News Bites — Current Year
It's petite and its contemporary
A Petite Contemporary Art auction – designed by Leonard Joel to highlight quality contemporary art pieces that deserve showcasing – will be held from 2pm Thursday July 30 at 333 Malvern Road, South Yarra.
Numbering only 40 art works with estimates ranging from only a few hundred dollars, this boutique auction is particularly aimed at bringing younger buyers to the art market with pieces that should have broad appeal.
Of particular note is Rona Green’s Pretty Boys 2005 (Lot 1
Other works of interest include Ron Mueck’s It’s a Girl! 2006 limited edition key ring (Lot 14
Dan Withey’s They Tell Me 2000 acrylic on wood is another exciting piece, while Justin Fluerring’s Facial Forms (Blue) 2015 (Lot 18
Other highlights include Tracy Dods Shadow Bondi 2003 oil on canvas (Lot 20
Sale Referenced: Petite Contemporary Art Auction, Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 30/07/2015
(By , 26 Jul 2015)
Australian institutions still pecking away at relevant works on paper.
Josef Lebovic's latest Australiana Collectors list shows that the institutions are still pecking away at a lower level with 20 of the 40 entries sold going in that direction, all of them logical acquisitions.
The Gladstone Regional Art Gallery, for example bought an engraving after William Westall View of (the local) Wrack-Reef Bank, taken at Low Water, 1814 priced at $1100. The State Library of NSW acquired a c.1829 lithographed Panorama of Sydney after Robert Burford priced at $1350 and the poster Pure Milk in Sealed Bottle. a poster c 1911.
The Certified Pure Milk Company went into liquidation in August that year after being fined for selling adulterated milk. The price a mere $660.
At the same price Canberra' Museum of Democracy secured a postcard of Vida Goldstein relating to the Senate Election Vote for Women. Goldstein was a suffragette.
The National Library of Australia has taken a group of eight albumen paper photographs ($4,400). of Sydney Street traders including a Paddy's Market shoe black.
(By Terry Ingram, 9 Apr 2013)
The Australian Art Sales Digest 2011 Edition (book version)
The Australian Art Sales Digest 2011 Edition (book version) lists all 2010 art auction sales in Australia and New Zealand, and summarises all sales results for the last 10 years.
Price is $110.00 within Australia or $140.00 to New Zealand including postage. Click here for order form. This is the final printed version of the Australian Art Sales Digest, and as from 2012 the Australian Art Sales Digest will only be available online.
(By John Furphy, 5 Aug 2012)
Battle Ready in Adelaide
Adelaide auction house Theodore Bruce, newly independent of its former shareholder Tim Goodman, who now operates Sotheby’s Australia, has plenty in the pipeline.
A return to providing South Australians with a full auction service, rather than cherry picking material to send to the eastern states, should bolster the firm’s regular fine art and antiques offerings.
Then there’s the Strehlow sale scheduled for March 14, which as well as four paintings by Albert Namatjira includes an exceptional Otto Pareroultja and other work by Hermannsburg artists. There are also important pictures by John Gardner, a colleague of Hermannsburg school mentor Rex Battarbee in the 1930s, which are based on Strehlow’s early photographs of Aboriginal sacred ceremonies.
And in another coup the firm will offer on March 6 an amazing collection of World War II Ferrets - formidable light armoured vehicles equipped with Rolls-Royce engines which saw service mainly towards the end of the war in desert campaigns .
The collection comprises four vehicles - one of which, a Ferret D Mark II, comes complete with smoke launcher, periscope and fitted military radio. There’s even a warehouse full of motors, gearboxes and other spare parts, all carefully greased and stored.
Most hairdressers settle for something gently sporty like a Toyota Celica, but not Egyptian born Robert Chabert, it seems, who has now loosed his battle-ready Ferrets onto the market. Chabert hopes to sell the collection as one lot - perhaps to a museum. The individual vehicles are worth $20,000 to $25,000 each, the auctioneer says, but the whole collection should fetch $120,000 to $150,000.
It should be enough to put militaria buffs into transports of delight.
(By Peter Fish, 23 Feb 2010)
Biggest Little Sale In Town.
Whilst the major auction houses have drastically reduced the number of works they offer in their major sales, (Bonhams and Goodman's May sale comprised 54 lots), the prize for the smallest art sale by number of lots with it's own dedicated full colour illustrated catalogue for 2009, goes to Charles Leski Auctions, whose December 15 sale comprised 39 lots.
Better known for selling sporting and general memorabilia, stamps, coins and banknotes, the sale was put together for Charles Leski Auctions by Peter Struthers, formerly head of Art at Leonard Joel, and it neatly completes the circle, as it follows two art sales by Charles Leski Auctions in 2008, curated by John Albrecht, now CEO and Head of Art at Leonard Joel.
Of the 39 lots offered, 22 were provenanced to the collection of the late Dr. George Bearham, a Collins Street Melbourne obstetrician and gynaecologist who died in 1994.
All 22 paintings from the Bearham collection sold. These ranged from minor watercolours sold for as little as $160 up to $11,000 for Hans Heysen's Arkabu (Lot 27).
Top price was Arthur Streeton's The Rose Garden (Lot 3) which sold for $37,500, provenanced to a private collection in Hobart.
In total, 29 of the 39 lots offered were sold, and the sale grossed $96,650.
[All prices shown are hammer.]
(By Supplied, 20 Dec 2009)