Saleroom: Hotere prediction fulfilled

By DON MILNE

The wisest prophets," said the 18th-century writer and politician Horace Walpole, "make sure of the event first."

So it was no great insight last March, in the light of the flood of attention planned to be given last year to the man many regard as our greatest living artist, for this column to ask: is this the year for Ralph Hotere?

Well, it was, in spades.

Even the most modest works by Hotere sold briskly throughout the year. And his finer works reached what many thought would be a peak in June when Auckland publisher Barry Colman paid $210,000 (hammer price) at Peter Webb Galleries for Vive Aramoana, a record for any living New Zealand artist.

Add in the 10 per cent buyer's premium and GST, and that comes to $233,625 - a goodly price for a picture to hang in Hotere's favourite watering hole, Carey's Bay Hotel in Port Chalmers. Colman and his wife have bought and are renovating the 1874 landmark and the Hotere will have pride of place - a far cry from the Kelleher Art Prize material that used to feature in so many New Zealand pubs.

Came December, Webb's again, and a private collector - who made the spectacular, and so often successful, move of holding back while two other protagonists battled it out - took another fine Hotere, Towards Aramoana, with just one bid.

His offer of $235,000, $5000 up on the previous hard-fought bid, knocked both other contestants out. Adding in premium and GST, the total amounted to just over $260,000. And the work will stay in New Zealand.

Earlier that month, Dunbar Sloane had got $180,000 (before premium and GST) for one of Hotere's corrugated iron works, Aurora/Aramoana. The Hotere year certainly ended on a high note.

So whose year will it be in 2003?

Works by the Lyttelton painter Bill Hammond - especially those with his trademark bird-human figures - continued to sell well, and could climb even higher this year.

But there was a dearth of good works by the man regarded as the third in the triumvirate of best living artists, Pat Hanly. That market has not really been tested, as it has for Hotere and Hammond. Will auction attract exceptional Hanly works this year to see him set records?

The International Art Centre set several records during the year, including an oil by Aucklander Peter Siddell for $89,000 and a Taranaki landscape by Michael Smither which reached $64,000 (premiums and GST included).

In December, Webb's set a record for a work by the late Edward Bullmore (1933-78), a Canterbury artist whose reputation in Britain, where he spent many years, used to outrank that here.

Bullmore, who might have been an All Black (he was a rugged, take-no-prisoners prop for Canterbury, Auckland and Bay of Plenty), chose art instead. His powerful oil of a Maori family, painted around 1958, fetched $100,000, against the estimate of $40,000 to $60,000. Will more of his early works now surface?

Long-established Wellington auctioneer Dunbar Sloane is now firmly set up in Auckland, with its eponymous principal (third of the name associated with the firm) making his home here. His art sales, always interesting, offered something for everyone, from cheap but attractive works by unknown artists to McCahons, Hoteres and Hammonds, with the latter's work Containers fetching a record $205,000 in May.

But the highlight of the Dunbar Sloane year had to be the artefact sale in November, which included much of the Maori collection of Wellington-born London dealer K. Athol Webster.

That sale, of nearly 500 lots, totalled $2.1 million. Many world records for particular artefacts were set, but the highlight was an East Coast pre-contact putorino (bugle flute).

Estimated at from $40,000 to $80,000, it was knocked down for $135,000. Which goes to show that while demand may be strong for works by the finest contemporary artists, it is also exceptional for the creations of those early, unnamed artists who worked in wood and stone before this land was colonised - not primitive, but art of the highest order.