Bill Hammond, his sons and their half-brother (left) at Webb Lane, Lyttelton, photographed by Peter McLeavey.
Bill Hammond, his sons and their half-brother (left) at Webb Lane, Lyttelton, photographed by Peter McLeavey.
Pioneering art dealer Peter McLeavey is central to the New Zealand art scene. A new biography reveals insights into some oftheartists he has represented in the past 50 years, including the enigmatic Bill Hammond
Peter McLeavey began to show Lyttelton painter Bill Hammond in 1987, just months before the stockmarket crash. "Laurence Aberhart told Peter to check me out," recalled Hammond, "and Peter rang up and said, 'Can we meet?' That's the thing about Peter - he doesn't just rely on his own taste. He canvasses your opinion. He asks everyone, 'What have you seen lately?' As the famous New York art dealer Leo Castelli remarked of his profession, 'You have to have a good eye but also a good ear'."
The easy-going Hammond soon established a rapport with Peter. "I provided the paintings, and he did his thing. He hung the shows. He used to say to me, 'Bill, you really should realise, a gallery is not a drop-in centre for the artists. It's where I do business. So why don't you take this $5 and go up the road to Silvios second-hand records and find something by The Doors. How can I work with you sitting around here?"'
Initially, Hammond was sometimes surprised by his dealer. "After my second show with him, he said, 'Let's go to the pub'. And I thought, Gee, Peter goes to the pub! So we went up Cuba St to a pub, an old, old, old public bar. He had his big black hat on, his black coat and his briefcase, and I thought, Wow, this is not the pub for Peter. There were about 20 men leaning on the bar, drinking straight out of jugs, and pictures of racehorses round the walls. And Peter said, 'Shall we sit there?' and pointed to the very middle of the room, and he went and got two jugs. But then when he came back he took my hand in his, and he started talking in a very loud voice about developing our relationship. Everyone was listening and I went, Oh hell, this is it! But we polished off those jugs without any trouble and he said, 'Let's get another round,' and the barmaid said to him, 'So, how's the art biz goin', Pete?' And I realised, This is where he drinks! They all knew him there!"
When Peter began to represent him, Hammond had already exhibited for 11 years, mainly at the Brooke Gifford Gallery in Christchurch. He would eventually become one of the most commercially successful of Peter's artists, but it would take time for his paintings to find an audience.
"I'm on the bones of my arse again," he wrote in the lead-up to his fourth show in 1990, "and I'm wondering if you are able to give me a bit of an advance on our Nov. show to keep me going. Would be most grateful if you can manage it. Peter sent a cheque, but the sales from the show barely covered it, much to his surprise. He blamed the economic downturn: 'The market is flat and all over the place these days'."
In fact, this had been a crucial show for Hammond, signalling a fertile new direction in his work. In the previous year he had travelled to the sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands with other artists, including Laurence Aberhart. Their destination was windswept Enderby Island, a former whaling station, which Hammond described as a paradise for birds - a sanctuary free from predators. "You feel like a time traveller," he remarked, "as if you have just stumbled upon it - primeval forests, ratas like Walt Disney would make. It's a beautiful place, but it's also full of ghosts, shipwrecks, death."
Everywhere on the island, birds congregated on the shoreline, gazing out to sea. "You could walk past yellow-eyed penguins with their heads back, their eyes rolled up strangely, their wings raised, then come back three hours later and they would still be there, in exactly the same position, in a beautiful trance-like state."
Returning home, Hammond began a new series inspired by the voyage, some of which were shown at the gallery in 1990. Peter was impressed with the paintings, especially the large Death row, Auckland Islands, and retained the unsold works in stock. Nine months later he wrote to the artist, "I've held off writing for some time. I guess I've been embarrassed by the lack of sales and have been waiting for some good news to give you. No such luck. Yes, it's been a slow year."
Hammond's exhibition late in 1991 was no more successful in terms of sales. "I was thrilled with the show," Peter wrote. "It looked great. And the feedback was very positive ... You are an outstanding artist but the market and people are just behind. Remember; it won't always be like that. As in the case of Toss (and Colin, to mention two locals), the tide will turn. One has to have courage and patience."
In 1993, Hammond began a new suite of paintings, once again influenced by his experience on Enderby Island. He had been studying Walter Buller's book, A History Of The Birds Of New Zealand, and reading about the 19th century trade in native birds that had decimated many rare species and hastened the extinction of the huia. In his new Buller's birds paintings, hybrid bird-figures would become a metaphor for all wronged and threatened creatures: actors on a stage, playing out scenes in an endless drama.
In a bid to promote Hammond, Peter held two exhibitions of his work in 1995. The first, Bill Hammond unplugged, showed pictures from stock; the second presented six recent paintings from the Living large series, which revealed a new degree of subtlety and complexity in his work. In Living large 6, the ghost-like birds, modelled on the huia, gather in expectation around a mysterious and poignant figure - a seated horse who holds a cello at arm's length. Painted in a monochromatic palette of inky blues, Living large 6 - the biggest work in the exhibition - was purchased by Celia Dunlop, one of many Wellington collectors Peter had mentored over the years.
Living large was Hammond's first sell-out show, and by the late 1990s the auction market for his work was booming. His "bird" paintings, with their instantly recognisable imagery and local content, had become highly sought after.
In December 1998, Peter sold a painting entitled Containers for $30,000; less than four years later, it fetched $200,000 at auction. By then, Peter had a waiting list for Hammond's work.
"I wish I had met you four or five years ago," he wrote to a young Auckland collector. "Then I could have shown you a range of Bill's work. That is no longer the case."
Vandalism and desecration of a couch
Book extract:
Peter McLeavey: The Life and Times of a New Zealand Art Dealer by Jill Trevelyan (Te Papa Press $64.99)
In 1991, Peter reached an agreement with the Auckland artist Merylyn Tweedie [also know by various pseudonyms, including the collective called et al]. "I would like to show your work; and handle it, and sell it from my gallery ... I'm very pleased (and excited) that we have made contact." Tweedie, whose work was informed by feminist theory, had been exhibiting since 1975, mainly as a photographer and film-maker. In May 1992, she discussed the arrangements for her first show with Peter, in which she planned to exhibit under a nom-de-plume, Merit Groting.
On the morning of Saturday, June 20, Tweedie arrived in Wellington to install her exhibition over the weekend. Peter was out of town, so he left a key for her at the fruit-seller below; it was not until Monday that he returned to the gallery. When he unlocked the door he was stunned: Tweedie's installation incorporated his chaise longue, now covered in white paint and entitled, in a nod to McCahon, Peter McLeavey sat here too. It was priced at $2000.
Tweedie's exhibition followed a conceptual art tradition: like Billy Apple, she had used features of the gallery to make a work that commented on the fabrication and marketing of art. But, unlike Apple, she had not sought permission first. To Peter, this was vandalism and desecration of his personal property. He was particularly upset about the chaise longue - a gift from a friend, and a deeply personal symbol which linked back to his origins as a dealer ... Early the next morning, the day of the opening, he telephoned Tweedie and cancelled the show. By midday, the work - with the exception of the chaise longue, which was dispatched to the upholsterer - was on its way back to her.
In March the following year, Richard Killeen sent Peter some photographs of a billboard that had recently been installed in Auckland. It showed an image of Tweedie, seated on the painted chaise longue, in the Peter McLeavey Gallery. But by now Peter was philosophical. He wrote to thank Killeen for the images. "I presume that Jim (or Mary) [Barr, renowned Wellington collectors] must have photographed Merylyn reclining on the painted chaise longue in the gallery ... I see both the works as loveletters. A curious thing, but feeding off some sort of passion, or attraction, or need, or hunger."
Years later, Killeen looked back on the Tweedie episode ... "it was one of those mafia-type, horse-head-in-the-bed sort of situations you never forget. People still talk about it. And Peter told the story so well, you know: 'I walked in there, I looked around, then I went and had a cup of coffee, and I came back and I said to Ivan, Get the truck, it's all going out. It's over'."
