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Up Close in Auckland

August 10, 2011 by Marion Maneker

ArtForum sends a Kiwi back home to report on the Auckland Art Fair. Anthony Byrt adds some insight into the New Zealand market and its astonishing numbers:

[T]he fact is, New Zealanders like buying. But they tend to collect within a narrow range—mostly local artists, with a few Australians thrown in. The result is a humid little microclimate of a market where artists with little profile beyond Australasia command prices way out of step with what they could achieve internationally. (It’s also pretty common for overseas visitors to choke on their cocktails when they’re told a work’s price.) This is a dangerous game, particularly for young artists, because once their prices are set too high at home, it becomes very difficult for them to find success elsewhere. […] Back at the fair, the late greats Colin McCahon and Gordon Walters were still ruling as market heavyweights, with the very-much-present Billy Apple not far behind. Thirty-something artists like Rohan Wealleans, Ricky Swallow, and Francis Upritchard were attracting plenty of attention too, and Yvonne Todd—whose work at Peter McLeavey was one of the fair’s highlights—is still superb. Although when it came to pleasing crowds, Brett Graham trumped everyone with his work Mihaia—a military tank carved from MDF. But really, art fairs are only ever about one thing. When I asked a dealer on Saturday night how much work he’d managed to sell, he gave me a typically deadpan New Zealand response that also seemed to be the consensus: “fucking heaps.”

Fair Weather (Scene&Herd/ArtForum)

Kiri Te Kanawa Makes Money on Goldie

November 19, 2010 by Marion Maneker

The art market is strong everywhere as this story from New Zealand shows. Dame Kiri Te Kanawa got a record price for her Charles Frederick Goldie painting of a sleeping Maori:

Forty Winks was the only painting Goldie did of Rutene Te Uamairangi, a Kingite Warrior of Taupo. It sold to a private New Zealand buyer for $573,000 – a record auction price for a Goldie. […]

International Art Centre director Richard Thomson said it was one of several paintings to sell for a record price in an environment largely unaffected by the recession. Mr Thomson said one highly encouraging aspect of the sale in the bidding for Dame Kiri’s Goldie was that there were so many genuine buyers in the $400,000 range.

“It is a very strong market.” Goldie paintings were as sound an investment as anything in the art market, he said. “I think it will be a million-dollar painting one day. “There is no sign of the recession in the art market. It is a solid and safe place to put your money.”

Big Spenders Drive Art Market to New Highs (New Zealand Herald)

New Zealand Has Strong Auction Season

April 13, 2009 by Marion Maneker

“Right when the economy is seemingly at a low point, the art market is stronger than I’ve known it in a few years”

Ben Plumbly, quoted above, couldn’t believe the strength of the his own auction house’s $1.7 million sale last week according to the New Zealand Herald:

Experts say the sales may be a sign of a recovering economy. “There was a sense of overall relief because with all the gloom and doom and with no one really knowing what’s happening with the economy, we were pretty nervous,” says Art + Object’s Ben Plumbly. [ . . . ]

Gow Langsford Gallery owner John Gow says the private sector of the art world has been “ticking along nicely” as well. “Art is a tangible asset … and there aren’t many things out there like that. You can have it, enjoy it, take a long-term view on it and then sometime in the future realise on it – and if you’ve bought a good painting and the artist does well, then you’ll probably do financially well out of it, too.”

The Art of Investment (New Zealand Herald)

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