Early lots were guaranteed to get the sale off to the right start, including two works by Bill Culbert both included in his recent retrospective exhibition at Auckland Art Gallery and coming off the back of an acclaimed exhibition at dealer gallery Fox Jensen McCrory in Auckland in February this year. Each work was highly desirable in its own way, with Bulb Box, Shadow 1 (Lot 1 ) selling for $13,000 to a consultant in the room and Five Cubes to Black – Daylight to Nightlight (Lot 2 ) doing even better to realise $21,000 to the phone. Both had low estimates of $7,000.
Australian artist Ricky Swallow has long had representation in New Zealand through Hamish McKay gallery in Wellington, and his well-known edition Apple 2000 (Lot 3 ) came from a Wellington collection. This work looked fantastic wrapped around the cover of the auction catalogue and is so tactile leading viewers with the desire to touch it. It sold right on low estimate for $11,000.
Art + Object has always had a strong market for photography and some works in the early section of the sale did well. A new record was set for photographer Mark Adams for his diptych Te Ana o Hineraki – Moa Bone Caves (Lot 9 ) which is shot from the inside those ancient and important caves in Christchurch, which also happen to be the setting for some of Bill Hammond’s cave paintings. Based on recent sales, the estimate of $8,000-$14,000 was fair but phone and online bidders competed to set a final sale price of $24,000. Photographer Peter Peryer who died in 2018 was well known for his exacting and considered approach to his practice and his prices at auction have seen a recent increase for some images. A dramatic silver gelatin image of Ruapehu (Lot 12 ) was offered from the collection of well known collectors Les and Milly Paris, who were great friends and supporters of the artist and exceeded the top estimate of $5,000 to realise $9,000 to a phone bidder.
Buried amongst the physical works in the sale, was the first NFT for the artist Gordon Walters, sold by A+O in collaboration with start up business Glorious. Glorious intends to partner with contemporary practising artists in the future to release their digital works with an NFT attached, but their first two offerings to the market have been digital versions of well known New Zealand artworks already in existence. Cass by Rita Angus (the last available image from the edition of 12) was offered online at IAC a couple of weeks back where it realised $19,000. This time, the Walters edition of Maho (Lot 27 ) was edition number one with the rest of the edition to be sold in an online drop next week. Usually NFT’s are purchased in the cryptocurrency Ethereum but being part of a regular auction meant that this work was sold in NZD and with a buyer’s premium attached. One phone bidder competed with the online buyers and the work sold at its top estimate of $30,000. The buyer of the lot receives a digital image of the work, the NFT and a Samsung TV to display the work at home.
Back to the realm of physical artworks, artist Louise Henderson is having a long overdue moment in the sun, with recent auction and retail prices for her work hitting new heights. The momentum continued in this sale with her painting Untitled (Lot 22 ) consigned with an extremely reasonable estimate of $8,000-$12,000. Her smaller works on paper from the same period have been selling for more than that over the last two years, but it can be different to value works coming into sale while the market re-adjusts to sudden price increases and the new values are bedded in. Underbid by the Gary Langsford, the artist’s dealer, in the room, the work sold for $19,500 to the private client.
Another work with a Gow Langsford connection was Andy Warhol’s original 1972 screenprint Mao (Lot 26 ). Warhol’s works offered in New Zealand usually comprise the Sunday B. Morning editions which sell in the low thousands of dollars but this work had an estimate of $60,000-$80,000 and unsurprisingly had phone bidding from the USA, and clients online and in the room. Starting off at $50,000, the auctioneer slowly got the bids to the low estimate and at that point the room bidders entered and it became a duel between them and the overseas phone bidder who was doing some quick conversions into US dollars as they were bidding. The work sold to a couple in the room who paid $80,000 – a hefty increase on the $25,000 which was paid from Gow Langsford in 1999.
The market for Ralph Hotere is starting to move again with prices becoming more buoyant across all ends of the market. Art + Object’s sale had two major paintings included of which Black Window (Lot 34 ) was well contested. This painting from one of the artist’s most commercially desirable series was well provenanced, having been selected for the 1984 Sydney Biennale and not being on the open market previously. A starting bid of $100,000 had been left online and one of the changes to the market with the introduction of online bidding platforms is that the leading online absentee bid left is visible to all prior to the auction commencing. Bidding commenced at this figure between the room and the phone and in the end the phone was successful at $150,000 which was $20,000 over low estimate.
Bill Hammond continues his meteoric rise in the secondary market, with strong results in the last year, encouraging more works to come to market. Like Louise Henderson, with the market in ascendency, accurate estimates can be difficult to provide and therefore the value for Watching for Buller (Lot 36 ) looked positively light compared to its final selling price. The work was last traded in 2013 when it went unsold with an estimate of $45,000-$65,000 and was purchased post auction. This time round it went to market with an estimate of $60,000-$80,000 and sold after a heated bidding duel between numerous parties for $114,000, the appeal of the small scale domestic size work was undeniable.
Sculpture has always fared well at Art + Object and his sale contained works by auction room favourites Paul Dibble and Terry Stringer. An elegant and elongated sculpture by Paul Dibble, Geometric Figure No.4 (Lot 44 ) ticked all the boxes for clients when it sold for $90,000 against an $80,000 reserve and a three sided work by Terry Stringer The Head is a Theatre of Dreams (Lot 71 ) which was lotted towards the end of the sale, looked very good sitting right beside the rostrum and netted a handy $16,000 hammer price for the vendor who had originally paid about $4,000 for it in 2005.
This sale at Art + Object didn’t contain as many of the blockbuster paintings we have become accustomed to seeing in recent years so the overall sales total was down when compared to sales in 2021, but as always the good works found homes at strong prices. The sale total after the auction was $1,497,550 hammer price with a clearance rate of 63%, results more reminiscent of pre 2020 auctions but good result all the same.
All prices are in $NZ and are hammer prices unless otherwise noted.
