The new masters

By Hamish Coney, June 4, 2006 @ midnight

Idealog May/June 2006, page 60. Illustrations by Elette Wheeler

A new wave of entrepreneurial artists, dealers and promoters is launching an assault on the lucrative international art market

International art fairs can be chaotic so Michael Lett barely noticed the well-dressed but quiet visitor who wandered up to his stand at a Swiss art fair—but when the new arrival promptly bought half a dozen works Lett realised his visitor wasn’t just a casual art nut. “I only found out later that he was listed as number five on ArtReview’s list of the top 100 most powerful art world figures,” Lett recalls. “Now we keep in touch and he is keen to learn more about the New Zealand art scene.”

Lett is one of a new breed of young dealers who are determined to bring their artists to international attention and have turned Auckland’s K’ Road into a hotspot for visiting artists and curators. Softly-spoken and still in his mid-twenties, Lett confesses to learning as he’s going but his ambition is clear. “It is a very real goal for a New Zealand artist to have an international career,” he says. “I fully expect most of my artists will be exhibiting with other galleries internationally. In fact, in ten years’ time I think it will be the norm.”

If you’ve been to the Massey Ferguson stand at the farming trade show at Mystery Creek then you’ll have a pretty good idea what an art fair is all about. Bewildered punters collect brochures from eager salespeople desperate to sort the real buyers from the tyre-kickers. Lett says it’s “bloody hard work” yet he’s become something of a veteran after showing at art fairs in Switzerland, Australia and Miami over the last 18 months.

At the NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) art fair in Miami, Lett’s gallery was one of over 80 emerging galleries vying for collectors’ attention. They were all trying to land the big fish: major international art collectors whose personal art budgets put many public gallery acquisition budgets to shame. NADA was just one of seven art fairs clustered in Miami in early December 2005 chasing the hearts, minds and wallets of over 40,000 collectors, curators and art media.

Next to the Michael Lett stand were galleries from Amsterdam, Rio de Janeiro, Brussels, Glasgow, New York, Berlin, London, Vienna, Chicago, Paris and Wellington. Get the picture? Art is a global industry and the fairs enable New Zealand dealers to “dissolve the barrier of distance”, says Lett. “Art fairs have become more important over the last few years and I can see my gallery going to two or three per annum for the foreseeable future,” he says, noting that some galleries now literally work the global circuit like a travelling circus—a kind of rock’n’roll art tour moving from fair to fair.

So why is this happening now? Not every bit of good news for our creative bods is down to The Lord of the Rings or the sauvignon blanc effect. Our art scene truly arrived on the international stage when New Zealand fronted up at the Venice Biennale, although most of us only hear about the Biennale when the chosen artist is given a kicking by the media—remember Paul Holmes’ primetime clubbing of 2005 selection, ‘et al’?

Two years before that Michael Stevenson’s installation ‘This is the Trekka’ was given the full I-don’t-know-much-about-art treatment by a bewildered mainstream media.

Yet the times, believe it or not, are a-changin’. New Zealand artists and gallerists are making some real headway in the global art scene and we’ve even had a bit of an image makeover. Good old New Zild, land of sheep, beautiful scenery (yawn), tasty plonk and the odd neurotic writer (sorry Janet), has become a bit funky.

As a fully paid-up member of the New Zealand art fan club I’ve never had any doubt about the quality of local art: it’s very good. As an art history student I was part of a tiny band undergoing deep immersion in the subject. I studied Italian, English and American art but I was damn sure they weren’t studying our art.

Being an artist in New Zealand has always been pretty hazardous to your financial health. Superstar status in Godzone usually meant you could feed yourself. Stories of artists’ day jobs are the stuff of legend. The Godfather of New Zealand landscape painting, Toss Woollaston, managed to fill the collections of our public galleries in between his ‘real’ job as a door-to-door salesman. 70s wildman Phil Clairmont dreamed of his next masterpiece while pounding the pavement as a postman.

Of course I’m biased as hell but I’ve always believed that the only thing holding our artists back from wider global recognition has been the tyranny of distance—not just in the vast distance our art has to travel, but also in the few inches between our ears. Sometimes we aren’t really sure we can play with the big boys and girls.

That’s changing quickly. Mercurial Wellington dealer Hamish McKay is leading the assault on the international fairs and has noted the change in mood. McKay is one of a rare breed of commercial art dealers—gallerist is the industry term—who think like a curator. In practical terms this means he has exhibited artists, particularly emerging artists, long before they were a commercial proposition. “We’ve made a bit of impact on the world stage lately,” he says. “I don’t have to do quite as much explaining about New Zealand as I used to. There is real interest.”

“Some galleries now literally work the global circuit like a travelling circus—a kind of rock’n’roll art tour moving from fair to fair.”

National art is on show at Venice—think of the Biennale as the Cannes Film Festival of art. Every two years collectors, curators, art dealers, journalists and art world insiders make a beeline for the exotic Adriatic city to check out what’s hot, not and talent-spot. Simply by being at Venice, New Zealand has generated immense profile as a meaningful art-producing nation but the real pioneering work is being done by the gutsy Kiwi artists and dealers who overcome huge odds to place New Zealand art on the radar.

In 2005, Shane Cotton, Joanna Braithwaite, Michael Parekowhai and Seraphine Pick held solo shows in Sydney, Francis Upritchard in New York, Julian Dashper in three American cities, Jacqueline Fraser in Vienna and New York, Fiona Pardington and Bill Culbert in Paris, Michael Stevenson in Aachen and California and Saskia Leek in San Francisco. It was a breakthrough year for New Zealand artists.

The dealers are doing their bit on the art export frontline at international art fairs. It’s at these massive art events that our artists are strutting their stuff in front of what Hamish McKay describes as a “white hot” international art market, where you’ve got to be in to win. Pick up a copy of the art world bible, Artforum, and you’ll see ads for art fairs in Turin, New York, Palm Beach, Düsseldorf, Bologna, Los Angeles and Milan all in the first few months of 2006.

At the very top of the art and money tree is Art Basel in Switzerland, the biggest, baddest art fair of them all. Described by The New York Times as “the Olympics of the art world”, it displays the works of 270 international galleries and over 2,000 artists. Looking for a Warhol, a late Picasso or the work of the most common pick for the greatest living artist, Gerhard Richter? Grab your chequebook and head for Art Basel.

Some art people now reckon Basel is as important as the Venice Biennale. It’s a view that reveals how the balance of power is changing in the art world as the major commercial art fairs gain ground over traditional curated exhibitions. Collectors want to go where they can buy art, not just admire it.

These high-rolling clients are celebrities in their own right. Their names are whispered in reverent tones. Galleries vie for their business in much the same way as casinos, with free hotel rooms and impossible-to-book restaurants lavished on the alpha collectors. It means private jets and industrial-strength entertainment budgets. Major dealers typically book an entire floor of a hotel. The goal is simple: whatever it takes to get some quality one-on-one ‘face time’ and bag the budgets of the top collectors. Michael Lett recalls a conversation with a London mega-gallery assistant who confided that their entertainment budget had been slashed for last year’s Art Basel, down to a trifling £100,000, just enough to last for the full three days.

“The local art scene that is bristling with talent and attitude, and even earning a bit of filthy lucre.”

Kiwi dealers can’t operate at that level—yet. McKay’s total budget to attend a fair is closer to $40,000, which has to cover freight, travel, accommodation and a few vinos. “To break even you have to sell $100,000-plus of artwork, and while you might not do this business directly off the stand there’s always interest after the fair which converts into sales and opportunities for the artists,” he says. With dozens of fairs to choose from it’s a case of finding a fair with the cachet, quality and potential connections that can ensure a fledgling international player a fair chance of exposure to the hippest collectors, curators and media—without requiring a Hollywood budget.

Liste, which runs alongside the colossal Art Basel, is a training ground for Art Basel and the hot fair for emerging galleries who compete fiercely to attend. Lett estimates there are 250 applicants for fewer than 15 available exhibition stands. The rigorous selection process also answers those doubting Kiwis: is New Zealand art actually good enough to compete? Most certainly.

“The first time I went to Liste I immediately got the sense that our art was just as good as anyone else’s,” says McKay. “They [the fair managers] thought so too and I was invited back. The good collectors are scanning for interesting work from all over: China, India, Mexico and now Australia and New Zealand.”

These days I see a local art scene that is bristling with talent and attitude, confidently engaging with the larger art world and, heaven forbid, even earning a bit of filthy lucre. The fact that New Zealand artists are exhibiting and selling overseas is inspirational for all involved and a spur to make an already-great product even better.

The Curator: Brian Butler

Curators are the tastemakers and culture drivers of the art world. They decide what art we get to see and how we see it. Great curators are visionaries who shine a torch into where the visual arts culture is evolving.

So if anyone can offer a realistic assessment of New Zealand’s ability to make an impact on the world stage, it’s American curator and director Brian Butler. Butler has left a plum gallery job in Los Angeles, one of the art capitals of North America, to be director of Auckland’s ARTSPACE.

He’s found a vital art scene here that demands a greater international voice. “New Zealand is ready to have a big conversation with the world,” Butler says. "The art here is more than good enough. New Zealand is not in a vacuum—if it was, those days are over.”

He warns against thinking of New Zealand art as a niche of its own, however. “Packaging it up as Team New Zealand is not a good idea; the work will just get filed and easily dismissed and stereotyped. New Zealand artists need to be on the world stage on their own merits—that’s what is expected of winemakers.”

To get to play on the world stage there are a few rules of entry. “Art is not about winning or losing,” says Butler, “but you have to be in the game.” That means a sustained presence at the major international art events. “If New Zealand is going to be at Venice, then New Zealand galleries should try and back it up by being included at Basel or Liste.”

The time is right. In a spooky set of coincidences the prize judge and the most recent winner of New Zealand’s premier art award, the Walters Prize, are intertwined with the Venice Biennale and New Zealand art’s growing presence on the world stage. The 2004 prize recipient was mysterious art collective ‘et al’, which went on to represent New Zealand at the 2005 Venice Biennale. The judge was none other than influential American curator Robert Storr, who will be the head curator of the next Venice Biennale in 2007.

Brian Butler and Liz Caldwell

The Advocate: Liz Caldwell

Spending taxpayers’ hard-earned dosh on art is a great conversational firestarter. Heaving great wads of dollars at the America’s Cup as it sails over the horizon or slugging the plucky Kiwi battler in the back pocket to build footie stadiums for an already-rolling-in-it Rugby Union is seen as a sound, even canny, investment by our pundits and politicians.

But throw a few crumbs at art and you’ll be deafened by the sound of the poppy-felling chainsaw revving up. The symphony of outrage from heartland Godzone twangs on the ‘bludger’ string before rising to a crescendo of the great ‘waste of money’ chorus. But hang on a minute mate, doesn’t promoting Enzed through art do just the same as sporting success? I guarantee you a hell of a lot more people around the world saw or read about New Zealand’s performance at the Venice Biennale than our recent rowing medals.

When you do the numbers, the amount of public money spent on the arts is minute compared with that available to sport—which is all the more galling when we now compete in the creative economy. Full credit, then, to Creative New Zealand for its ballsy decision to step into the big league at Venice.

The $500,000 invested at the Biennale is just one percent of Creative NZ’s annual budget but soaks up nine percent of the allocation for visual arts. That means dozens of artists miss out on funding so one artist can go on the adventure of a lifetime. It’s a tough call but one that is beginning to pay off as New Zealand art develops a reputation.

“Going to Venice signals we are prepared to take our place in the world,” says Liz Caldwell, until recently an advisor at Creative NZ. “It also makes it that much easier to get international curators to come to NZ and a direct consequence of this is our artists being included in major touring shows internationally.”

For example, she says, four New Zealand photographers—Gavin Hipkins, Wayne Barrar, Greta Anderson and Michael Parekowhai—have been included in the current ‘Picturing Eden’ exhibition at the International Museum of Photography in Rochester, New York. She also mentions that Lisette Lagnado, the curator for next year’s Sao Paulo Biennale, has visited New Zealand to search out artists.

Just as important, she says, New Zealand art competes in a global market, which removes what she calls the “faux exoticism” associated with New Zealand in the past. As every Kiwi knows, there is nothing more enraging than being told how cute your accent is.

In case you were wondering just what your tax dollars were being spent on, Creative NZ funds and manages residencies for New Zealand artists in Berlin, New York, Beijing, New Delhi, the Cook Islands and Hawaii. It also pays for participation at other biennales, including two Korean events, Sao Paulo and Sydney. Bill Hammond’s giant ‘Hokey Pokey’ canvas was one of the highlights of the 2000 Sydney Biennale, making me feel just as proud as a footie fan watching Jonah score the winning try in that famous Sydney rugby test.

The Artist: Saskia Leek

If you’re bewildered by some art these days, meet Saskia Leek. Although gargantuaninstallations, stupefying video and newmedia work—anything that bangs and frequently clanks on about ‘fracturedidentity’, ‘new paradigms in the digital age’ or whatever—seem to hog all the headlinesin the art world at the moment, Leek is a painter who works on a small scale and with a classic painter’s touch.

Her work is full of ideas, however. Her imagery traverses suburban housing, still life and fantasy imagery that seems located in a distant corner of the collective subconscious. It’s obviously a pretty big collective because Leek’s work is shown and admired around the world. She’s just returned to Auckland from a solo show at San Francisco’s Jack Hanley Gallery, is a regular exhibitor with Darren Knight in Sydney and her work was also recently curated into a major exhibition at the University of California Berkeley called ‘Some Forgotten Place’ alongside international art world stars like Mamma Anderson from Sweden and Wilhelm Sasnal from Poland.

So Leek is ideally placed to comment on the challenges and the plain old logistics for a New Zealand artist launching an international career while remaining based in New Zealand.

“It’s liberating to exhibit [internationally] and know that what you are doing is totally valid,” she says, but she’s careful that the pressures of exhibiting overseas don’t mean that vital local connections are neglected or quality is compromised by the need to produce more work to supply international dealers.

For a New Zealander to really make an impact internationally the artist needs to be based in a major art centre, Leek says, pointing to the success of New Zealand artists such as Boyd Webb, Karl Maughan and Francis Upritchard. But perhaps you can have your cake and eat it too: given the costs and isolation a New Zealand artist faces, Leek sees art fairs and savvy internet promotion as offering our artists more chance than ever before to stay at home and still get some exposure with the international art world.

The Organiser: Dominique Mollet

If New Zealand gallerists are looking for an audience, it’s hard to beat 50,000 art-mad visitors and over 1,500 art media. That’s the crowd that will flock to Basel in June for two successive shows: the monstrous Art Basel and the hip Liste Art Fair. New Zealand gallerists at Liste literally become shopkeepers in an art mega-mall during the busiest shopping season.

Liste targets younger, emerging galleries. Last year Auckland dealer Michael Lett found himself alongside new galleries from Vienna, Copenhagen, Berlin, Oslo, Athens, Cape Town and Tokyo. It sounds like an art lolly scramble but the eye-popping diversity of the fair is one of its key attractions, says show manager Dominique Mollet. She’s looking for fresh art and New Zealand artists fit the bill. “We want to show artists and galleries that are not well known outside their home countries,” she says. “Our visitors know Liste as the fair where you can discover. New Zealand gets on collectors’ radar as soon as they participate.”

The fair organisers scour the planet for galleries which both pass the quality hurdle and have the kind of attitude and roster of artists which will excite the tired art palates of the most jaded of collectors and critics. New Zealand’s isolation, which has for so long been a barrier to so many creative practitioners, isn’t an issue for Liste visitors, says Mollet. “Collectors not knowing about New Zealand is not a problem but an opportunity. Our visitors come to find new art and new locations. They are extremely open.”

But what kind of art do international collectors want? These art buyers aren’t after a slice of New Zild. Until very recently New Zealand art reflected the general level of knuckle-gnawing introspection that seems to have been the only game in town for over a century in New Zealand’s cultural life. All the discussions were centred on issues of identity. Whether it was gender, race or class-based, there wasn’t much space for anything else other than extended bouts of sandal-wearing navel gazing.

That might be life-and-death stuff to us but, not surprisingly, it doesn’t mean a great deal to the rest of the world. But the gloom seems to have miraculously lifted and a generation of spunky young Kiwi artists have gone global by plugging into the mainframe of the international art moment. That means the big question of the day is not ‘Who am I?’, but ‘What’s going on?’

The Dealer: Darren Knight

Sydney-based gallerist Darren Knight was as surprised as anyone else when his first show by New Zealander Michael Stevenson sold out in 1993. Up until this point, the Australian art scene was as introspective as ours on this side of the ditch and there was next to no interest from collectors and curators in any real dialogue between the two countries.

Knight has since become an important advocate of New Zealand art: he can be credited with breaking the international careers of New Zealand artists such as Stevenson, who went on to represent New Zealand at the 2003 Venice Biennale, Ronnie van Hout and Michael Harrison. Today he also exhibits New Zealanders Saskia Leek, Laurence Aberhart and Joanna Braithwaite. Knight also represents one of the Australian art world’s hottest commodities, sculptor Ricky Swallow, one of the sensations of 2005’s Venice Biennale.

He admires the hardy spirit and perseverance of Kiwi artists. “New Zealand artists have a spirit of individualism. There are even fewer chocolates on offer than in Australia. New Zealand artists have to have a real determination to pursue their careers.”

Australian dealers also look to trade fairs to spread the word. “New Zealand and Australian artists are in the same boat, isolated and largely irrelevant to the major art markets,” Knight says. “Once you get to a fair all galleries are on the same footing. Art fairs are a kind of democracy. You have the same size booths and more-or-less an equal shot at being noticed. They also serve a really important role in encouraging international artists to exhibit in our patch as they see other artists engaged in similar issues.”