Auction Summary
Posted on 15 August 2014
Just over a week on from the mid-Winter major art auction of Important Paintings and Contemporary Art, ART+OBJECT is delighted to report an auction total of $1.45 million and announce new record prices for Billy Apple, Ans Westra and Dame Ngaio Marsh. Taken together with the April auction, which realised $1.8 million, ART+OBJECT comfortably leads the market for sales of major New Zealand art works at auction in 2014.
The catalogue was perhaps most notable for the inclusion of many major modern and contemporary paintings with impeccable and interesting provenance. Among these were Billy Apple's seminal transactional painting, Sold. The artist will be the subject of a major and long-overdue retrospective at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki in 2015. From the collection of the well-known buying collective The Future Group, Sold had been requested by exhibition curator Tina Barton for the retrospective and identified as a key work from the artist's Transaction series. It sold for an unprecedented price at auction of $58 625. Ralph Hotere's The Wind II was the second Song Cycle Banner to be presented to the market in as many auction catalogues. It featured in Gregory O'Brien's publication 'Hotere: Out the Black Window' and sold in a negotiated sale for $170 000. Colin McCahon's Homage to Ingres was gifted by McCahon to his then-dealer Don Wood and has resided in his collection ever since. It sold for $87 935.
Other noteworthy results include: Michael Parekowhai , Amiens ($23 450); Don Driver, Soft Hanging No. I ($15 240); Dick Frizzell, The Magpies ($23 450); Colin McCahon, Waterfall ($51 590); Seraphine Pick, Hideout ($58 625); Stephen Bambury, "It Recalled the Immaterialty of the Universe" ($44 555); Peter McIntyre, Start of the Roundup ($37 520); Michael Smither, Hapuka ($75 040); Colin McCahon, Helensville ($84 420); Paul Dibble, Soft Geometric ($58 625); John Pule, Arcadia ($22 275); Francis Newton Souza, Hampstead Terraces ($84 420), R. N Field, Untitled – The Cottage in Spring ($11 135), Peter Robinson, Bare Essentials ($28 140) and Ans Westra, Untitled ($9025).
We now welcome consignments for our final auction of Important Paintings and Contemporary Art scheduled for November 27th. Early consignments include important works by Richard Killeen, Don Binney, Colin McCahon and Milan Mrkusich. Director of Art, Ben Plumbly will be visiting Wellington in the coming weeks conducting appraisals for the auction catalogue.
Ben Plumbly:
021 222 8183 or ben@artandobject.co.nz
