Saleroom: White show should push up demand

By DON MILNE


There is nothing quite like a major exhibition to create saleroom interest in an artist's work.

So the Hocken Library's fine Island Life: Robin White in New Zealand and Kiribati on show at the Auckland Art Gallery is bound to increase interest in an artist who has never really been out of fashion.

Her early screen-prints and paintings strike a resonant chord with many New Zealanders, as do the works of an artist rather more neglected in recent years, Don Binney.

Binney, too, is the subject of a retrospective, sponsored by Dunbar Sloane and now at the Dowse Gallery in Lower Hutt. Aucklanders will see it next year.

White's prints have been selling for around $1500, but last month's affordable art sale at Webb's saw two reach $2700, one go for $2800, and a fourth, At the Bay, Portobello, hit $4100 (hammer prices, before 10 per cent buyer's premium and GST). Time will tell if her works from Kiribati, where she spent two decades, will attract such interest; one feels they should.

Dunbar Sloane has three works by White in his sale tonight, as well as more than a dozen works, many of them prints, by Tony Fomison, from the artist's estate. A four-panel wooden screen by Bill Hammond is estimated at from $180,000 to $220,000, while there is an interesting collection of early watercolours by Richard A. Oliver, who was captain of HMS Fly which carried out the first detailed hydrographic survey of New Zealand. They are expected to sell at between $2500 and $6000.

Webb's sale next Tuesday also has some fine early works, including a rare watercolour by George French Angas produced for The New Zealanders Illustrated of 1847.

Few such works are in private hands; this depicts Apihai Te Kawau, principal chief of Ngati Whatua, and his nephew. Webb's has set the estimate at from $150,000 to $200,000.

The sale also includes several international modernist works from the collection of the late Dr Erna Renker Moss, who was born to Swiss-German parents but lived for many years with her American doctor husband near the artists' colony of Woodstock, New York.

On the death of her husband in 1974, she emigrated to New Zealand, where she was closely involved with the hospice movement. The collection includes works by Vasarely, Josef Albers, Ben Nicholson and Giovanni Giacometti - unusual fare for an Auckland sale, and sure to attract international attention.

Those works aside, Webb's have two fine paintings by Michael Illingworth, an impressive selection of Hoteres, Hammonds, Fomisons and Smithers, and what to my mind is the best Pat Hanly offered this year.

From his Figures in Light series of the early 1960s, it is estimated at from $100,000 to $120,000. If only ...

* Coming up: Dunbar Sloane's investment art sale is tonight, with affordable art tomorrow night. A fine Blomfield oil of kauri diggers, formerly on loan to Te Papa, is among tonight's attractions.

The International Art Centre has a collectable art and charity auction in its Parnell gallery on Sunday afternoon, with 250 wide-ranging works. Just the chance to pick up something for Christmas, and in a good cause - some of the proceeds will go to the Starship Hospital heart unit.

Cordy's art and antiques sale, next Tuesday, includes two interesting early paintings by Michael Smither, and a couple of works from the 1980s by Dick Frizzell.

Webb's final art sale for the year is also next Tuesday evening, followed by jewellery and watches on Wednesday and decorative arts on Thursday, December 11.