Cover Story
New Zealand renaissance
by Amanda Spratt
It’s ours, it’s rising in value and we’re sitting on it.
New Zealand renaissance
It’s ours, it’s rising in value and we’re sitting on it.
Amanda Spratt
New Zealander bought what may be the most expensive donkey the country has ever seen.
For $112,000 – more than twice its expected price – the unknown male collector secured the well-known Anzac painting Simpson and His Donkey, by New Zealand war artist Horace Moore-Jones.
At Webb’s in Auckland this year, a 1960s Tattersfield Maori Legend rug – of the kind still seen in Salvation Army stores around the nation – sold for $3000. The same retro auctions feature an original L&P bottle and a tin of Kiwi shoe polish.
And there were gasps at new auction house Art+Object recently as works by the likes of Stephen Bambury soared past their reserve prices and into the $50,000 range.
It’s New Zealand art, but not quite as we’ve known it before.
“We are,” says Art+Object co-director Hamish Coney, “in the middle of a visual arts renaissance. More people are going to see art and there’s more to see, and the quality and diversity of the art is amazing.
“Five years ago when you got an invite to a gallery opening you’d stick it on the fridge and count down the days. Now I struggle to make it to all the openings every weekend.”
Never before, say those in the industry, has interest by Kiwis in Kiwi-made been this strong. Forget Victorian dining-room chairs and ostentatious antique vases; think sleek 1970s sideboards, ancient Maori artefacts and a Michael Parekowhai photograph.
Local art and design, says auctioneer Dunbar Sloane Jr, has well and truly shrugged off the cultural cringe.
“This country is waking up and buying their own heritage back,” says Sloane. “Twenty years ago people thought anything made here was rubbish. Now people are realising that it’s getting rare, so there’s lots of demand, and they’re prouder of their history.
“There’s a generation now that regards New Zealand as their home and doesn’t look back to England as much. Our parents and their grandparents still thought England was home.”
Last year, the art market turnover hit about $50 million and it’s still climbing, while younger artists such as Shane Cotton, Seraphine Pick and John Pule are now being mentioned in the same conversations as Ralph Hotere and Bill Hammond.
And have you looked in Grandma’s china cabinet lately? You should: 1970s dinner sets and stylised 1950s advertising posters – the likes of which, says Coney, are still found in the neighbour’s junk sale and family estates – have surged in value.
“It’s like the L&P ad – world-famous in New Zealand is famous enough for us,” says Coney. “I’ve grown up around the increasing assertiveness of New Zealand culture and the arts, just like we’ve seen in fashion and film. The general attitude to the role of artists in society has changed.”
The buyers, too, have changed, says Coney’s colleague Ben Plumbly. Auction houses are now looking to trade in the mum-and-dad buyers for younger models.
“There are young people who enjoy it and have money. You don’t have to be 50 years old living in Kohimarama to buy art. You can come along and have a bloody fun night and go home with something really nice for a couple of hundred dollars.”
That’s why Plumbly, Coney and partners Ross Millar and James Parkinson have set up Art+Object (see box page 18) in what Coney calls Auckland’s “West Bank”. Tucked away in an industrial area of Newton better known for its sex workers than its art collectors, it’s a far cry from Remmers, but just round the corner are galleries like Artspace and Starkwhite, catalysts in establishing the area as a hub for contemporary art.
Others are following suit. Dunbar Sloane Jr and Sr, who opened in Auckland about six years ago, are moving to a new warehouse in the area and Webb’s, still in Epsom, has lifted its presence in the contemporary art category.
“People like me who were born in the 60s and 70s who’ve bought their first home are coming to a place where they’re looking at enriching their homes in new ways,” says Webb’s general manager Sophie Coupland. “And we want work that speaks about who we are as a culture and who we are as individuals in that culture.”
But, says Coupland, it’s not just young buyers who are embracing the trend described as “contemporary eclectic”.
“There are those who are older and want to redesign their big old Remuera houses. We have absolutely moved away from the austere house with no ledges to put anything on. But we are not going to revert to the over-the-top Royal Worcester Copenhagen vase, either.”
The new energy in the auction market is also behind the shift, says Hawke’s Bay Museum and Art Gallery director Douglas Lloyd Jenkins. And just as younger buyers in the property market are gentrifying less-desirable suburbs, younger art collectors are looking beyond the traditional.
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