In an island nation made up of two parts our sense of isolation can be quite acute, with Australia over there and Chile way over in the other direction and Antarctica way down south, sometimes it feels like we are at the end of the earth.
The Real Art Roadshow was a wonderful privately funded initiative to demolish the cultural isolation that can develop, even on two relatively small islands.
The mastermind behind the travelling roadshow was Fiona Campbell, who with a small team of advisers put together a ''big rig'' filled with some hard core fresh art which hit the road over a ten year period taking the show around New Zealand schools.
In total over 700 schools were visited, over 300,000 total visitors were exposed to a challenging 72 square metres of carefully curated contemporary New Zealand Art. What a vision, what an exercise, and what an achievement. The auction, like the roadshow was full of surprises.
With over $21 million having been spent on the secondary New Zealand Art market already this year, getting all the big ticket items away was not going to be an easy task and as a result some key works were passed in. The highest price on the night went to Toss Woollaston's large oil painting Nelson Landscape (lot 66) which sold for $82,500, while Pat Hanly's Lunar Lover (lot 60) sold to a Rotorua collector for $70,000.
Michael Parakowhai's Bosom of Abraham (lot 13) sold well at $12,750 and Tony de Lautour's revisionist painting from 1999 Shore Party (lot 23) went for $6,250.
One of the oldest works in the collection, a large oil on canvas by Ian Scott, entitled Homage to Morris Louis (lot 43) attracted plenty of bids selling well at $45,000.
Two black and white series of graphic works by James Robinson attracted very keen bids from the floor and phone, with lot 117 selling above the top end of the estimate for $8,000 and a smaller three panel work for $3,400.
A big surprise right towards the end of the sale was a pencil drawing by Gavin Chilcott (lot 147) which attracted spirited bidding and sold well above the top estimate of $1,200, selling for $1,800. In the past, his works have tended to languish at auction, but this work might herald a new awakening
In all, the sale total on the night was over $1 million which just goes to show there are a few good miles left in the roadshow artworks, with most going to new homes.
''An important feature of this auction was the noticeable increase in internet bidding compared to any of our previous art auction sales'' said Hamish Coney Managing Director of A +O. "There was internet bidding on nearly 20% of the lots on offer and successful internet bids contributed around 10% of total sales, generating over $100,000". He concluded ''we know that online bidding is the way of the future for a lot of people and it appears that although it is just a little bit late, the future has now arrived with the Real Art Roadshow.''
