The Odyssey Group is an art buying collective of 15 members, established 10 years ago with the purpose of pooling funds to acquire premier works. The Collection captures the essence of New Zealand contemporary art from the last decade and contains key examples by John Pule, Elizabeth Thomson and Heather Straka.
Art & Object have established quite a niche in presenting collections formed by art buying collectives having offered The ART+TEXT, The Hanging Around Group and The Tempus Collection group over the last couple of years. By presenting collections such as this to auction it solves the problem of disbanding the items equitably as well as enabling collective participants to keep any items that they may have grown to love.
The Odyssey Group Collection is by no means the only item of interest on July 30. Standouts of the auction are a 1967 Colin McCahon Buttercup Fields Forever IV with a $NZ200,000-300,000 estimate. McCahon holds the record for a New Zealand artist at auction, and with his works selling for well over the $NZ200,000 mark at Deutscher Hackett in Melbourne last year this piece will no doubt be keenly sought after. A Michael Smither, Boys fighting over Plastic Gun ($NZ220,000-320,000) and a Shane Cotton entitled Wake ($NZ230,000-300,000), both with magnificent provenance and exhibition history are also likely to get the paddles waving.
With big ticket items on offer it is sometimes easy to overlook the quirky pieces. Gregor Kregar's Blue Sheep – a sheep wearing a blue jersey with an estimate of $800-$1,400 has the potential to create quite a storm in the rooms!
