Art+Object’s second Important Paintings and Contemporary Art auction of 2023 is headlined by two important private collections, The Fairfield Trust Collection from Wellington, and the collection of sculptor Chris Booth. These two private collections are supplemented by a further seventy odd lots from further anonymous, mixed vendors, including Bill Hammond’s Hokey Pokey 3 from a small and highly sought-after series from the late 1990s. It last appeared at auction in 2008.
The Fairfield Trust Collection opens the auction catalogue and comprises of 39 lots. A Wellington based collection, it features many works with extensive literary and museum history with several works being held on long-term loan at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. There are multiple examples by three of New Zealand’s leading painters Bill Hammond, Ralph Hotere and Colin McCahon. A highlight of the collection is an early McCahon landscape painting formerly in the collection of his friend Toss Woollaston. Other artists to feature in the collection include Patricia France, Tony Fomison, Denis O’Connor and Shane Cotton.
Chris Booth is one of New Zealand’s foremost sculptors and his works are in significant collections all around the globe. His works manifest a deep concern with the way the development of European society has altered the land and spirituality of Aotearoa and how we continue to degrade our natural environment. He was Frances Hodgkins fellow in 1982 where he was mentored by Ralph Hotere. The catalogue features seven works by Hotere from Chris Booth’s collection all dating to around this crucial period in the early 1980s when a proposed aluminium smelter near Hotere’s home in Port Chalmers, Otago prompted some of the best environmental and political art in New Zealand history.
Other works in the catalogue with noteworthy provenance include works from the collection of leading modernist sculptor Molly Macalister. A good friend of Colin McCahon’s, the catalogue includes a beautiful, small Waterfall (Lot 27 ) from 1964 as well as Macalister’s own work entitled Mask (Lot 45 ) in Kauri, which was last seen publicly at her memorial exhibition curated by the late Ron Brownson at Auckland Art Gallery in 1982.
Bill Hammond’s Hokey Pokey 3 (Lot 70 ) is from a small and highly sought-after series from the late 1990s. It has all the hallmarks of his best works and the potential to sell very well. It last appeared at auction in 2008.
Multiple fine examples by some of the artist’s leading painters in Colin McCahon, Ralph Hotere, Allen Maddox and Toss Woollaston will provide a fascinating litmus test for the current state of the New Zealand art market and show how it is tracking in the context an increasingly choppy economy and a looming election.
