New Zealand Art Auction Sale Reviews

There are very few changes you can make to the auction formula to make it different and interesting for buyers.  When there are so many demands on time and money, clients don’t want to come and sit through long sales – they want it short and sharp, they want jazzy illustrated catalogues with lots of magazine-style pictures, they want convenient parking so they can nip in and out and most of all, they want catering at the auction, definitely wine, but food is even better. 

The final sale for 2019 by International Art Centre, held on 27 November was titled Modern and Contemporary. Although IAC had held a major sale just 4 weeks prior, they were able to consign 170 lots of mainly low to mid range paintings with a few higher value items included. Following the trend from Art + Object the night before, the crowd at IAC was noticeably fewer than usual, numbering about 60 when the auction started. However a large number of clients had left bids and others were bidding on the phone as expected at this time of year.

Owning and running an auction house is one of the most demanding jobs around. The constant pressure to hold sales, consign stock and get good results in a small and highly competitive market is immense. The analogy of a duck swimming is often used to describe the inner workings of an auction house; everything looking calm and serene on top, but staff fiercely treading water down below.

The staff at Art + Object must have felt like ducks on a pond this month, holding their Important Paintings and Contemporary Art Sale, just three weeks after their McCahon/Friedlander sale, and having the print deadline for Important Paintings fall right on their McCahon sale weekend. To make their job even harder, they had offered their high value McCahon consignments for the previous sale and were consigning for the end of the year sale, from clients whose thoughts have turned to the holiday season.

In order to recognise the 100 year anniversary of the birth of Colin McCahon, Art + Object have spent the last year consigning for a sale simply titled ‘An Auction Event’, a tag line grand enough to be worthy of New Zealand’s most national and internationally significant artist. Colin McCahon was a prolific artist, whose work appears regularly at auction. However to balance the risk of holding a sale of just one artist’s work which sells at a fairly high price point, Art + Object were able to secure the petite collection of eminent New Zealand photographer Marti Friedlander to make a 50 lot sale that was held on 5 November 2019 in Auckland, with two matching catalogues housed in a slipcase.

Setting an end of year sale date can be a difficult thing – it’s a juggle between having enough time to consign stock after the August round of sales, and not setting the date too late into the December period when the buyer’s minds have turned to Christmas parties and extended summer holidays. Usually a date in the last week of November or first few days of December is selected however the International Art Centre surprised the market this year by bringing their Important and Rare Art sale forward by a month.

The sale of the Noel and Margaret Dick collection held on 12 June 2019 in Wellington was heralded as the last substantial private collection of its type to be offered for sale in New Zealand. Wellington has certainly had its fair share of blockbuster collections, offering The Les and Milly Paris Collection (over two parts in 2012 and 2018), and the Frank and Lyn Corner Collection in 2018. While the Dick Collection was not quite of the same quality or quantity as these other two collections which sold over $5.5 million and $2.1 million respectively, the Wellington-centric audience were out in force pushing numerous works well over their estimates and paying some incredibly strong prices.

The first section of the Important & Rare Art sale at the International Art Centre in Auckland on 9 April consisted of 33 lots of contemporary New Zealand painting including a mini collection of Peter Stichbury works, comprising a painting, two pencil studies and one giclee print from an edition of 100.

Top price amongst the four works of $56,000 was for the wide-eyed painting of New Zealand child actress Anna Paquin 2004 (lot 10) that in 2005 adorned the cover of Pavement magazine. The following lot, a mechanically produced giclee print Glister 2008 (lot 11) sold for $4,000 while the two drawings from 2005 went for $4,750 and $7,500.

The small carefully curated sale of only 74 works in a range of media of the Important Paintings and Contemporary Art in Auckland on 4 April 2019 got off to a good start with two works by Dunedin based artist Kushana Bush selling well. Kushana Bush is without doubt one of the most amazing woman artists working in New Zealand at the present time.

Both works were from an Australian collection and had been purchased from the Brett McDowell Gallery in Dunedin. Warble Stretch (lot 1) sold for $5,900, just below the upper estimate of $6,500 while a slightly less complex work Pelican Stretch (lot 2) sold for $4.400.

The new owners of the Webb's brand have pumped in a lot of time, energy, thought and money to turn around the ever so slightly tarnished brand of the former Mossgreen-Webb's auction house in recent times.

Preceded by industry gossip, on Monday April 1 Webb's announced they had acquired Bowerbank Ninow the gallery / auction house established in late 2015 by two former Webb’s employees.

In the intervening period Bowerbank Ninow had held a regular monthly changing exhibition and 3 to 4 auctions a year, usually around a theme or focused idea and New Zealand photography of the 19th and 20th century was a field in which they specialised.

On the day the merger was announced, Bowerbank Ninow had two auctions scheduled for two days later on April 3.