitled (Lot 33) of c1996 challenges the viewer to distinguish Dashper’s concept or meaning from the work’s form. His concentric circles of coloured vinyl constitute a recognisable facet of his abstract lexicon, and resist any discussion of their formal qualities. In 1997, Dashper asserted that his art was ‘about abstraction and painting, rather than being actual painting,’ signalling a development from his earlier gestural work.² Indeed, untitled lacks any trace of the artist’s hand. And the various colours of contact adhesive circles were chosen not with serious consideration of colour theory, artistic expression or symbolism, but by Dashper’s twoyear-old son who crawled amongst them on the floor, making his selections.

Rather than shying away from dialogue, many of Dashper’s works emphasise their connections to other international artists.

For example, in his graphite on paper work A Philip Guston (Lot 35) (c1991), with his clearly outlined individual forms differentiated by patterns, Dashper playfully draws upon the simplified, quasicartoonesque forms of Canadian American artist Philip Guston’s later work. In the clearly delineated sections of colour, and the slick, flat, vinyl circles of untitled, Dashper clearly speaks the language of ‘visual Esperanto’. Employing the vocabulary of American abstract artists, the work brings to mind the geometric shapes of Frank Stella and, to many, Dashper’s use of concentric circles cites Kenneth Noland’s and Jasper John’s targets.

Applying the circles onto the drumhead, untitled is also representative of the consistent references Dashper’s art makes to pop culture. Readers will likely be familiar with one of Dashper’s witty, most iconic works, The Big Bang Theory of 1992-1993 – five drum kits, each bass branded with the names of a canonical New Zealand artist. Dashper embraced – even advertised – connections between his work and pop culture, and likened the language of abstraction to that of pop music, similar in their generic nature. Instead of separating abstraction from the everyday world, then, Dashper amalgamates the two, simultaneously fusing popular and high cultures.

The conceptual, playful and witty works of Dashper have earned the artist a distinct position in New Zealand art history.

Tellingly, Dashper resisted being labelled a painter or sculptor, simply preferring the term ‘artist’. His oeuvre demonstrates constant enquiry and reflection on parochial traditions.

Impressively, Dashper manages to simultaneously look inward, at New Zealand’s society, art history and art market, and outward, at the global forces of abstract art. Consistently, Dashper traversed different artistic positions, avoiding categorisation, and embracing ‘slippages’, rather than marching to the beat of the same drum.

The Big Bang Theory (exhibtion catalogue), Artspace: Auckland, 1993.

1 Julian Dashper, quoted in ‘Will the circle be unbroken: A conversation between Julian Dashper and Trevor Smith’, in The Twist (Hamilton: Waikato Museum of Art and History, 1998), 22.

2 Julian Dashper, The Twist (Hamilton: Waikato Museum of Art and History, 1998), 33.

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33 Julian Dashper

untitled c1996 vinyl on drumhead 630 × 630 × 180mm (widest points) est $35,000 — $45,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Hamish McKay, Wellington.

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Exhibitions The Cross Show, Sue Crockford Gallery, Auckland, 27 February - March 17 1989.

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34 Julian Dashper

Anglican Church at Matauri Bay 1986 watercolour on paper signed JULIAN DASHPER, dated 1986, and inscribed ANGLICAN CHURCH AT MATAURI BAY 1986. in graphite verso 460 × 320mm

35 Julian Dashper

A Philip Guston c1991 graphite on paper inscribed A Philip Guston in graphite lower right 365 × 270mm

est $4,000 — $6,000

Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Hamish McKay, Wellington.

Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

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est $3,000 — $4,000

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36 Julian Dashper

It''s All So Beautiful 1988 acrylic on paper dated 1.11.88 and inscribed ITS ALL SO BEAUTIFUL in graphite lower right 520 × 520mm (overall) est $5,000 — $10,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Hamish McKay, Wellington.

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Exhibitions Julian Dashper, Sue Crockford Gallery, Auckland, 7-27 February 1988.

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Rita Angus – Portrait of Robert Erwin Essay by VICTORIA MUNN

For Angus, portraits were deeply personal in nature. Her sitters were consistently those with whom she had a personal connection, and she repeatedly gifted the sitter with the finished portrait. Angus’ portraiture demonstrates her perceptive observations of the people around her, and ability to translate their essential qualities into paint.

In 1953, Rita Angus wrote to Douglas Lilburn, ‘The great men rise from colour to sunlight.’ 1 Quoting John Ruskin’s 1870 lecture on colour at the University of Oxford, Angus’ letter demonstrates her artistic interest in colour – its symbolic potential, and the depth and light that can be achieved. Around the same time, Angus painted a portrait of a new friend, Robert Erwin, which exemplifies her economical use of clear colours and line to capture the essence of her sitter.

In the late summer of 1953, amidst her travels around Central Otago, Rita Angus met Robert Erwin. A university student with his finger on the pulse of the Christchurch art scene, Erwin was first introduced to Angus by Lawrence Baigent, who had lived adjacent to Angus’ studio on Cambridge Terrace, Christchurch, in the late 1930s. Erwin and Baigent were to become long-term partners, and Erwin instigated a lasting friendship with Angus.

That same year, he began regularly calling in at Angus’ cottage in Clifton, Christchurch. He eagerly tracked the progress of her oil painting of the Central Otago landscape, and served as an artistic sounding board for Angus. Erwin was also involved in her artistic practice: although Angus drew upon her Northland sketches of a young Māori boy for her (unfinished) oil painting of St Luke, in the absence of her initial model, Erwin — who had Māori ancestry — stepped in. The pair also worked together on a tapestry depicting Māui reeling in a fishing net, Angus painting the design and Erwin handling the weaving. 2 And, as evidenced

by Portrait of Robert Erwin, Erwin was also the subject of several portraits by Angus.

Angus’ confident use of watercolour is on display in Portrait of Robert Erwin. The war years brought a shortage of painting materials. Rather than making use of household paints or devising her own media, Angus embraced watercolour.

Angus cited the influence of watercolourist Margaret Stoddart (1865–1934) on her practice, the medium is threaded throughout her oeuvre, and she is celebrated for her great command of both watercolour and oil.

For Angus, portraits were deeply personal in nature. Her sitters were consistently those with whom she had a personal connection, and she repeatedly gifted the sitter with the finished portrait. Angus’ portraiture demonstrates her perceptive observations of the people around her, and ability to translate their essential qualities into paint. Outlining her approach to portrait painting, Angus explained ‘I note the special person-ality of the sitter, and often endeavour to express through a simplicity of line and colour, the content of the sitter’s interesting complexity and diversity of moods.’ Indeed, in Portrait of Robert Erwin, Angus draws upon a bold use of line and colour to create form, and the figure’s direct gaze and positioning, pushed up against the picture plane, imbue the portrait with an audacious intensity.

Rita Angus, St Luke, 1953-55.

1 Rita Angus, letter to Douglas Lilburn, 3 May 1954, Alexander Turnbull Library, MS-Papers-7623.

2 Jill Trevelyan, Rita Angus: An artist’s life (Wellington: Te Papa Press, 2020), 271.

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37 Rita Angus

Portrait of Robert Erwin c1953 watercolour on paper 330 × 230mm est $25,000 — $35,000 Provenance Private collection, Canterbury. Gifted by bequest, c2003; Collection of Lawrence Baigent and Robert Erwin, Christchurch.

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38 Rohan Wealleans

Ham Scanwitch 2016 acrylic on board signed Rohan Wealleans, dated 2016 and inscribed HAM SCANWITCH in ink verso 507 × 507 × 70mm (widest points)

39 Shane Cotton

untitled acrylic on canvas 200 × 200mm est $8,000 — $10,000 Provenance Private collection, Wellington.

est $6,000 — $9,000 Provenance Private collection, Wellington.

Exhibitions Rohan Wealleans: We are the flesh, Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington, 16 September - 7 October 2017.

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40 Peter Peryer

Mars Hotel 1976 gelatin silver prints, 4/20 signed Peter Peryer dated Easter 1976 and inscribed 4/20 in ink on cover sheet 176 × 176mm (each panel) est $16,000 — $24,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Photoforum fundraising auction.

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Exhibitions Another from the edition included in For your pleasure, Snaps, Auckland, 1976; Peter Peryer: an introduction, The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, 16 December 1977 – 22 January 1988; Two New Zealand Photographers, Bosshard Galleries, Dunedin, 1979; Time Release, Auckland War Memorial Museum, Auckland, 1982; Peter Peryer: Photographs, Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui, Whanganui, 1985; Second Nature: Peter Peryer, Photographer, New Zealand, toured Germany, Australia, New Zealand, 2005-2007.

Literature Gregory Burke and Peter Weiermair (editors), Second Nature: Peter Peryer, Photographer, New Zealand (Frankfurt: Edition Stemmle, 1995), 28-29; Courtney Johnston (editor), Peter Peryer: A Careful Eye (Lower Hutt: The Dowse Art Museum, 2014), 12-13; Peter Peryer: Photographs (Whanganui: Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui, 1985), 15, 25.

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Shane Cotton – Veil Essay by ANDREW PAUL WOOD

The “Māori Gothic” style Cotton is known for is cousin to the Italian Pittura Metafisica school of Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carla — naturalistic and detailed counterpointed by unexpected juxtapositions to evoke a visionary world of the imagination beyond physical reality.

Shane Cotton (Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Hine, Te Uri Taniwha, Ngāpuhi) produced Veil in 2008, the year he was awarded an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award and the Seppelt Contemporary Art Award from Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art. Painted after a Sydney artist residency, Cotton first showed paintings from this series with the Gow Langsford Gallery at the Melbourne Art Fair. He continued to produce this series for an exhibition with the Hamish McKay Gallery in which this painting was first shown.

The veil in the title is that between this world and the spiritual world, between the past and the present-future. It is a surreal work, minimalist by Cotton’s standards. It suggests the existence of its own syntax, begging for interpretation but simultaneously defying it. The themes that occupy Cotton’s work are biculturalism, the complex and nuanced way Māori and Pākehā histories intertwine, and the culture, politics and national identity that have evolved out of them.

The painting has all of the other-worldly gravity-free weightlessness and crystalline stillness familiar in Cotton’s mature work. A great, jagged mountain seems to hover in a white void. It is blue like tā moko. In its flank is a cave – perhaps a burial cave where Māori traditionally buried the dead. This chimes with the ancestral Toi Moko, harbingers of death, and emissaries from the beyond.

Cotton is a leading figure in a generation of Māori artists that emerged in the cultural upheaval and rise of identity politics in late 1980s and 1990s that included such luminaries as Michael Parekōwhai, Lisa Reihana and Peter Robinson, exploring the complexities of postcolonial biculturalism by drawing on Māori cultural concepts and Pākehā artistic traditions. It represents a whole new chapter in the long tradition of history painting.

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The “Māori Gothic” style Cotton is known for is cousin to the Italian Pittura Metafisica school of Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carla — naturalistic and detailed counterpointed by unexpected juxtapositions to evoke a visionary world of the imagination beyond physical reality. From that realm the Māori gods and powerful dead speak out across time and space in a contemporary vocabulary, through generations of colonial trauma and suffering, prophesying an ambiguous, but dramatically different future.

One of New Zealand’s most important living Māori artists, Cotton is highly sought after by private and public collections here and in Australia. He is represented in Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, the Chartwell Collection, the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, National Gallery of Victoria, and Queensland Art Gallery.

He was awarded the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship in 1998, represented New Zealand in the 2005 Prague Biennale and 17th Biennale of Sydney in 2010. In the 2012 Queen's Birthday and Diamond Jubilee Honours Cotton was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit. In 2012 and 2013 he was the subject of a major survey exhibition The Hanging Sky, which toured Brisbane, Sydney, Christchurch, and Wellington, and in 2015 he was commissioned by the Australian National War Memorial to produce a print in commemoration of the Anzac Centenary.

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41 Shane Cotton

Veil 2008 acrylic on linen signed S.Cotton, dated 2008 and incribed Veil in brushpoint lower right 1400 × 1000mm est $35,000 — $45,000 Provenance Private collection, Tauranga. Acquired from Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington.

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Exhibitions Shane Cotton: New Painting, Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington, 23 August - 13 September 2008.

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42 Max Gimblett

Key 2001 acrylic, plaster weld, plaster, epoxy resin and vinyl polymer on board signed MAX GIMBLETT, dated 2001 and inscribed "KEY" in brushpoint verso 635 × 635mm (widest points) est $25,000 — $35,000 Provenance Private collection, Wellington. Acquired from Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, c2002.

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43 Michael Parekōwhai

Turk Lane 2001 c-type print, edition of 8 1550 × 1250mm

Exhibitions Another from the edition included in 2002 Biennale of Sydney: (The World May Be) Fantastic, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 15 May - 14 July 2002.

est $17,000 — $25,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Michael Lett, Auckland, c2005.

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Literature Ewen McDonald (editor), 2002 Biennale of Sydney: (The World May Be) Fantastic (Sydney: Biennale of Sydney, 2002) (cited); Michael Lett and Ryan Moore (editors), Michael Parekōwhai (Auckland: Michael Lett Publishing, 2007).

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Ed Ruscha – Rusty Signs - Dead End 1 Essay by AD SCHIERNING

There are things that I’m constantly looking at that I feel should be elevated to greater status, almost to philosophical status or to a religious status. That’s why taking things out of context is a useful tool to an artist. It’s the concept of taking something that’s not subject matter and making it subject matter. —Ed Ruscha1 I have always been drawn to the work of Ed Ruscha (Edward Joseph Ruscha IV). My respect for his practice began with an infatuation with his 1963 masterpiece Twentysix Gasoline Stations² which I stumbled across at Auckland University’s Elam Library. This was the pop artist’s first artist book and, as the title suggests, it comprises of twenty six black and white photographs of petrol stations at different locations along the famous Route 66. The images are void of human activity and focus on the architecture of the modernist structures, with their hand painted signage. A lonely quietness is present in each composition that matches the gesture of capturing these utilitarian spaces in its essence. This basic elevation of the mundane is a thread throughout Ruscha’s work. The artist produced over a dozen books, many that followed the same architectural thread, including the 1966 publication Every Building on the Sunset Strip.

A pop art icon, Ruscha’s work drew on signwriting, architecture, film, and on a deeper level religion. Born in Nebraska in 1937 into a Roman Catholic family, the artist moved to Los Angeles in 1956 and has lived and worked in the city of angels since. His work is identifiable by his often ironic use of text and phrases, architecture and flat colour. The influence of his L.A surroundings is undeniable. Moving from the Midwest to a very contrasting and glamorous L.A., Ruscha reacted to the culture of advertising and film that drenched the city.

Rusty Signs - Dead End 1 is a Mixografia print, created at the artist’s print studio of the same name. Mixografia is also a trademarked printing technique that allows the artist to construct a three dimensional surface using paper pulp that is then pressed over the sculpted three dimensional plate. The resulting print is an impression into the paper as well as inking its surface. The three dimensionality of this print in particular gives the paper the illusion of pressed metal. Printed in 2014, this work is part of a larger series of six printed works that all mimic rusty road signs, three of which state DEAD END, two that say CASH FOR TOOLS and one FOR SALE, each with a different hue of rusty decay. Pitted with what appear to be bullet holes Rusty Signs Dead End 1 would not seem out of place if you were to see it at the end of a dusty trail off Route 66.

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In 1991 Ruscha created a series of works with the words The End. The final statement in a film, the works were reminiscent of black and white film with the scratches of warn celluloid painted into the background. The importance of the backdrop to Ruscha’s text play is vital to its reading and the same statement given a different backdrop would have a very different effect.

Ed Ruscha first started painting words in the early 1960’s. The complexity of his use of text grew over time and the statements he painted, or in this case printed, became more layered. This depth and layering allows for multiple readings.

With connections to contemporaries who rose to fame in the 1970s and 80s, such as Bruce Nauman and Jenny Holtzer, Ruscha’s text use was not an unusual artistic technique to lay commentary on the surrounding culture. It is a method artists continue to use, splicing and propagating text and meaning from one source to another to generate a new statement.

1 Source: https://gagosian.com/ artists/ed-ruscha/

2 Edward Ruscha Twentysix Gasoline Stations 1963, printed 1969, Artist's book, offset printed, Edition 3,000 62

44 Ed Ruscha

Rusty Signs - Dead End 1 2014 Mixografía® print on handmade paper, 30/50 signed Ed Ruscha, dated 2014, and inscribed 30/50 in graphite lower edge 600 × 600mm est $25,000 — $35,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Gagosian, London.

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Ian Scott - Lattice No. 92 Essay by CONNIE DWYER

While there are inferences to that which is explicitly New Zealand, such as a visual nod to harakeke weaving in Māori traditions, they also exist in an international context that was little referenced in Aotearoa art of the time. Scott adhered to formal standards similar to the American Abstract Expressionists, and modernists, Kenneth Noland and Piet Mondrian as two clear international influences for Scott’s Lattices.

In the mid-70s, Ian Scott began what would be his most enduring and oft-revisited series. The Lattice works are geometric abstract paintings, which across their creation were refined into key elements of coloured diagonal bars that seem to flow above and below one another, upon a regular square support. There is a nuclear neatness to the series, flattened by smoothly applied block colours that optically warp through a woven pattern. The flatness, instantly at odds to the illusion of three-dimensional weaving, is first in the tensions that sustain the Lattice series.

The works are obsessively regular, with lines that both cross perfectly from the corners of the support to the dead centre, but also expand outwards into a ‘beyond’ space outside of the canvas confines. Scott found resolution in the Lattice works by way of painting the infinite, stating that he ‘like[s] the idea of the bands running right across and out of the painting in a free uncontained way, and yet meeting at the edge of a logical cropping-point’.¹ They therefore exist as a sort of window, a perfect glimpse of a continuous and interconnected world.

The series obeys its own internal laws, each based on fundamental elements of abstract painting. Constant experiments and variation of three key elements Scott identified as colour, edges and overlapping, created paintings by way of formula.

This systematic set of abstract principles, which Scott tweaked as the series developed, contributed to Scott’s greater understanding of a successfully resolved Lattice. Colour, for example, was pared back to a limited palette, and outlined edges of the rectangular colour blocks moved between being more or less pronounced. Lattice No. 92, created in the early 1980s, exemplifies such in its restrained, lighter palette and edges that alternate between thick bars and thin strips.

In a neat parallel, the Lattice works wove in and out of Scott’s New Zealand context. While there are inferences to that which is explicitly New Zealand, such as a visual nod to harakeke weaving in Māori traditions, they also exist in an international context that was little referenced in Aotearoa art of the time.

Scott adhered to formal standards similar to the American Abstract Expressionists, and modernists, Kenneth Noland and Piet Mondrian as two clear international influences for Scott’s Lattices.

The Lattice works straddle the line between proudly existing as what they are, painted colour on a canvas, and Greenbergian flatness to the extent that the process of its creation is invisible, through clinically applied layers of smooth medium and sharp edges. Though time spent with Scott’s Lattices allows intimacy to form, if a viewer is held by the work, they are rewarded with a glimpse into its process, and the mesmeric quality of its interwoven, sharp-edged lines.

1 Michael Dunn in conversation with Ian Scott, originally published in Art New Zealand 13 Spring 1979. http:// www.art-newzealand.com/Issues11to20/ scott.htm Webb's

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45 Ian Scott

Lattice No. 92 1982 acrylic on canvas signed Ian Scott, dated September 1982 and inscribed Lattice No. 92 in ink verso 1145 × 1145mm est $25,000 — $40,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from The Warwick + Kitty Brown Collection, Day 1, Lot 60, Webb's, Auckland, 17 March 2017.

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46 Heather Straka

The Clean Up 2 2005 oil on canvas on board signed Heather Straka, dated 2005, and inscribed The Clean Up 2 in ink verso 190 × 310mm est $3,500 — $5,500 Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

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Séraphine Pick – Are They Searching For The Same Things?

Essay by NEIL TALBOT

Jim and Mary Barr, Séraphine Pick's Lyall Bay studio in Wellington, March 2014.

“What are the connections between festival goers at Woodstock and today’s teenagers who operate in a world of social media? Are they searching for the same things?” It may be that the utopia an earlier generation sought in counterculture and psychedelics, today’s youth looks for in the ever-shifting sands of technology development and internet memes. Whatever the case, Pick has found masterful means to transform this content into brilliant, absorbing painting.

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These paintings shift away from the symbolic dreamscapes of her earlier works, and into territory that is, at a glance, more convivial. Yet the content is far from superficial, showing aspects of contemporary human experience that are psychologically complex and lnuanced. The paintings show figures that range from inebriated and vulnerable, to blissful or contemplative.

Séraphine Pick has maintained an excellent painting career for decades. Her paintings are things of wonder, from her earlier dreamscape-surrealist work, to the lighter, more painterly work of the 2010s and 2020s. A consistent thread through her work of all eras, is its quality, and the clear dedication Pick has brought to realising great painting. Seeing a significant grouping of Pick’s work from across the decades offers an intriguing glimpse into the mind and working methods of the artist. This group of three works features one from the 1990s and two from the mid 2010s, presenting an insightful precis of her overall practice.

The earlier work in this selection is Where Have You Been (Lot 49), an oil painting from 1999. The artists’ works from this era have proved highly desirable to collectors and institutions, particularly in recent years. The work is highly detailed, filled with the symbolic and spectral imagery that has made Pick’s work of this era so distinctive and sought after. The figure of a woman is situated in the lower right of the image, engaged in some contemplative ritual or meditation, her back to the viewer.

Her outstretched hand holds a small, potted cactus. A spectre, seemingly emanating from the woman stares out at the viewer.

Other smaller figures are in view – some apparition-like, others more corporeal. The image is fully immersed in the dream-like symbolism of the artists’ work from this period.

Pick’s more recent work has featured a lyrical treatment of paint, with large areas of translucent washes, paint runs, and hints of raw canvas complimenting figures and landscapes.

These paintings are more immediate, less laborious, exploring the beauty of light marks on a canvas. Complex layers, hand painted and generative allow space for a sincere love of painting to enter the visual conversation. In this one can see the ways in which the artist has combined intuitive approaches to paint with more analytical decision making to arrive at resolved paintings that are immensely satisfying to view. These paintings also appear to have drawn on sourced imagery, rather than images from the artists’ own psyche and personal experience.

1 White Noise, 2015. The Dowse Art Museum (Book).

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47 Séraphine Pick

Easy Living Study 2015 acrylic on canvas signed S PICK and dated 15 in brushpoint lower right 550 × 700mm

48 Séraphine Pick

Blue Hand 2013 oil on linen signed Séraphine Pick and dated 2013 in brushpoint lower right 660 × 915mm

est $12,000 — $15,000

est $20,000 — $26,000

Provenance Private collection, Wellington.

Provenance Private collection, Wellington.

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The two works of this later era included for discussion here were produced between 2013 and 2015. These paintings shift away from the symbolic dreamscapes of her earlier works, and into territory that is, at a glance, more convivial. Yet the content is far from superficial, showing aspects of contemporary human experience that are psychologically complex and nuanced. The two paintings each show an individual figure, one inebriated and vulnerable, the other blissful or contemplative.

Blue Hand (Lot 48) is from Pick’s 2013/2014 painting series, ‘Wankered’, which made use of internet sourced images of inebriated people in compromised or funny positions. This painting, an oil on linen work from 2013, shows a drunk woman passed out on a public bench. Easy Living Study (Lot 47) is an acrylic on canvas work from 2015. Showing an enraptured hippie in a sun-drenched field of flowers, this work was the precursor to one of Pick’s most memorable paintings in recent years, the titular work from her Easy Living series.

These more recent works are drawn from collective imagery – photos people have put on the internet for some purpose, an intriguing contemporary human behavioural phenomenon. Pick has utilised these images as source material for beautifully rendered, evocative paintings. Easy Living Study in particular makes use of a lighter, more radiant palette. It has an almost religious or psychedelic aspect and glorious paint application. Blue Hand is darker in content and palette, yet its gestural application of paint is similarly exceptional. Collectively, these works read as a fascinating cross section of visual culture across a number of decades, adding further depth to Pick’s extraordinary career output.

In 2015, a major show of Pick’s work titled White Noise was shown at The Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt. A book was launched in conjunction with the show, and it featured an essay by Sian van Dyk’s titled, Everything Old is New Again¹.

Van Dyck explored Pick’s painting against the backdrop of the 21st Century’s proliferation of digital culture, and made some astute observations about the artist and her practice. “What my subject choice means is initially unconscious, but becomes conscious because people are always asking me what it’s about,” van Dyck quotes Pick, revealing how an artist’s understanding of an artwork can continue to develop after its completion. Van Dyk, looking at overarching themes in image content, asked, “What are the connections between festival goers at Woodstock and today’s teenagers who operate in a world of social media? Are they searching for the same things?” It may be that the utopia an earlier generation sought in counterculture and psychedelics, today’s youth looks for in the ever-shifting sands of technological development and internet memes. Whatever the case, Pick has found masterful means to transform this content into brilliant, absorbing painting.

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49 Séraphine Pick

Where Have You Been 1999 oil on canvas signed Séraphine Pick, dated 1999 in brushpoint lower right 910 × 660mm est $30,000 — $40,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Brooke/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch, 1999.

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Exhibitions Where have you been? (Frances Hodgkins Fellowship 1999 exhibition), Hocken Library, Dunedin, 2000.

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Milan Mrkusich – Dark Element Essay by JULIAN MCKINNON

In purist abstraction, however, paint is utilised for its own inherent characteristics: colour, texture, line, form, contrast. Unencumbered by the need to present an image of something, paint can become a means to explore formal relationships between art and architecture, a vehicle for aesthetic contemplation.

Abstract painting can be esoteric. To its advocates, it sits at the apex of visual and intellectual sophistication. Yet, its detractors might argue that it is devoid of meaning. To summarise the history and philosophy of abstract painting is a complex a task, though at its roots, it is a consequence of the invention of the camera.

As Belgian art theorist Thierry De Duve states, “[…] to cite but the most blatant specific impact of industrialization on painting, from the moment photography was invented, painters had lost their job as purveyors of resembling images. […] the product of their labor had to compete with a cheap ready-made substitute.”¹ In short, the invention of the camera created an existential crisis for painting. Painters needed to either fade away or reinvent themselves and their art form. In order to navigate such a challenge, some painters pursued painting about painting, wherein the frame of reference was no longer the external world, but rather the internal dimensions and material substance of the painting itself. Painting as ‘idea’; reductionist abstraction; what de Duve describes as the concept of painting as ‘pure visibility’.² Milan Mrkusich is one of the foremost pioneers of abstract painting in New Zealand. His artwork first started being exhibited in the late 1940s, a time when landscape still dominated New Zealand painting. Mrkusich, however, was not interested in such subject matter. The Arts Foundation credits him with this zinger, “You want a landscape? Take a drive in the country.” Instead, his interests were architecture and abstraction. He engaged with ideas of art and design arising from the European Bauhaus movement and Russian Constructivism; such interests applied to painting lead directly to ‘pure visibility’.

Paint has great utility as a material for conjuring illusions or creating images, and it is still very much used to those ends, despite the provocation of the camera.

In purist abstraction, however, paint is utilised for its own inherent characteristics: colour, texture, line, form, contrast.

Unencumbered by the need to present an image of something, Webb's

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paint can become a means to explore formal relationships between art and architecture, a vehicle for aesthetic contemplation.

In the case of Mrkusich’s Dark Element, a 1968 oil on canvas, the work is a beautifully restrained. It is elemental in its two-tone colour and geometric simplicity. The void-like black circle has an immersive quality, as if pulling the viewer’s eye inward. The contrasting dark ochre of the rectangular plane subtly draws the eye back to the panting’s surface. In this it activates the illusory quality of paint, though in the most understated of ways. In a book on Mrkusich’s work, Alan Wright and Edward Hanfling wrote, “In Mrkusich’s paintings small things matter. It is an art of subtlety and nuance, the careful edge, the faintest transition from one shade of a colour to another, the self-effacing touch – an art of things that are barely there, as if to suggest that experience itself is infinitely varied, shifting imperceptibly from one moment to the next: change, transformation, time.”³ Dark Element has an uncomplicated elegance, linked to modernist architectural principles. At the same time, it demonstrates the philosophical essence of abstract painting: pure visibility.

1 Thierry De Duve, Kant After Duchamp, 1996. page 148.

2

Ibid. Page 149.

3 Alan Wright and Edward Hanfling, Mrkusich: The Art of Transformation, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2009, p.113.

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50 Milan Mrkusich

Dark Element 1968 oil on canvas signed Mrkusich, dated '68 and inscribed MRKUSICH/DARK ELEMENT 1968 in brushpoint verso 1225 × 720mm est $30,000 — $45,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Petar James Gallery, Auckland c1979.

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Michael Smither – Three Rock Pools and Lava Flow Essay by DAVID MASKILL

It is inconceivable that he would not have been aware of the environmental threat to these elemental landscape forms. The primordial splendour that Smither conjures forth in this depiction, cannot help but imply its threatened invasion by the dreaded didymo.

Perhaps this explains the intensity of focus in the work. Smither appears to have suspended time in the hope that in painting, at least, he can hold back the tide of destruction.

In Three Rock Pools and Lava Flow, Smither returns to a motif he first encountered as a child growing up in New Plymouth—the unique rock pools and lava flow of the Taranaki region. After a sixty-year career as one of Aotearoa's leading painters, he brings all of his experience and physical memory to the depiction of his beloved rock pools.

There is a decidedly surreal element to the work. The rocks and boulders, moulded to egg-like smoothness by river and tide over millennia, almost threaten to “hatch”. At the same time, there is a primeval quality in the depiction of a landscape empty of human presence. Here, he seems to be saying, is a better time before human occupation and industrial progress threatened its very survival.

By 2004, the devastating effects of intensive dairy farming had taken their toll on the region’s pristine waterways. Smither’s ecological credentials are impeccable. It is inconceivable that he would not have been aware of the environmental threat to these elemental landscape forms. The primordial splendour that Smither conjures forth in this depiction, cannot help but imply its threatened invasion by the dreaded didymo. Perhaps this explains the intensity of focus in the work. Smither appears to have suspended time in the hope that in painting, at least, he can hold back the tide of destruction.

Smither identifies in a very physical sense with his painted subjects. Of his depictions of stones and water he writes, “the brush takes the place, of the licking of the water, the wrist the rolling of the stone” Also implied here is a deep spiritual pantheism, which frames the prosaic subject of rocks, water and vegetation. One cannot help but remember that Smither’s favourite saint was St Francis of Assisi. The saint’s famous Canticle of the Sun shines its light on the shallow pools and transforms them into something of wonder and beauty.

It was, after all, in a rocky Taranaki stream that Smither chose to set his Baptism of Christ from 1967. Something of that deep physical spirituality resonates in Three Rock Pools and Lava Flow.

1 Michael Smither, ‘Stones’, in Michael Smither with Trish Gribben, Michael Smither Painter, Auckland: Ron Sang Publications, 2004, p. 238 Webb's

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51 Michael Smither

Three Rock Pools and Lava Flow 2004 oil and sand on board signed MDS and dated 04 in brushpoint lower right 1260 × 820mm est $250,000 — $350,000 Provenance Private collection, Taranaki. Acquired directly from the artist, 2005.

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52 Bill Hammond

Mountaineering Homesick Blues 1985 acrylic and enamel on canvas signed W. Hammond, dated 1985 and inscribed MOUNTAINEERING HOMESICK BLUES in brushpoint lower edge 513 × 814mm est $30,000 — $40,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Denis Cohn Gallery, Auckland, 1985.

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53 Toss Woollaston

Mapua Landscape 1939 oil on board signed Woollaston in brushpoint lower left; signed M. T. WOOLLASTON and inscribed MAPUA LANDSCAPE/Possession of Rodney Kennedy in brushpoint verso 420 × 465mm est $35,000 — $55,000 Provenance Private collection, Christchurch. Acquired from Yvonne Fine Art, Christchruch, c1990.

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Pat Hanly – Torso V Essay by DAVID MASKILL

While it is certainly an exaggeration that Hanly single-handedly launched New Zealand painting out of its “brown and green period” into the light of brilliant high-key colour, there is an element of truth to the claim. No New Zealand painter before him had embraced painterly Expressionism and American action-painting with quite the same degree of sheer joy—an emotion not often associated with pākehā high culture of the earlier McCahon/Baxter/Fairburn era.

Hanly’s Torso series from the late 1970s burst onto the New Zealand painting scene and changed it forever. No brooding landscapes for him. Instead, Hanly chose the classic European subject of the female nude in all her voluptuousness. A homage to his wife Gil on one level, it is as much an expression of his admiration for Francis Bacon and even more so for the work of the American abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning, whose Woman series from the 1950s it evokes without descending into pastiche.

But Hanly’s choice of such a traditional subject was in no way backward looking. He kept a hand-written journal from the early 60s until 1971, excerpts from which featured in an Auckland City Art Gallery exhibition in 2000. This offers rare insights into the personal thoughts and feelings of a New Zealand artist of this period in a strikingly direct way. Of his human subject works, Hanly writes in 1964, “Non individuals leaving no sign or mark…

People are too new here and nature absorbs them.” Written over a decade before the Torso series, we sense an anxiety about his figurative works that by 1977 has clearly been put to rest.

While it is certainly an exaggeration that Hanly singlehandedly launched New Zealand painting out of its “brown and green period” into the light of brilliant high-key colour, there is an element of truth to the claim. No New Zealand painter before him had embraced painterly expressionism and American action-painting with quite the same degree of sheer joy—an emotion not often associated with pākehā high culture of the earlier McCahon/Baxter/Fairburn era. Tellingly, one of Hanly’s Torso paintings was chosen to replace a McCahon as the cover image of Gordon H. Brown and Hamish Keith’s revised edition of An Introduction to New Zealand Painting 1839–1980, published in 1982.

Hanly was a prankster and had no time for art that he didn’t like. He famously graffitied the work of then expatriate conceptual artist, Billy Apple, in a privately-staged exhibition in 1982 in the home of Francis Pound and Sue Crockford, believing it to be over controlled and lacking in passion. Hanly was forever the fiery one, committed to the notion that painting was far from a deadend medium. In this respect, he was out of step with international trends in conceptual, post-object and performance art. Be that as it may, he deserves to be remembered for his exuberant and passionate paintings—replete with his own uniquely local joie de vivre. As he wrote in his journal in 1969, “Art is love. Love is everything.”

Gordon H. Brown and Hamish Keith’s revised edition of An Introduction to New Zealand Painting 1839–1980 published in 1982.

1 The Journal of Pat Hanly, exhibition brochure with excerpts from Hanly’s journal selected by Ron Brownson, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2000, np.

2 Ibid.

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54 Pat Hanly

Torso V 1977 enamel on board signed Hanly, dated 77 and inscribed TORSO V in brushpoint upper left 470 × 410mm est $60,000 — $80,000 Provenance Private collection, Christchurch.

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55 Shane Cotton

Whakakitenga II 1998 oil on canvas signed SWC and dated 1998 in brushpoint lower right; inscribed WHAKAKITENGA in brushpoint upper left 495 × 600mm est $25,000 — $35,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

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Tony Fomison – G’day Mum, Here’s Your Annual Picture Essay by MEGAN SHAW

Gil Hanly, Tony Fomison, c1980s.

Attached to the back of the painting is a note in Fomison’s own handwriting, “G’day Mum, here’s your annual picture....” That Tony Fomison gifted these works to his mother, in whose collection they remained until today, shows the value he attributed to them and the careful choice he made in presenting his ‘annual’ gift.

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Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait in Hell, 1903, Collection Munch Museum.

Tony Fomison was a master of mythology. His ghouls, jesters, skulls, spirits, werewolves and religious subjects show deep reflection on the metaphysical and the cultural. But what of the mythology that Fomison crafted of himself?

Fomison painted few self-portraits throughout his career, making his red Self Portrait (Lot 56) a rare work to come up for sale. The difficulties of “trying a self portrait from life, which I’d never tried in oils before” kept him engrossed in this work until dawn on Sunday the 15th of September 1975. After a few hours’ sleep, he was back into painting until Monday afternoon: “& so to bed,” Fomison’s logbook records, “after the most exhausting painting I can remember borne out of my 1st self portrait painting from life – with a strange feeling of elation of peace.” Painted in an arresting red palette, his Self Portrait offers a highly charged first reading much like Edvard Munch’s Self-Portrait in Hell (1903) or Andy Warhol’s red Self-Portrait (1986), rather than a feeling of existential peace. Fomison’s sustained close observation of his own features better focused by the monochromatic paint and heightens his euphoric state.¹ Two key cultural influences gnawed at Fomison’s sense of place and self before he attempted this self-portrait from life.

In August 1975 he visited the ‘Van Gogh in Auckland’ exhibition at the Auckland City Art Gallery which encouraged him to “pull my finger out & throw myself into my work.” Fomison was also reading Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich which reinforced to the artist “how well off we are in NZ.” Fomison regarded the present Self Portrait as a breakthrough which began to dissolve “the ghost of my deep fears about my drawing ability (drg from life).” His logbooks confess that likenesses had always intimidated him, and that he was a “sucker” for watching portrait sketchers at fairgrounds or the Cook Street markets.² While Tony Fomison may have doubted his artistic abilities, the four works offered here testify to his great skill in colour, form, enigmatic storytelling and the essence – and even purpose – of painting.

During Fomison’s stint in the 1960s as a pavement chalk drawer in a Parisian street gang, he copied works by Picasso including the Pierrot, a seminal figure from commedia dell’arte

1 Excerpts from Tony Fomison’s Painting Logbook ‘From February 1973, Christchurch to Auckland & Beyond’, #98.

2 Ibid.

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56 Tony Fomison

Self Portrait 1975 oil on cloth on board signed Fomison in brushpoint lower right; dated 1976 in brushpoint upper right 430 × 495mm est $80,000 — $120,000

Exhibitions Tony Fomison: What Shall we Tell Them?, City Gallery, Wellington, 13 February - 22 May 1994.

Provenance Collection of Mary Fomison (the artist's mother), Christchurch. Gifted by the artist, c1975.

Literature Ian Wedde (editor), Fomison: What shall we tell them?

(City Gallery, Wellington, 1994), 101.

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and pantomime for Modernists such as Picasso and Beckmann, Bloch, Dali, and Klee among others.³ Yet Fomison’s return to the Pierrot character mythologises him in a new way: by combining him with Dracula. The Perriot/Dracula (Lot 57) is painted in Fomison’s iconic black and white palette inspired by the 14th century European “dooms” and by gothic sub-culture. This was a stylistic continuation from his 1960s and early 70s works beginning with an all-black canvas and gradual additions of white paint.⁴ The forms are expertly chiselled with sharp edges and creases, and theatrical lighting worthy of Caravaggio. And yet what defines Fomison’s subject is his ghostly collaret of translucent frills, and the inscribed title.

Three Faces (Lot 59) is painted on an unilluminated background, peering at one another from beyond the edges of the frame. The figure on the left appears the most anthropomorphic, its shoulders visible and complete with recognisable facial features and hair. It locks eyes with the small green face to the right. Our eyes travel between the gaze of these two creatures, skimming over the lunar ghoul at the lower centre who is, perhaps, the most permanent in this transcendent scene. Three Faces is compositionally similar to Fomison’s popular lithograph The Question (1986) and the painting Song of Auckland (c1990) and although undated, likely painted in the late 1980's. Fomison’s painting is fundamentally allegorical, although the identities he casts in his mythologies are not always clear; these three could depict the three stages of life, a memento mori, or some process of metaphysical transformation.

Two Masks with Curtain (Lot 58) is a porthole into communion and separation, image and reality, lovers and the beloved, image and reflection, and self-reflection, each binary captured within this small tondo.⁵ The circular format favoured

by Fomison in this period was traditionally reserved for religious works, however here it is employed to highlight the duplicity of human nature, much like the Ancient Greek masks of comedy and tragedy. Here, tragedy prevails in both ghoulish faces with the painting’s title referring to Yukio Mishima’s ‘Confessions of a Mask’ and the “reluctant masquerade.”⁶ The right face cringes and withdraws into the shadows, while the left is deliberately lighter, warmer, perhaps foreshadowing Fomison’s later exploration of Papatūānuku, shielded here by a tree-like curtain.

Indeed, in his logbook entry Fomison wrote that it “could be the starting point, for instance a tree-of-life theme, the faces flanking the central trunk.”⁷ This exploration of the tension of opposites found its form in Question and Answer; The Tree of Life (1989) now in Te Papa Te Tongarewa.

Fomison was also intensely interested in the process of making which began by sourcing a base or canvas. Self Portrait is painted onto a checkered tea towel which is still visible from the reverse. Perriot/Dracula was painted onto a “pink-stained canvas” glued onto the reverse of an “ex junkshop scenic ptg”, and Two Masks with Curtain was painted onto the metal surround from a breadboard bought from a Ponsonby Road junk shop.

Two Masks with Curtain hung on the wall in Tony Fomison’s home until at least 1981 when it featured in Bruce Morrison and Hamish Keith’s ‘Profile’ documentary, before the artist gifted it to his mother. Attached to the back of the painting is a note in Fomison’s own handwriting, “G’day Mum, here’s your annual picture....” That Tony Fomison gifted these works to his mother, in whose collection they remained until today, shows the value he attributed to them and the careful choice he made in presenting his ‘annual’ gift.

Vsevolod Meyerhold dressed as Pierrot for his own production of Alexander Blok's Fairground Booth, 1906.

Film Still from Calvin Floyd’s In Search of Dracula (1975)

3

Tony Fomison: A Survey, 5.

4

Ibid, 10.

5 #176.

Painting Logbook 1977-1979 170-243,

6 Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask (1948), p. 27. Fomison was also inspired by Mishima’s The Decay of Angels (1971).

7 #176.

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57 Tony Fomison

Perriot/Dracula 1975-76 oil on jute on board signed T Fomison, dated 7.7.75-29.4.76 and inscribed Perriot/Dracula in brushpoint left edge 365 × 260mm est $80,000 — $140,000

Literature Ian Wedde (editor), Fomison: What shall we tell them?

(City Gallery, Wellington, 1994), 170.

Provenance Collection of Mary Fomison (the artist's mother), Christchurch. Acquired Auckland, c1976.

Notes The work was purchased from a dealer show in Auckland.

Mary Fomison gave her daughter Julia (Tony Fomison's sister) money to make the purchase on her behalf.

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58 Tony Fomison

Two Masks with Curtain 1977 oil on jute inscribed G'day Mum, here's your annual picture (I did it 1977, its addressed to a novel by that Japanese writer whose name I can never remember!) in graphite on label affixed verso 170mm (diameter) est $30,000 — $50,000 Provenance Collection of Mary Fomison (the artist's mother), Christchurch. Gifted by the artist, 1980s.

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59 Tony Fomison

Three Faces c1987 oil on board 290 × 590mm est $30,000 — $60,000 Provenance Collection of Mary Fomison (the artist's mother), Christchurch. Gifted by the artist, 1980s.

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60 Shane Cotton

Kawakawa Pattern 2003 acrylic on canvas signed S COTTON, dated 2003 and inscribed 'KAWAKAWA PATTERN' in brushpoint lower right 715 × 1065mm est $35,000 — $45,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

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61 Peter Robinson

Necessary Protection 1996 oilstick on canvas signed Peter Robinson and dated 5.00PM 1 Dec/'96 in ink verso 450 × 600mm est $6,000 — $12,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Brooke/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch, c2000.

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62 John Walsh

Tipi Haere 2002 oil on board signed J Walsh, dated 2002 and inscribed Tipi Haere in ink verso 730 × 1189mm est $12,000 — $16,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

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Colin McCahon – Jump E4 Essay by NEIL TALBOT

Judith Gifford, in her gallery, 1982, Peter Bannan.

Jump E4 is a particular standout from this widely-admired series.

The work possesses elements observable throughout: the monolithic black rectangle, which one could interpret as a sheer cliff face, the perforated diagonal line, perhaps representative of a terrifying yet exhilarating flight trajectory, and the word ‘JUMP’ at the bottom of the picture plane.

In black, white and grey, its palette is elemental, conveying stark gravitas.

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Letter from Judith Gifford to Kim Wright and Rodney Kirk-Smith about the consignment of works from Barry Lett Galleries.

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This ‘leap of faith’ is the thematic substance of the Jump paintings. In this series, one can interpret psychological motifs of overcoming fear and navigating internal responses to danger and risk; the perilous jump of the young gannets a metaphor for human experiences of adversity.

In 1974, Barry Lett Galleries presented an exhibition of paintings

by Colin McCahon titled Jumps and Comets: Related Events in My World. Many of the works in the show were McCahon’s Jump paintings, a thematically linked series of works that shared common traits: stark columns of black paint, dotted lines against mottled backgrounds suggestive of sky, and the word ‘jump’ painted onto the surface. These works were inspired

by McCahon’s observations of the gannet breeding colony at Otakamiro Point, the clifftop separating Muriwai Beach and Maukatia (Māori Bay) west of Tāmaki Makaurau. This coastline is subject to wild weather; strong winds incessantly buffet the cliffs that loom above the seething ocean. In such conditions, fledgling gannets make their first attempts at flight, leaping perilously and stretching their wings.

This ‘leap of faith’ is the thematic substance of the Jump paintings. In this series, one can interpret psychological motifs of overcoming fear and navigating internal responses to danger and risk; the perilous jump of the young gannets a metaphor for human experiences of adversity. This isn’t unique to the Jump paintings; McCahon’s work often engaged with complex aspects of the human condition. Deep questions about the nature of existence, undercurrents of the psyche, and spiritual paradox appear everywhere, as if the very water he swam in.

Nevertheless, his Jump paintings remain highly sought after, their quality appreciable.

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Jump E4 is a particular standout from this widely-admired series. The work possesses elements observable throughout: the monolithic black rectangle, which one could interpret as a sheer cliff face, the perforated diagonal line, perhaps representative of a terrifying yet exhilarating flight trajectory, and the word ‘JUMP’ at the bottom of the picture plane. In black, white and grey, its palette is elemental, conveying stark gravitas. Subjective interpretation might lead a viewer to sense the artist urging them to shake off their fears and attempt a kind of psychological flight, unencumbered and free. In sum, Jump E4 possesses all of the distinct qualities that have made McCahon such an enduring force: painterly restraint, visual poetic, and purpose of vision.

At the time Jumps and Comets: Related Events in My World showed, Barry Lett Galleries was under the directorship of Rodney Kirk-Smith and Kim Wright. In 1975, Barbara Brooke and Judith Gifford established Brooke/Gifford Gallery in a large space in 112 Manchester Street, Christchurch. The site was cluttered with old motorbikes leaking oil and a floor splattered with years of paint. Brooke and Gifford were undaunted, and transformed the space into an environment for the exhibition of contemporary New Zealand art. Impressed by the ambition and determination of the Christchurch pair, Kirk-Smith and Wright sent them a consignment of important artworks as a gesture of support.

These works were then included in one of Brooke/Gifford’s earliest shows. Jump E4 was one of the works consigned. It caught the attention of Gifford, no doubt in part because of the particular qualities which make it such a strong painting. Gifford purchased the work, with Brooke encouraging the acquisition, referring to the painting as ‘standout work’.

A member of Gifford’s family spoke of the fact that McCahon painted his Jump paintings, including Jump E4, in a small house on a hill at Muriwai Beach. After Judith Gifford purchased the work, she and her husband hung it in a similarly modest home nestled into a hill in Clifton Spur, overlooking Sumner Beach – echoing the environment it was created in. It remained there for 46 years. The painting has kept Gifford and her family captivated, remaining in their collection until now – an enduring testament to the leap of faith in starting the Brooke/Gifford Gallery.

After Judith Gifford purchased the work, she and her husband hung it in a similarly modest home nestled into a hill in Clifton Spur, overlooking Sumner Beach – echoing the environment it was created in.

It remained there for 46 years. The painting has kept Gifford and her family captivated, remaining in their collection until now – an enduring testament to the leap of faith in starting the Brooke/Gifford Gallery.

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63 Colin McCahon

Jump E4 1973 acrylic on jute on canvas signed C. McC., dated 73. and inscribed JUMP/(E.4) in brush point lower edge 910 × 442mm est $250,000 — $350,000 Provenance Collection of Judith Gifford, Christchurch.

Acquired from Brooke/Gifford Gallery, 1975.

Exhibitions Jumps and Comets: Related Events in My World, Barry Lett Galleries, Auckland, 27 May - 7 June 1974.

Notes Colin McCahon Online Catalogue (www.mccahon.co.nz) number: CM001053

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Colin McCahon – Caltex Essay by CHRISTIE SIMPSON

In 1965, Colin McCahon completed a small suite of preparatory studies for a mural designed to embellish the foyer of the Caltex building in Auckland, Tāmaki Makaurau. In McCahon’s well used palette of black, reddish brown and white, the series of preparatory paintings consist of the word CALTEX penned in koru-like script. McCahon gives the company name a very organic and almost delicate treatment - a contrast to the company’s actual logo at that time, which consisted of a bright red star and graphic circle emblazoned with CALTEX in contrasting black.

The Caltex mural did not end up going ahead; this is a series of studies for a work that, intriguingly, does not exist.

Widely recognised as one of Aotearoa’s most successful painters, McCahon covered many themes and styles over his career, which spanned over forty years. He experimented with both figurative and abstract paintings and explored a variety of subject matter including landscapes, figures and religious iconography. Known to be influenced by posters and sign writing, in the 1950s McCahon began to include text in his paintings - seen in works such as Let us possess one world (1955).¹ The Caltex mural was therefore a fitting choice for the artist.

While at this point in the 1960s, McCahon had been creating word paintings for some years. Caltex harks back to his earlier carefully painted cubism-like lettering from the 1950s. The Caltex series also appears to be the first time that McCahon used the Māori symbol of the koru within his lettering, although he would continue this idea in works such as Koru 1, 2, 3 (1965).

While perhaps an arbitrary choice, given the subject matter and branding of the company, this use of the koru foreshadows the way Māori motifs would go on to be incorporated into corporate branding in Aotearoa, such as the New Zealand Film Commission logo designed by Gordon Walters in 1979.² McCahon’s word paintings explore themes very clearly through their use of text, but they are also a visual exploration of shape and form. In Caltex, the letters become visually pleasing curved arrows and spirals, neatly butting up against each other.

The work is harmoniously balanced, with the slight reddish brown used in the “T” letter repeated in the small, white-bordered triangular form on the lower right. This triangular shape also brings to mind McCahon’s large Waterfall series painted the year prior, which consisted of a bold band of white arcing across a dark background and disappearing off the opposite lower edge of the work. Again, there is a similarity to the Caltex series, as all the studies contain at least one letter that appears to drip off the edge of the paper.

McCahon’s use of words and letters as both image and as text was a radical exploration for painting in the 1950s and 60s.

Sometimes one or two words, sometimes paragraphs of text these were works that were not always well received by the public.

“By combining visual and verbal elements, McCahon had begun to ask the viewer to consider his works both in a literary sense and for their visual effectiveness, pushing the possibilities of the meaning of written words into the structure of the work.”³ This pushing of possibilities is what made McCahon such a legendary painter: he was unafraid to try something new. In this case, his inquisitiveness stretched to transforming a corporate brand into a large abstract mural.

1 http://www.mccahon.co.nz/ cm001410 2 https://www.aucklandartgallery. com/whats-on/exhibition/gordonwalters-prints-design?q=%2Fwhatson%2Fexhibition%2Fgordon-waltersprints-design 3 Gow Langsford 2013 Spring Catalogue: https://issuu.com/ gowlangsfordgallery/docs/spring_ catalogue_online Webb's

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64 Colin McCahon

Caltex 1965 acrylic on paper signed Colin McCahon and dated '65 in ink lower right 255 × 405mm est $60,000 — $80,000 Provenance Private collection, Christchurch.

Acquired privately, 1990.

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Colin McCahon - The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version) Essay by KELLY CARMICHAEL

McCahon was a lover of Bellini, and scholar Gordon H. Brown relates that, after discovering a colour plate showing Bellini’s The Pieta with St John, McCahon was so moved he slammed the book shut until he could recover his composure.

Over the course of his career, Colin McCahon could be variously defined as a landscape artist, a figurative painter, a regionalist, and an innovator for his use of painted text. Perhaps the two most defining thematics of his practice, however, are McCahon’s relationship with religion and his abstraction. The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version) (1961) incorporates these two incredibly strong trajectories of McCahon’s practice. This work is one of a series of four known works by McCahon responding to Venetian Renaissance painter Giovanni Bellini. McCahon was a lover of Bellini, and scholar Gordon H. Brown relates that, after discovering a colour plate showing Bellini’s The Pieta with St John, McCahon was so moved he slammed the book shut until he could recover his composure.¹ The Bellini Madonna series is said to be based on Bellini’s The Alzano Madonna/Madonna with a Pear (c.1485). The artist’s son William McCahon recalls that the series came from the time McCahon underwent religious instruction within the Catholic Church and, in particular, the trouble he was having with some of the doctrine around the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary.

At first glance Bellini’s sumptuous Madonna and Child seems unlikely source material for this series of abstract paintings, yet connections and allusions reveal themselves..

As in the Bellini, colour is a rich and allegorical component.

Horizontal and vertical axes (the ‘implied cross’ composition of Christ symbolism) in both works become apparent, as do some of the tonal and textural qualities of background and drapery.

The line created by the Christ child’s plump leg leading us to Bellini’s signature now becomes a diagonal black line defining the golden triangle in the lower right corner of the work, pointing to the work’s title written by McCahon in small capitals.

McCahon has also replicated Bellini’s celebrated parapet seen in The Alzano Madonna, the compositional device that acts as a low barrier in the foreground of many of Bellini’s images of the Madonna and Child intended for private devotion. In many paintings, Bellini conspicuously placed his signature on this parapet, as does McCahon, using his initials here. More than just a convenient spot to place the pear – considered a symbol of virginity – the red marble parapet creates an illusion of threedimensional space, functioning as a visual enticement for the viewer to look beyond, and into the painting.

Most striking about the work is the geometric blocks that make up the composition and the way the vertical and horizontal are split with a diagonal/triangular overlay. Here we might imagine McCahon extracting the abstraction he sensed in Bellini’s original. Painted between 1961 and 1962, The Bellini Madonna series came shortly after McCahon’s transformative trip to America in late 1958, a trip that shifted his practice in response Webb's

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to American abstraction. It is possible to imagine the green brocade curtain that hangs behind Bellini’s Madonna and Child translated into the top-left block of McCahon’s work, its texture brought out in colours of ash, charcoal and golden ochre. The soft modulating of light and dark in the lower left block – palpable, fleshy and warm in meaty pink and smudgy brown tones beneath a sky-blue triangle – derives from the marbled drapery seen in the cuff of the Madonna’s robe, and the red marble parapet. It also alludes to the suffering that will ensue for the Christ Child.

“Here in the red marbling, Christ’s blood becomes a sunset, with the white light of a sunlit rainstorm below. Within the ‘sunset’, Colin uses the ‘crescent moon’ wound symbol that Bellini used when portraying the dead Christ,” William McCahon commented of The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version).² Dominating most of the right-hand side of the painting is the velvety black that would become so familiar in McCahon’s later religious works – the unknowable, the void, God. The divisions between blocks and diagonals in The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version) are not so much defined by colour, but by McCahon exploiting line and light to section the pictorial plane. Light is symbolic, of course, both for Bellini and McCahon. Bellini’s use of light, in particular the shadowing behind the Madonna’s head and shoulders, places the figures in our world, suggesting the earthly reality of this divine vision. This shadow must be cast from a light source to the front and right of the figures, that’s to say from outside the frame, where we, the viewers, exist. The same light that illuminates them illuminates us, binding secular and divine. For McCahon, who explored and grappled with questions of faith and doubt throughout his life and practice, imagery of darkness and light in the Christian tradition was deeply significant and often employed. The Bellini Madonna became geometric abstractions into which he poured his broader message.

In her essay from the publication for the exhibition A Question of Faith, Stedelijk Museum curator Marja Bloem describes how, in deciding which work to select for the first European retrospective of Colin McCahon and how to present his practice, “…it became apparent that landscape and religion or, more accurately, the spiritual – but also humanist – message conveyed by the language of the Christian Bible, are constant factors in his life and work.” McCahon’s relationship with Christianity was complex and multifaceted.. McCahon remained, in the words of his son William, a “homeless Christian”. As an exhibition, A Question of Faith focused on the artist's ongoing spiritual quest, demonstrating how McCahon explored questions of faith, doubt, hope, and eventually despair, in his practice. While visual clues could be ambiguous, there were 98

65 Colin McCahon

The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version) 1961 enamel on board signed C.M and dated OCT.'61 in brushpoint lower right; inscribed THE FIRST BELLINI MADONNA. (SECOND VERSION) in brushpoint lower edge 1205 × 755mm est $350,000 — $450,000

Literature Marja Bloem & Martin Browne, Colin McCahon: A Question of Faith (Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum; Nelson: Craig Potton, 2002), 92, 196, 197.

Provenance Private collection, New South Wales.

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Exhibitions Colin McCahon: A Question of Faith, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 30 August - 10 November 2002; City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand, 7 December 2002 - 9 March 2003; Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, Auckland, 29 March - 15 June; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 4 July - 7 September; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 15 November - 16 January 2004.

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always signs for the spiritually cognisant. However, even in the paintings offering more obvious clues, McCahon’s audience didn’t seem to understand his paintings as vehicles for spiritual thought, a foundational theme of his practice. “No one seems to know what I’m on about, it amazes me, no one seems to know that I’m painting Christ,”³ McCahon told an interviewer in 1980.

Painted in 1961, The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version) comes shortly after McCahon’s first Gate series, a body of work that contended with the formal challenges and opportunities abstraction offered. The series reflected the artist’s meditations on the world around him and the obstacles to human progress and happiness he saw as posed by the nuclear threat of the time. McCahon described the paintings as a "way through" for humanity, presenting an abstract discourse through which to critique and construct contemporary culture. Gate 15 (1961) and another work from the same year, Here I Give Thanks to Mondrian, show strong compositional similarities with The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version), including geometric blocks, diagonal shifts, enhanced spatial dynamics and triangular corners. Here I Give Thanks to Mondrian sees McCahon paraphrasing Mondrian’s geometric shapes but with softened portions and angularity, and a muted tonal palette. McCahon has added painterly texture, the handwritten dedication in his own distinctive script, and the blended outlines seen in the first Gate series. McCahon deeply admired the abstract painter Piet Mondrian and believed that the artist had achieved paintings that “beat like, and with, a human heart.”

In her book The Spirit of Colin McCahon, which focuses on the religious dimension of his art, author Zoe Alderton contends that “…Mondrian inspired McCahon to structure his works in a way that would give them inner life.” Spirituality and the abstract may not be the odd bedfellows first glance would have them be. Wassily Kandinsky, like other artists at the end of the 19th century, saw art as a new religion. In his 1912 essay “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”, Kandinsky equated representational art with materialism. He saw abstraction as a language that was not only capable of expressing deeper truth but also of communicating it to all five senses we possess. Indeed, in the 1986 exhibition The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890–1985, American curator Maurice Tuchman asserted that the “genesis and development of abstract art were inextricably tied to spiritual ideas current in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.”

Known as a radical abstractionist, Mondrian is also regarded as a spiritual painter, and many writers have explored mystical content in abstraction, seeing grids as spiritual thresholds.

McCahon grappled with Mondrian, commenting, “Mondrian, it seemed to me, came up in this century as a great barrier – the painting to END all painting. As a painter, how do you get around either a Michelangelo or a Mondrian? It seems that the only way is not more ‘masking tape’ but more involvement in the human situation.” This shift from perfection to connection defined McCahon’s practice. Like Mondrian, his desire to express a spiritual essence to the viewer through his work, and communicate the universal questions and concerns of humanity, led to a simplification of composition in which line, shape and colour are significant. In this sense, The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version) is a distillation of Bellini’s Christian symbolism and an exploration of how meaning can be communicated with sparse means. Both traditionalist and radical innovator, McCahon dared to ask humanity’s big questions, those of doubt and of faith, of hope and despair, with simple form. The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version) is a remarkable work, offering substance and engagement with spiritual matters without the easy handrails offered by the figures, narratives and texts of McCahon’s career output.

Giovanni Bellini The Alzano Madonna c1487 oil on panel 843 x 655 mm Collection of Accademia Carrara, Bergamo.

Colin McCahon Here I give thanks to Mondrian 1961 enamel on hardboard 1215 x 915mm Collection of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (acquired 1964).

1 Gordon H. Brown, Colin McCahon: Artist (Wellington, NZ: A. H. and A. W. Reed, 1984), 35.

2 William McCahon, “The First Bellini Madonna (Second Version),” (unpublished essay, January 2002) as quoted in Marja Bloem and Martin Browne, Colin McCahon: A Question of Faith (Nelson, NZ and Amsterdam, Netherlands: Craig Potton Publishing and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2002), np.

3

Ibid., 50.

4 Carel Blotkamp, Mondrian: The Art of Destruction (London, UK: Reaktion Books, 2001), np.

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66 Yayoi Kusama

A Pumpkin GB-D 1999 screenprint on paper, 83/100 signed yayoi kusama, dated 1999, and inscribed 83/100/A PUMPKIN GB-D in graphite lower edge 200 × 270mm est $20,000 — $30,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

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Louise Henderson – A Greater Lyricism Essay by VICTORIA MUNN

The work favours spirit over narrative, colour and light working over depth, and demonstrates, as Flower Forms does, Henderson’s consistent favouring of a shallow picture plane in the late 1960s and 1970s. Here, as in the 1950s works, the female forms dominate the composition. The women, stretching almost the entire length of the great canvas, are almost life-size, and the geometric forms adorning the clothing evoke the colourful, patterned textiles of Polynesian dress. No longer a young Parisian woman; Henderson’s subjects reflect her environment in the Pacific.

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In June 1952, Louise Henderson wrote a letter to her husband and daughter from Paris. In it, she recounts with great excitement her encounter with French artist Jean Metzinger at Académie Frochot, who praised the personality in her work, stating that it was ‘truly original and beautiful in colour.’ 1 Although her style develops and changes across her lengthy artistic practice, Henderson’s deep fascination with colour remains a constant.

Produced in the mid-1960s following the death of her husband Hubert, Henderson’s Elements, Air and Water series marks her steps past cubism, instead embracing a more emotional response to nature. untitled (Lot 67) is representative of these atmospheric canvases, dominated by blue tones and passages of rusty and fiery oranges and filled with gestural brushstrokes, which mark an important development in Henderson’s art. ‘Once I was interested in any solid form,’ she explained, ‘Now I am interested in things that are nothing and everything – like water and air.’ 2 In untitled, it is her sensitive choice of colours that flood the canvases, which imbue the diptych with an impressive sense of liveliness and transitory natural elements. Produced in the following decade, Tahitian Women (Lot 68) also showcases Henderson’s sensitive abilities as a colourist: the kaleidoscope of orange and pink shapes in the figures’ skirts, the gems of colour in the background, and the golden glow emanating from the women, fill the canvas with a vibrancy and liveliness.

Within her oeuvre one finds numerous artworks depicting two women. Not only did the subject matter enable her to explore female relationships, the twin motif situates Henderson in an art historical tradition, notably popular among fellow French artists such as Jean-Jacques Lagrenée (1739-1821), Henri de ToulouseLautrec (1864-1901) and André Lhote (1885-1962). The subject adapted as her style developed, and served as a useful vehicle for her to work through her artistic concerns. In several paintings depicting two female forms, produced in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the women are surrounded by lush green bush, as the artist seeks to integrate human figures with their natural surroundings.

In Tahitian Women, Henderson plays with the position of figures in shallow space, and using colour to evoke a sense of warmth, life and sunlight. Although the women’s hair, arms and torsos are clearly delineated from the background, the flurry of light, geometric, colourful forms in their clothing blend into it.

The 1970s marked an important point in Henderson’s artistic output. In the early years of the decade, she focused on depicting the New Zealand bush – its nuanced colours, unique natural forms and patterns of light and shadow. In Flower Forms (Lot 69), an example of the floral arrangements she produced in the early 1970s, Henderson unites this intense interest in nature, and the still-life tradition. But in this work the composition forgoes the heavily contrived, static nature of many still lifes – both old master and modern – and instead evokes a sense of fluidity and movement, and demonstrates her experimentation with the translucency of watercolour to overlap natural forms. Rather than hard-edged, clearly defined cubist planes and heavy blocks

André Lhote, Les Deux Amies, 1927 Webb's

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67 Louise Henderson

untitled

c1965 oil on board signed Louise Henderson in brushpoint upper left 1320 × 865mm (each panel) est $70,000 — $140,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from The Ron Sang Collection, Lot 32, Art + Object, Auckland, 15 March 2015.

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of colour, the forms have a greater lyricism and, likely layered on top of one another before the paint dried, suggest a spontaneous, free and expressive artistic process.

Although both Tahitian Women and Flower Forms are representational, and retain discernible figurative forms, there are passages that verge on abstraction. Certainly, untitled embraces a poetic, expressive response to nature, barely teetering on representation. Henderson embraced this margin, explaining, ‘Though I do not entirely denounce non-representational work, I do feel that for Western man it has an element of escape, of intellectual withdrawal. My life is on the fringe of two worlds and I want to express this duality.’ 3 Indeed, although she experimented with abstraction, Henderson’s artistic practice focused on the human experience, and reflecting life around her. She had depicted Samoan and Māori women in the 1950s, experimenting with cubist techniques in works such as Samoan Woman in Yellow (1954) and Maori Matrons (1953), in which the figures are created with flat planes of colour. She returned to the subject of Polynesian figures in the 1970s and ‘80s, surely partly inspired by her several trips to Rarotonga to visit her daughter. The work favours spirit over narrative, colour and light working over depth, and demonstrates, as Flower Forms does, Henderson’s consistent favouring of a shallow picture plane in the late 1960s and 1970s. Here, as in the 1950s works, the female forms dominate the composition. The women, stretching almost the entire length of the great canvas, are almost life-size, and the geometric forms adorning the clothing evoke the colourful, patterned textiles of Polynesian dress. No longer a young Parisian woman; Henderson’s subjects reflect her environment in the Pacific.

In a 1970 New Vision Gallery catalogue, Henderson stated her intention to combine non-representational painting and abstraction with subjects and elements from life that would be recognisable for her viewers. ‘The acceptance of a more common, human pattern and the human figure,’ she signaled, ‘will probably increase in my work.’ 4 This demonstrates that although painting was a personal practice for Henderson, in which she responded to her own emotions, surroundings and artistic concerns, she did paint with her viewer in mind, and sought to connect to audiences through her paintbrush.

Louise Henderson, Samoan Woman in Yellow, 1954

The women, stretching almost the entire length of the great canvas, are almost life-size, and the geometric forms adorning the clothing evoke the colourful, patterned textiles of Polynesian dress. No longer a young Parisian woman; Henderson’s subjects reflect her environment in the Pacific.

1 Louise Henderson, letter to Hubert and Diane Henderson, 15 June 1952, Louise Henderson Archive, EH McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, RC 2018/4/8.

2 Louise Henderson, quoted in Otago Daily Times, 31 March 1965.

3 Louise Henderson exhibition catalogue, New Vision Gallery, Auckland, 1970.

4 Louise Henderson exhibition catalogue, New Vision Gallery, Auckland, 1970.

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68 Louise Henderson

Tahitian Women 1975 oil on canvas signed Louise Henderson and dated 75 in graphite lower left 1680 × 1680mm est $75,000 — $125,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Gifted by bequest.

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69 Louise Henderson

Flower Forms 1972 watercolour on paper signed Louise Henderson and dated 72 in ink lower left 520 × 340mm est $15,000 — $25,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Ferner Galleries, Auckland, 2000.

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70 Rita Angus

Study for Detail, Portrait of R Vaughan Williams watercolour on paper certificate of authenticity from Page Blackie Gallery affixed verso 160 × 165mm est $8,000 — $16,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Page Blackie Gallery, Wellington.

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Don Binney – Lake Omapere Essay by ELIZABETH NEWTON-JACKSON

Don Binney is celebrated in the history of New Zealand art for having created accessible and personal artworks for almost fifty years. There is a reliable harmony that exists in his paintings.

Each contain the familiar elements of land and sky, tied together with a skilful application of fluid line and bold pigment.

Binney’s thematic and stylistic consistency has led to the celebration of his artwork as distinctly representative of Aotearoa. Conversely, this consistency has resulted in an occasional reconfiguration of Binney as an artist rehashing old ideas. “Ah, Binney - yeah, he cleaned up a few birds in the early 'sixties, and he's still doing the same thing now”, was the artist’s own reference to this dismissal of his work.¹ Binney’s acknowledgement of this “cavalier disbelief” in his continued relevance proves the intentionality of the focus within his work.² Binney has described this as “tinkering” with and “refining” his style rather than routinely employing recycled formats.³ Without doubt technically capable of altering his approach, the artist instead remained steadfast to his enduring style. This evidences a faithful dedication rather than a careless idleness.

Through his practiced simplicity, Binney has been unyielding in his creation of adroitly cohesive and evocative natural environments.

Lake Omapere, 1963-64 is an early example of Binney’s dexterous approach to the natural world. Although he paints with a degree of stylistic abstraction, the artist retains specificity in his subject. Residing within the Kaikohe-Bay of Islands volcanic field, Lake Omapere is vast, but not deep. The artist has rendered a cross section, with an omniscient view, ascribing himself the ability to see beyond land, beyond water. Illustrating a layer of earth below the shallow lake, Binney addresses the characteristics of the locale with keen accuracy.

In the carefully delineated strata of Binney’s painted environment is a reference to the geological. Passages of thick lather and discernible brush stroke alternate with sections of smooth texture and homogenous shade. Even the dark earth is subtly striated with distinction between gloss and matte, black and yellow. Green bleeds into red, and black bleeds into yellow on the ridges of the undulating hills. The visual simplicity of Binney’s approach has resulted in his understated execution of a complex, layered view.

Binney has illustrated an impossible perspective by bringing the viewer below the lake. However, in the curved framing of land and water, is a suggestion of a distinctly human vantage point. Binney has credited “years of looking through binoculars” with his focused visual perspectives.⁴ The distinct contours of this work are reminiscent of the view through rounded binocular lenses. While Binney’s binoculars have generally facilitated his acute ornithological interest, this painting is distinct for its lack of bird life. Instead, Binney’s clear, bright horizon houses a warmtoned orb, likely representative of a low, evening sun. Its golden tone radiates heat. Curved in harmony with the land, the sun presses persistently downward toward the earth. Horizon, water, and land elegantly coexist.

By attentively depicting both the seen and unseen, Binney has constructed an enticing and authentic account of the natural world.

1 Sheridan Keith, “A Conversation with Don Binney,” Art New Zealand, 1983.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 “Benevolent by-product,” Ingenio Magazine, 2011.

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71 Don Binney

Lake Omapere 1963–64 oil on board signed DON BINNEY, dated 63-64 and inscribed 'LAKE OMAPERE' in brushpoint lower right 550 × 725mm est $80,000 — $120,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Hayah Gallery, Auckland, 1964.

Exhibitions Hayah Gallery, Auckland, 1964.

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Matt Hunt - Sandpits of Eternity Essay by JULIAN MCKINNON

Hunt’s paintings invite viewers to engage, reflect, and attempt to decode their layered symbology. To that end, they are riddles, perhaps without answers. Conclusions drawn as to their meaning will be as diverse and numerous as their audience. How exactly does one unpack the hidden message of a winged and sword bearing Christ with a coinoperated washing machine for head and torso on a rocket-crucifix?

Spacecraft, crystals, utopian cities floating in the sky, glimpses of damnation and eternal bliss, fountains, luminous beings, crucifixions, demons, domesticity and consumerism – these are but some of the themes one encounters in the paintings of Matt Hunt. His works defy categorisation, such is the layering and complexity of their content. One can detect certain recurrent themes or archetypes running through them: new age spirituality, Christianity, confrontations between good and evil, alien visitations, technology, and a biblical ark-like diversity of animals. This manifold subject matter is arranged as if according to some arcane code, conveying a profound, yet not quite decipherable, insight into the nature of the universe.

Hunt’s paintings invite viewers to engage, reflect, and attempt to decode their layered symbology. To that end, they are riddles, perhaps without answers. Conclusions drawn as to their meaning will be as diverse and numerous as their audience.

How exactly does one unpack the hidden message of a winged and sword bearing Christ with a coin-operated washing machine for head and torso on a rocket-crucifix? Or of a humanoid tiger with wings, accompanied by a robot clutching a flying V guitar, on board a spacecraft-meditation room overlooking an earthlike planet? These are playful paintings, in which one can take delight. They are conjured by an interesting mind, engaged in a flight of fancy, coupled with accomplished technical finesse and grace. The at-ease sense of humour present in the work offers assurance that the artist was having a wonderful time while creating.

Hunt’s artistic vision is unique. It is also under-appreciated in the New Zealand art lexicon. Relationships to the work of Bill Hammond, Roger Mortimer, Séraphine Pick and perhaps also Richard Killeen are detectable. However, the vision presented is altogether different to any of those artists. Hunt draws on paranoiac aspects of contemporary culture – surveillance technology, military hegemony, conspiratorial whisperings of imminent dystopia – while weaving in threads of consumer tech

Peter McLeavey pictured with Memory of the Sacrifice, at his gallery, 2011.

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72 Matt Hunt

Memory Of The Sacrifice 2001 oil on canvas signed M. Hunt, dated 2001 and inscribed MEMORY OF THE SACRIFICE in brushpoint upper edge 1500 × 1100mm est $25,000 — $35,000 Provenance Private collection, Wellington. Acquired from Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington, 2011.

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Exhibitions Matt Hunt: Supereality, Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington, 13 April - 7 May 2011.

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and sci-fi, biblical judgement and spiritual enlightenment. These paintings summarise the pain and possibility of our age, when utopia seems both a naïve dream and a tantalisingly possibility.

All of these threads can be read in two excellent examples of Hunt’s work, Memory of the Sacrifice (Lot 72), and Utopian Spiritual Space Machine (Lot 73). The latter, with its winged-tiger space commander figure and guitar-wielding robot companion, was painted in 2008. Its aesthetic is more sci-fi pastiche, with apparent reference to new-age spirituality in its blue and mauve crystals and space-ascension flight crew. The former, whose central figure is the washing-machine Christ, was painted in 2011. In its depiction of a cathedral window, a trumpet-blowing angel, and winding staircase to heaven (along with escalator descending to hell) the references to religious painting are obvious. Yet its sci-fi space windows and jet-levitation crucifix lend it another, quirkier frame of reference. For all their differences, both of these paintings are unequivocally of a single visual sensibility.

In some ways, one could liken these sumptuous oil paintings to the religious art of bygone centuries – Botticelli’s angels, the iconographic hosts of Fra Angelico, or the darkly imaginative depictions of heaven and hell of Hieronymus Bosch.

Though in a sense, these are false equivalences. Such artists are no more antecedents of his style than religious scripture is a predecessor to science fiction; one might string together connections, though they are unlikely to stand up to ruthless analysis. Hunt’s visual lexicon and style of painting is very much of the 21st century; it would have made little sense prior to the existence of the internet.

Hunt’s fantastical figurative paintings, with their utopias, space flight, heavens and hells, flying cars and dinosaurs, winged creatures, luminous cities and crystal pools are microcosms of the complexity, confusion, and prospective wonder of our time.

They are illustrative, yet poetic; beautifully painted, but with just enough of a cartoonish touch to eliminate any sense that they are taking themselves too seriously; playful, though speaking to grand themes of the cosmos – sandpits of eternity.

Hunt’s fantastical figurative paintings, with their utopias, space flight, heavens and hells, flying cars and dinosaurs, winged creatures, luminous cities and crystal pools are microcosms of the complexity, confusion, and prospective wonder of our time.

Sandro Botticelli, Annunciation (Annunciation of San Martino alla Scala), 1481. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

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73 Matt Hunt

Utopian Spiritual Space Machine 2008 oil on canvas inscribed Utopian Spiritual Space MachineThe Angelic Elect Crew Of The Megastarship Adx 7007 Send Visions Of Supereality To All Truthseekers On Earth! in brushpoint upper left 1300 × 2400mm est $25,000 — $35,000 Provenance Private collection, Sydney. Acquired from Ray Hughes Gallery, Sydney, 2008.

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74 Peter Peryer

New Zealand 15.3.1991 1991 gelatin silver print 408 × 268mm

75 Peter Peryer

Still Life 1982 1982 gelatin silver print 600 × 850mm

est $3,000 — $4,000

est $2,500 — $3,500

Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Hamish McKay, Wellington.

Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Hamish McKay, Wellington.

Exhibitions Another from the edition included in Second Nature: Peter Peryer, Photographer, New Zealand, toured Germany, Australia, New Zealand, 2005-2007; 175° East, Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui, Whanganui, August 1991.

Exhibitions Another from the edition included in Peter Peryer: Photographs, Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui, Whanganui, 1985; Peter Peryer: A Careful Eye, The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, 23 August – 23 November 2014.

Literature Gregory Burke and Peter Weiermair (editors), Second Nature: Peter Peryer, Photographer, New Zealand (Frankfurt: Edition Stemmle, 1995); 105; 175° East (Whanganui: Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui, 1991), endpapers.

Literature Courtney Johnston (editor), Peter Peryer: A Careful Eye (Lower Hutt: The Dowse Art Museum, 2014), 94; Peter Peryer: Photographs (Whanganui: Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui, 1985), 28.

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76 Marie Shannon

Phone Friends 1990 gelatin silver print, 1/15 400 × 1000mm (overall)

77 Marie Shannon

The Wild Side in Me 1989 gelatin silver print 375 × 470mm

78 Marie Shannon

King for a Day 1991 gelatin silver print, 1/12 500 × 600mm

est $3,000 — $4,000

est $3,000 — $4,500

est $2,000 — $2,500

Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Hamish McKay, Wellington, 1990.

Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Hamish McKay, Wellington, 1990.

Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Hamish McKay, Wellington, 1991.

Exhibitions Stockroom Selection, Gregory Flint Gallery, Auckland, 14-26 January 1991; The Wonderful World of Marie Shannon, Fisher Gallery, Auckland, 28 May - 27 June 1993.

Exhibitions Marie Shannon, Gregory Flint Gallery, Auckland, 3-21 September 1991.

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Literature Stuart McKenzie & Robert Leonard, 'Something from Nothingness Comes: Recent Photographs by Marie Shannon', Art New Zealand 61, Summer 1991-92, 55.

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Charles Frederick Goldie – Head of a Nubian Essay by NEIL TALBOT

Firstly, though its subject is not a Māori elder, it is immediately recognisable as a Goldie; the artists’ characteristic flair in portraiture shines through. Secondly, the work was created by the artist at the age of twenty six, when he was developing his craft in the intoxicating environment of Impressionist Paris.

Charles Frederick Goldie is an artist whose work has captured the public imagination like no other. The painter is one of New Zealand’s most famous and renowned, with a fascinating catalogue of work made between the 1890s and the 1940s.

He is perhaps best known for his distinctive portraits of Māori elders, which have been the subject of both theft and forgery, acclaim and disdain.¹ His work is instantly recognisable; it was made with a level of technical finesse that is unmatched in contemporary painting.

While he was born in Auckland, and first developed his artistic talents there, 22-year-old Goldie travelled to Europe to further his studies in 1893.² The introduction to Alister Taylor’s 1979 tome C.F. Goldie: Prints, Drawings & Criticism begins as follows. “In the 1890s, when C. F. Goldie was a student and painter in Paris, France was in a cultural and artistic ferment.

The masters of the Impressionist movement were at work; there were exhibitions of Monet, Manet and Renoir; the reputation of Degas was at its height. In England, where Goldie studied under Sir James Guthrie, the names of Oscar Wilde and Whistler were legend […]. How could any young student except perhaps the most insensitive escape the excitement and effect of all these influences?”³ Needless to say, directly experiencing Europe in such heady times had an effect on Goldie's painting.

Head of a Nubian, an oil painting from 1896 was painted

by Goldie in Paris and is inscribed accordingly. It is a remarkable work for a number of reasons. Firstly, though its subject is not a Māori elder, it is immediately recognisable as a Goldie; the artists’ characteristic flair in portraiture shines through. Secondly, the work was created by the artist at the age of twenty six, when he was developing his craft in the intoxicating environment of Impressionist Paris. That lends the work a particular romantic flair – the young, idealistic artist testing his metal in the cultural crossroads of the Earth. Finally, for all the obvious finesse of the portraiture, the treatment of paint in the background is loose, gestural, expressive. In this one can detect the environmental influence, the painterly flourish of Renoir or Degas, and sense the thrill of the young artist mastering his abilities.

What is most impressive about this painting is how it brings together the youthful exuberance of a young artist abroad with the distinctive mastery of portraiture which has made Goldie a household name. One might then see this painting as sitting at a developmental crossroads – the step where the precocious youth moved into his power as a master artist. These are but a handful of the reasons why this work is an extraordinary painting.

As all great paintings do, it invites the viewer to look, engage, and wonder.

1 Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand.

2 Ibid.

3 Alister Taylor, C.F. Goldie: Prints, Drawings & Criticism, 1979.

Page 1.

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79 Charles Frederick Goldie

Head of a Nubian 1896 oil on canvas signed C. F. Goldie, inscribed Study/ PARIS in brushpoint lower right 385 x 330mm

Exhibitions Goldie, Christchurch Art Gallery, 12 December 1998 - 7 March 1999; Goldie, Auckland City Art Gallery, 28 June - 28 October 1997.

est $110,000 — $170,000 Provenance Private collection, Hawkes Bay. Gifted by bequest 1985; Private Collection, Hawkes Bay. Gifted by bequest c1970s; Private Collection, Hawkes Bay. Webb's

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Literature Alister Taylor and Jan Glen, C F Goldie: Prints, Drawings & Criticism (Publication Graphics: Martinborough, 1979), 251.

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Banksy – The Banksy Phenomenon Essay by JJ HARPER

The appeal of street art is its ubiquitous and therefore socialist nature. This genre of art is defined by its immateriality and impermanence. Ironically, this is the thrust of its market appeal; the conditions that make the works unsaleable in turn give them greater value. Banksy has leaned into market constraints, producing various limited edition print runs as a saleable version of his publicly displayed stencil works. Barcode (Lot 81) exemplifies the artist’s practice: a jaguar escapes from a cage-cum-barcode — a quintessential example of Banksy’s anti-consumerist and anti-authoritarian themes. Just as every barcode is a novel combination, so too are the rosette patterns of big cats, alike to fingerprints. Banksy uses these elements to champion diversity of form over the homogeneity of globalism.

First stencilled in the artist’s hometown of Bristol, Banksy has intermittently returned to the work, recreating it in Somerset school and as a series of screenprints. Now, since Barcode exists as an edition of 150 signed and 600 unsigned prints, the artist has wryly turned his critique back on itself, selling it as a consumerist product. It’s a cynical but endearing gesture.

Considering the accelerated market demand for Banksy since Barcode first appeared in 2002, the work maintains a notable space in the artist’s oeuvre as an iconic early piece.

On the other hand, Jack and Jill (Lot 80), was never stencilled — a rarity for Banksy. It’s title obviously referencing the nursery rhyme, the artwork is a classic Banksy anomalous image; two children run carefree in a pastel blue background, bogged down by heavy “Police” emblazoned bulletproof vests.

Banksy’s reproductions have a symbolic relationship with his street art. They are a twin fantasy, which came first? As Jean Baudrillard writes, “And so art is everywhere, since artifice is at the very heart of reality. And so art is dead, not only because its critical transcendence is gone, but because reality itself, entirely impregnated by an aesthetic which is inseparable from its own structure, has been confused with its own image. Reality no longer has the time to take on the appearance of reality.

It no longer even surpasses fiction: it captures every dream even before it takes on the appearance of a dream.” 1 Banksy manipulates the social media mass circulation of images to authenticate his works via his Instagram account. Being visibly invisible imposes scarcity. Banksy’s persona is a postmodern inverse of Andy Warhol, a hyper-performed non-performativity.

Banksy presents a pop apathy to Warhol’s fetishising of capital.

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80 Banksy

Jack & Jill 2005 screenprint on paper, 108/350 signed BANKSY on plate lower right; inscribed 108/350 in graphite lower left 480 × 680mm est $150,000 — $250,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Pictures on Walls, London, 2006.

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In his essay The Warhol Product, Jeffery Deitch (dealer of Banksy’s peer, street artist Shepard Fairey) argues art is now only three things: “investment. . . public relations. . . advanced consumerism.” 2 As art’s position to the artist’s individuated socio-political context is mapped to be the foremost aspect of determining meaning, Banksy eschews a frame of “identity”. The meaning is purely in circulation of the image; all that is solid melts, etc. “Anti-” is its own market. See: Love is in the Bin, Banksy’s infamous art intervention at a Sotheby’s auction, shredding one of his classic Girl with Balloon prints. The Guardian’s art critic, Jonathan Jones, viewed Banksy’s shredder stunt as his greatest work, writing “Art is being choked to death by money. The only rebellion left is for artists to bite the hands that feed them – as Banksy appears to have done on Friday night.” 3 Jones’ commentary on Banksy exemplifies Dietch’s Warhol thesis. Dietch frames Warhol as “the vanguard of mass culture...perhaps the ultimate artist of our time,” embodying “the cultural contradictions of capitalism better than almost any person alive.” Jones’ has moved from viewing Banksy as “flat and dispiriting” 4 to later glorifying him: “When the auctioneer’s hammer came down at Sotheby’s and a “modern masterpiece” began to eat itself, the stage was set perfectly. Here was the art world’s moment of truth — however theatrical and multifaceted it may prove to be. For once the commodity bit back. . . Banksy has let a little light into a very claustrophobic room — and proved he is the artist who matters most right now.” Jones’ own turn of opinion models Banksy in this Warholian tradition. Isn’t the point to be a dispiriting reflection of the market? The maintenance of anonymity alongside fame, is another obvious cultural contradiction of capital that Banksy replicates — a framework that is entirely dependent upon lack of regulation. Banksy is a market deconstruction of Warhol, which itself, is an evolution of the original product.

As Banksy becomes ever more sought after, there are fewer and fewer opportunities to attain his work, or that of any superstar artist — especially in New Zealand. Rarer, even, for two Banksy works to be up for auction at the same time. This auction is positioned to be another record-setter — making it an unmissable chance to own a piece of history.

Sotheby’s staff hang the work, now renamed Love Is in the Bin, in its gallery.

Photograph: Ben Stansall.

1 Baudrillard, J. 2016.

Simulations. New York: Semiotexte.

2 Deitch, J. 1980. “The Warhol Product.” Art in America, May 1980, https://www.artnews.com/art-inamerica/features/archives-warholproduct-63575/.

3 Jones, J. 2018. “Why putting £1m through the shredder is Banksy’s greatest work.” The Guardian, 8 Oct. 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/ artanddesign/2018/oct/08/why-shredderis-banksy-greatest-work.

4 Jones, J. 2017. “Britain’s bestloved artwork is a Banksy. That’s proof of our stupidity.” The Guardian, 26 July 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2017/jul/26/britainartwork-banksy-art-girl-with-balloon.

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81 Banksy

Barcode 2004 screenprint on paper, 200/600 inscribed 200/600 in graphite lower right 480 × 687mm est $90,000 — $160,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Tom Tom Gallery, London, c2004.

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82 Ronnie van Hout

untitled 1995 embroidery on cloth; ink on paper 790 × 770mm

83 Ronnie van Hout

untitled 1993 embroidery on cloth 495 × 345mm

est $5,000 — $7,000

est $4,000 — $6,000

Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Hamish McKay, Wellington, 1995.

Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Hamish McKay, Wellington, 1993.

Exhibitions Ronnie van Hout: I forget, Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington, August 1995.

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84 Douglas Wright

Black Milk 2006 acrylic on mirror signed D.W., dated 2006 and titled Black Milk in brushpoint lower edge 970 × 517mm est $3,000 — $5,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Hamish McKay, Wellington.

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Buck Nin – The Earth, the Sky, and the People Essay by JULIAN MCKINNON

Installation at the National Art Gallery's Kohia ko Taikaka Anake showing, on the left, Emare Karaka's Waitangi Wailing Wall (1990) and, on the right, Buck Nin's Rongopai Experience (1973).

As early as the 1960s, Nin was curating and presenting exhibitions of contemporary Māori art that was connected to a living, breathing culture and history. He made a point of demonstrating that contemporary Māori were diverse, culturally attuned, and positively engaged in contemporary discourse.

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Dr Buck Nin was a highly significant twentieth century Māori artist and educator. He was deeply involved in Māori cultural rejuvenation, especially regarding the development of Māori art and art education. Nin was instrumental in shaping Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, and his advocacy for the organisation advanced its progress to becoming a national tertiary institution in the 1980s.

Central to this was his educational philosophy, which sought to create a learning environment in which Māori identity was central, and students developed skills and gained confidence to take their place in the world on their own terms. Nin was involved in Māori land rights activism, including Dame Whina Cooper’s 1975 hikoi and the Bastion Point occupation in 1977-78. His paintings often revisit themes in keeping with this bigger picture.

While Nin’s artwork was in many ways tethered to his broader community advocacy for Māori culture, it is also exceptional on its own merits. This text addresses two excellent works that he produced around 1989 and 1990. One could discuss these works as hovering between figuration and abstraction, but those Western terminologies don’t entirely fit.

Nin’s work is deeply entwined with te ao Māori and as such it concerns whenua and whakapapa, the enmeshed relationship of people and the earth.

Recurrent motifs in Nin’s work include symbolically significant depictions of land, sky, and people in between. This can be interpreted as representing Ranginui and Papatūānuku, and the separation between them instigated by their children.¹ This mythological perspective was frequently integrated into Nin’s work. Other recurring themes are a koru banner running through the picture plane – presenting a perspective of the land as seen from a waka – and a triangle, representing the gable of a marae wharenui.² As Nin was intent on presenting a vision of the world from a te ao Māori perspective, his work continually explored the relationship between land, people, and culture. The figures in his paintings are frequently depicted symbolically returning to the marae and papakāinga. Many Māori were disconnected from whanau and whenua as a consequence of urban drift in the second half of the 20th Century.

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85 Buck Nin

untitled c1989 acrylic on board signed NIN in brushpoint lower right 1195 × 1005mm est $18,000 — $25,000 Provenance Estate of Buck Nin, Auckland.

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Nin grew up in a market gardening family in Kaikohe.

Here, he personally witnessed the urban drift of Māori leaving traditional land for city environments, both in Aotearoa and abroad. This along with his parentage – his Māori mother grew up in Ōtaki, his Chinese father was from Māngere – meant that a dichotomy between cultures, and a sense of disconnection from land was very much within his lived experience.³ Nin advocated for reconnection and restoration of these links, and this is represented in his paintings. To him, the land was a living being, deeply intertwined with ancestry. His paintings show steam rising from the living earth into the sky above, connecting people to their ancestral and mythological origins.

The untitled work (Lot 86) from c1990 features motifs, colours and compositional approaches that recur throughout Nin’s work. Its distinctions arise from the figures painted in the centre; these are contemporary people, not outlined ancestors or mythological figures. In this work, Nin sought to portray the return of urban Māori to the marae. Green, red and brown beams come together over the heads of the people, like the gable of a meeting house. The beams, however, do not meet. The recurrent theme of fractures brought about by urban drift is at play in this symbolic motif.

Lot 85, an untitled work from c1989 has similar compositional elements – the dark earth with mottled colour, the detailed centre, and steam rising into the sky from the land. This work also features a red and white banner, a motif of Nin’s that references the view of the land from a waka. The figures here are engaged in an assembly. This, with the prominence of the land and earth tones in the painting, appear to indicate that this work examined land protest, possibly in Tāmaki Makaurau.⁴ In the patterned centre, three hands, indicative of the ancestors, reach up, down, and across, seeking to make connection. This work ties in to Nin’s strong belief in reinvigorating Māori connections to land and culture.

These two exemplary works are in keeping with the broader trajectory of Nin’s artmaking. He was determined to present art that was confident, culturally assured, and of the moment. As early as the 1960s, Nin was curating and presenting exhibitions of contemporary Māori art that was connected to a living, breathing culture and history. He made a point of demonstrating that contemporary Māori were diverse, culturally attuned, and positively engaged in contemporary discourse.

With other pioneers of modern Māori art, such as Paratene Matchitt, Cliff Whiting, Robin Kahukiwa, Ralph Hotere, and Darcy Nicholas, Nin engaged in cross fertilisation of traditional forms, and modern ways of seeing. Nin found an artistic voice to express these matters and left a powerful legacy in painting.

1 Source: oral histories from Buck Nin’s whānau.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

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86 Buck Nin

untitled c1990 acrylic on canvas signed NIN in brushpoint lower right 1860 × 1400mm est $25,000 — $35,000 Provenance Estate of Buck Nin, Auckland.

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87 Thomas Darby Ryan

Whanganui River 1891 oil on canvas on board signed T. Ryan and dated 1891 in brushpoint lower right 754 × 1370mm est $60,000 — $90,000 Provenance Private collection, Auckland.

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88 Rohan Wealleans

Independent Prestige 2011 acrylic and polysterene on board 1200 × 1810 × 450mm (widest points)

Exhibitions Future Primitive, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 23 November 2013 - 2 March 2014.

est $25,000 — $35,000

Literature Linda Michael (editor), Future Primitive (Melbourne: Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2013), 82.

Provenance Private collection, Wellington.

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89 Simon Casson

Themis of the Thirteen 2002-03 oil on canvas signed Simon Casson, dated 2002/3 and inscribed Themis of the Thirteen/oil on canvas in ink verso 1830 × 1680mm

90 Michael Smither

untitled 1979 oil on canvas signed MDS. and dated 1979 in ink verso 2470 × 1810mm est $20,000 — $30,000

est $25,000 — $35,000 Provenance Provenance Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Long and Ryle, London, 2003.

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91 Michael Smither

Stay Awake 1972 oil on board signed MDS, dated 1972, and inscribed Stay Awake in graphite verso 475 × 1195mm

92 Don Driver

By Air 2004 plastic on tarpaulin signed Don S Driver and dated 2004 in ink verso 1280 × 2500mm

est $35,000 — $45,000

est $15,000 — $25,000

Provenance Private collection, Nelson. Acquired privately c1980s; Private collection, Nelson.

Provenance Private collection, Taranaki. Acquired directly from the artist, 2008.

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Jaqueline Fahey – “If you have nothing to say, don’t paint!”

Essay by ELIZABETH NEWTON-JACKSON

Railing against abstraction, the artist has sustained an astute visual commentary on her own family life, as well as urban and suburban experiences. By maintaining her authentic personal style, Fahey has remained at the forefront of New Zealand art; a constant figure, full of lifeforce and provocation.

After seven decades of producing vibrant, energetic paintings, Jacqueline Fahey’s message is clear: “If you have nothing to say, don’t paint!”¹ Modernist New Zealand artists were largely turning away from figurative methods in the mid- 20th century, focusing instead on broad themes and abstracted forms. Amid this trend, Jacqueline Fahey’s style remained distinct.

Railing against abstraction, the artist has sustained an astute visual commentary on her own family life, as well as urban and suburban experiences. By maintaining her authentic personal style, Fahey has remained at the forefront of New Zealand art; a constant figure, full of lifeforce and provocation.

Fahey’s conscious marriage to a figurative style has not been merely a stylistic choice, but a social and political one.

As a self-proclaimed feminist artist, Fahey recognised that abstraction had primarily resulted from centuries of Western art based on male-centric themes.² A basic history of European art involves a steady progression through a range of figurative styles, to a modernist period of divergence into abstraction.

From a woman's perspective, however, the gaps in this history of figurative representation are vast. By expressing themes of motherhood, sisterhood and suburban entrapment through her characteristically riotous figurative forms, Fahey has contributed to opening the way for varying viewpoints, and audacious feminist statements.

As early as her art school days at the Canterbury University College School of Art, from which she graduated in 1952, Fahey recalls being told: “you’ll have to change, old girl, or you’re out.”³ However, not finding what she needed in the abstract methods of the day, Fahey shrewdly concluded that there remained ample space for relevant social commentary through the figurative.

Fahey has been unswerving in her drive to paint what she knows. In the 1960s and 1970s she produced a flurry of domestic scenes in which she juxtaposed the delights and frustrations of suburban life. In more recent years, Fahey has ventured outdoors and into the streets with her subject matter, addressing the chaos of metropolitan life with humour and dexterity.

In both her untitled (Lot 93) and Can Painting Change Anything? (Lot 95) works Fahey deftly captures the social and cultural melting pot of urban Auckland. The narrow compositional

1 “Jacqueline Fahey - seven decades of paintings,” Radio New Zealand.

2 Thomasin Sleigh, “Women's Work,” New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata.

3 “Jacqueline Fahey: In her own words,” Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.

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93 Jacqueline Fahey

untitled 1998 acrylic on board signed Fahey and dated 98 in brushpoint lower right 1070 × 503mm est $12,000 — $18,000 Provenance Private collection, Rotorua. Acquired from A2 Art, Lot 265, Webb's, Auckland, 25 September 2013.

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structure of untitled (1998) provides a flurried snapshot, the merest of moments captured amid the buzz of the night. Intent that a painting should speak to its viewers, Fahey utilises words to express further meaning. While the truncated vehicles on the road indicate the movement and speed that drives the work, this inner-city motion is enlivened by the written thoughts of the painting’s occupants. The word “go” is prominent in relation to each. The Aucklanders in Fahey’s snapshot understand their urban existence in terms of movement and flux, as busy and as active as the city street that forms the backdrop to their lives.

Although each figure embodies a common verb, “go” they remain disconnected from one other. The pākehā mother and child at the left, focused only on their weekly grocery run, represent urban gentrification. They look outward and beyond, apparently unaware of the anguish and confusion expressed by the figures behind them. Their dialogue is internal, or it is with the city itself.

Due to the flattened, condensed perspective of the painting, the urban setting appears as not merely a backdrop, but as a fifth portrait in the scene. Vivid and pulsating, the city is as alive as any of its occupants.

In Encounter with the Past (Lot 94), Fahey again utilises the verb “go” to emphasise motion and progress in an urban context. A winding path leads the viewer through a disordered scene, comprising a set of jumbled and disconnected figures, none meeting another’s gaze. Each is entrapped in separate experiences of past and present, of motion and stasis. The linear progression from left to right, carved out by the vivid, orange path, is disrupted by a car brazenly driving in the opposite direction. The vehicle is incongruous in the picturesque city park, complete with fluorescent grass and flowering hydrangea.

The title of this work implies an internal snapshot of Fahey’s own life path. Although each character may represent variety in a restless metropolis, the painting also provides a glimpse into the artist’s own encounters. The contemplative nun may have journeyed through time from the Dominican convent at which Fahey’s grandmother taught.⁴ The woman standing by a pink suitcase on which “Fahey” is scrawled is no doubt the artist herself. By intertwining a personal narrative with a scene of apparent urban chaos, Fahey reinforces her role as the architect and central figure in her works. Rather than claiming to speak for others, Fahey candidly expresses her own experiences, and her own insights; so much so, that she often makes a visual appearance in her works, signifying her deliberate subjectivity.

This is true of Can Painting Change Anything? (2003), in which Fahey also appears. The paintbrush in her hand is both a tool of gesture, and a tool of conception. The artist simultaneously creates and responds to the scene behind her.

The red paint still on Fahey’s brush suggests the immediacy of the painted passage. The fiery sunset is unflinchingly rendered in thick, continuous strokes. Its vibrancy recalls the daily beauty of the city, while offering more than a suggestion of violence.

The vivid evening sky melds with the street scene below, and the now sinister red visually encloses and dramatizes the threat of an upheld fist. In contrast to this urgent threat of violence, a mother and child unconcernedly traverse a pedestrian crossing, heads down, unaware of the vicious attack that plays out before them.

Although they live side by side in this city night, citizens remain estranged from one another, determinedly entrapped in the trials and triumphs of their own banal urban routines.

Fahey captures with lively disorder, the delightful interplay between themes of darkness and light. As a contemporary of fellow female innovators such as Doris Lusk and Rita Angus, Fahey has long been a towering presence in New Zealand art.

Her consistent style coupled with her enduring ability to capture the current has secured her lasting renown. With each painting she produces it is abundantly evident that Fahey has plenty to say. It is the abounding energy of the pulsating colour and line in her works that ensures their own continued, independent discourse with their viewers.

4 Pat Rosier, “Painting Her Life,” Broadsheet, 1984.

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94 Jacqueline Fahey

Encounter with the Past 2008 oil on canvas signed Fahey, dated 2008, and inscribed Encounter with the past in brushpoint lower right 1003 × 1513mm est $25,000 — $35,000 Provenance Private collection, Rotorua. Acquired from Bath Street Gallery, Auckland, c2008.

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95 Jacqueline Fahey

Can Painting Change Anything?

2003 oil on canvas signed FAHEY and dated 2003 in brushpoint lower left 707 × 1220mm est $8,000 — $14,000 Provenance Private collection, Rotorua. Acquired from, Important Paintings and IN 3D Sculpture, Lot 59, Art + Object, Auckland, 22 November 2007.

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Literature Jacqueline Fahey, Something for the birds (Auckland University Press: Auckland, 2006), 114.

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96 Jacqueline Fraser

That Misogynist Gucci Crow Holds Her

Eyes Open With Super Glue, Sucker 2005 sequins, paper, synthetic wig, mesh and plastic on cloth signed Jacqueline Fraser and dated 12.8.2005 in ink verso 2265 × 970mm est $18,000 — $28,000 Webb's

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ST E P I N TO A WO R L D O F

EXTRA MELLOW FLAVOURS

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By bidding at auction you agree to be bound by these terms.

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The conditions that are listed below contain terms that are used regularly and may need explanation. They are as follows:

3.2. Catalogue and Other Descriptions All statements by Webb’s in the catalogue entry for the property or in the condition report, or made orally or in writing elsewhere, are statements of opinion and are not to be relied upon as statements of fact. Such statements do not constitute a representation, warranty or assumption of liability

by Webb’s of any kind. References in the catalogue entry to the condition report to damage or restoration are for guidance only and should be evaluated by personal inspection by the bidder or a knowledgeable representative.

The absence of such a reference does not imply that an item is free from defects or restoration, nor does a reference to particular defects imply the absence of any others. Estimates of the selling price should not be relied on as a statement that this is the price at which the item will sell or it’s value for any other purpose.

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The contract for the sale of the property is therefore made between the Seller and the Buyer.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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

5.5.

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

5.6.

Remedies for Non-Payment If the Buyer fails to make full payment immediately, Webb’s is entitled to exercise one or more of the following rights or remedies (in addition to asserting any other rights or remedies available under the law) 5.6.1. to charge interest at such a rate as we shall reasonably decide.

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

5.6.3. to cancel the sale.

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

140

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

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

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

5.6.8. to reject at any future auction any bids made by or on behalf of the Buyer or to obtain a deposit from the Buyer prior to accepting any bids.

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

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

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

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

Webb's

5.7.

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 2021

the publication of the catalogue was unreasonably expensive or impractical or likely to have caused damage to the property. the benefits of the warranty are not assignable and shall apply only to the original buyer of the lot as shown on the invoice originally issued by Webb’s when the lot was sold at Auction. the Original Buyer must have remained the owner of the lot without disposing of any interest in it to any third party.

The Buyer’s sole and exclusive remedy against the Seller in place of any other remedy which might be available, is the cancellation of the sale and the refund of the original purchase price paid for the lot less the buyer’s premium which is non-refundable. Neither the Seller nor Webb’s will be liable for any special, incidental nor consequential damages including, without limitation, loss of profits.

The Buyer must give written notice of claim to us within thirty days of the date of the Auction. The Seller shall have the right, to require the Buyer to obtain two written opinions by recognised experts in the field, mutually acceptable to the Buyer and Webb’s to decide whether or not to cancel the sale under warranty. the Buyer must return the lot to Seller in the same condition that it was purchased.

8. Severability If any part of these Conditions of Sale is found by any court to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable, that part shall be discounted and the rest of the Conditions shall continue to be valid to the fullest extent permitted by law.

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

10.

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 presale estimates and starting prices.

12.

Sale Results

Webb’s will provide auction results, which will be available as soon as possible after the sale. Results will include buyer’s premium.

These results will be posted at www.webbs.co.nz.

13.

Goods and Service Tax

GST is applicable on the hammer price in the case where the seller is selling property that is owned by an entity registered for GST. GST is also applicable on the hammer price in the case where the seller is not a New Zealand resident. These lots are denoted by a dagger symbol † placed next to the estimate.

GST is also applicable on the buyer’s premium.

Overseas buyers and buyers nonresident in New Zealand will not be charged GST on both hammer price and premiums under the following conditions: 13.1. The items are exported through a Webb’s approved freight company including New Zealand Post 13.2. The items are exported within 60 days of the date of the sale.

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.

141

Index of Artists

A Angus, Rita

R 54-55, 107

B Banksy 118-121 Bensemann, Leo 42, 43, 44-45 Binney, Don 34, 108-109 Brown, Nigel 35 C Casson, Simon Clairmont, Philip Cleveland, Les Cotton, Shane

130 30, 31 29 56, 58-59, 80, 88

D Dashper, Julian Driver, Don

128 40 89 62-63

S Scott, Ian Shannon, Marie Smither, Michael

Stichbury, Peter Straka, Heather

64-65 115 33, 74-75, 130, 131 28 66

T Todd, Yvonne

37

V 47-53 131

F Fahey, Jacqueline Fomison, Tony Fraser, Jacqueline

Ryan, Thomas Darby Reynolds, John Robinson, Peter Ruscha, Ed

132-136 81-87 37

F

van Hout, Ronnie

122

W Walsh, John Walters, Gordon Wealleans, Rohan Woollaston, Toss Wright, Douglas

90 26, 27 56, 129 77 122

Gimblett, Max 60 Goldie, Charles Frederick 116-117 H Hammond, Bill 27, 76 Hanly, Pat 26, 78-79 Henderson, Louise 101-106 Hirst, Damien 28 Hunt, Matt 110-113 K Kusama, Yayoi

100

M Maddox, Allen Maw, Liz McCahon, Colin Mrkusich, Milan

32 41 46, 91-99 72-73

N Nin, Buck

123-127

P Pardington, Fiona 36 Parekōwhai, Michael 61 Peryer, Peter 57, 114 Pick, Séraphine 67-71

Webb's

August

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Absentee Bid Form

Auctions Private Sales Valuations +64 9 529 5600 auction@webbs.co.nz

In order to register to bid with Webb’s please complete this form and scan or email to auction@webbs.co.nz

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

Bidder #

(Please Print Clearly)

(Office Use Only)

Email (Please provide for invoice purposes)

Address (PO Box not sufficient)

City

Auction # & Title (Please Print Auction & Title Here)

Postcode Telephone Number(s)

1

2

(In Order of Preference)

Lot Number (in order)

Catalogue Description

Maximum Bid Not including buyer’s premium or GST

I authorise Webb’s to register bids on a per lot basis up to the maximum price I have indicated for each lot.

I will not hold Webb’s responsible for any errors that occur.

I understand that if my bid is successful, the purchase price will be the sum of my final bid plus the buyer’s premium of 17.5% of the final bid price plus any GST payable on the buyers premium, as indicated in the catalogue. GST will be charged on the buyer’s premium.

I have read and accepted Webb’s terms and conditions as printed in the catalogue and online at www.webbs.co.nz. Bids will not be processed unless this form is signed.

Signature

Date

martell xo

Mark your martell xo martell xo fining Moments Mark your Mark your ENJOY RESPONSIBLY efining Moments Defining Moments ENJOY RESPONSIBLY

ENJOY RESPONSIBLY

21/7/20 5:22 pm

THE ART OF REVEALING NATURE

PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY

Colin McCahon Jump E4, 1973