Last cab off the rank achieves pretty fine result

By John Perry in Auckland, on 08-Apr-2016

Being the last cab off the rank can have its disadvantages, but it certainly did not affect the well oiled team at Art & Object. All of Aucklands major auction houses had conducted their sales in the days previous to A&O's Important Paintings & Contemporary Art auction on 7 April.

A good crowd of around 100 people attended a finely honed 76 lot auction covering a series of masterworks from the last 60 years or so, and with absentee bids, telephone bidders and the internet all playing key roles in the final outcome of important works, there was never a dull moment.

Being the last cab off the rank can have its disadvantages, but it certainly did not affect the well oiled team at Art & Object. All of Aucklands major auction houses had conducted their sales in the days previous to A&O's Important Paintings & Contemporary Art auction on 7 April. Top price of the evening, $255,000, went to a Colin McCahon work on Steinbach paper from 1976 entitled Rocks in the Sky; Series 2 No 2 Lagoon Muriwai originally in the collection of fellow artist Pat Hanly.

The first real excitement came when a large format (152.4 x 121.2 cm) silkscreen print of Mickey Mouse by Damien Hirst came up for auction. Now I am no big Walt Disney fan but i sure could have added Mickey (Large) (Lot 33 ) 2014 to my collection.

It was a brilliant abstraction of that popular and universal icon right up there with Andy Warhol's "Marilyn''.

This particular print,(a very rare printers proof) had found its way to the A+O saleroom as its owner had worked in London at K2, Hirst's printing factory, and had recently returned to N.Z.The bidding started at $30,000 and rose quickly to $47,000,finally going to a local collector who beat off stiff competition from international phone and internet bidders.

Top price of the evening, $255,000, went to a Colin McCahon work on Steinbach paper from 1976 entitled Rocks in the Sky; Series 2 No 2 Lagoon Muriwai (Lot 40 ) originally in the collection of fellow artist Pat Hanly.

Another much smaller work of McCahon's Truth from the King Country Load Bearing Structure No.1 (Lot 41 ) sold for $57,500.

while two beautifully crafted oil paintings by Michael Illingworth from the 1970's A Matarui Bayscape (Lot 37 ) and Portrait of a Man of Consequence (Lot 38 ) both sold well at $75,000 and $60,000 respectively.

Richard Killeen's striking nine part work Rising and Setting 1979 (Lot 34 ) from the Jim and Mary Barr collection achieved a record price for the artists work at auction,with the bidding starting at $24,000 and rising to $54,000 in a matter of minutes.This was followed by another more recent and complex work of Killeen's Still life with James Joyce (Lot 35 ) which sold for $43,000.

Top price for a photograph went to Fiona Pardington's large format C type print entitled Huia Lover  (Lot 43 ) from 2005 which sold for a staggering $34,000.

A palette knife painting of a Maori Mother and Child (Lot 36 )' from the mid 1960's by Peter McIntyre found by the vendor in an American second hand store sold for a respectful $34,000. Originally in the corporate collection of American Airlines, the painting has a checkered history.

With 45 of the artworks selling on the night and a number bound to go through in the following days, the on the night total of $1,100,000 was a pretty fine result for the last cab off the rank.

All prices shown are hammer prices in $NZ.

Sale Referenced:

About The Author

John Perry is known locally as a collector / consultant / curator/ educator and artist and is a former director of the Rotorua Museum of Art and History. For the last 20 years has worked as an antique dealer specializing in ''man made and natural curiosities'' from an old art deco cinema on the outskirts of Auckland. Over the last 16 years he has developed a multi million dollar collection of 19th and 20th century artworks for the Rotorua Energy Charitable Trust. He recently donated 120 artworks from his collection in various media to the East Southland Art Gallery in Gore. A committed ''art o holic'' he continues to develop collections of New Zealand and International fine art / folk art / ceramics and photography for future usage in a private/public ARTMUSEEUM of NEWSEELAND, not to be confused with Te Papa Museum of New Zealand.

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