Buyers wired up for Oliver, Barton
Peter Fish, Buyers wired up for Oliver, Barton, The Australian Financial Review, Thursday 4 December 2014
'Copper is a vital commodity, useful for wiring, plumbing and a host of other industrial inputs. Its use in art is less recognised, yet copper wire sculptures by Bronwyn Oliver appear to be electrifying today's art buyers - as are the hard-to-quantify paintings of Del Kathryn Barton, many of which feature female genitalia.
Two wire works by Oliver featured in the top 10 prices at Deutscher and Hackett's auction in Melbourne last week, cementing her reputation as one of the most admired contemporary figures.
Oliver's Bloom - a complex circular nest of copper wire 1.3 metres in diameter- kicked off the sale with an above-estimate hammer price of $160,000, or $192,000 including premium, while Inscription - a serpentine wire creation 2.45 metres wide , the second lot in the sale- fetched $156,000 including premium. Another circular creation, Reel, fetched a premium-inclusive $72,000.
While Oliver is not seen in the same bracket as high-status figures such as Brett Whiteley, Jeffrey Smart and Fred Williams, works by those "big names" peformed relatively unspectactularly at D&H last week - and indeed at Sotheby's Australia and Bonhams in Sydney earlier the same week.
D&H Sydney executive director Damian Hackett said offering three such sculptures in one sale probably gave a misleading impression. "Over eight years D&H has probably sold eight or nine [Oliver works]. They're very rare and special things"
Bloom would probably equal the highest price for a wall-mounted work by the sculptor, as opposed to larger free-standing pieces or those designed for gardens or public spaces. The same auctioneer sold Oliver's Striation for $168,000 in Sydney in August.
The auction record for the artist, who died in 2006, is $360,000 for the large work Tracery, sold at Menzies in Sydney in March 2010. The buyer was reputedly the then-Sydney Biennale chairman, Transfield executive director, Luca Belgiorno-Nettis.
Oliver, born near Inverell, NSW, in 1959, is said to have joined a sculpture class in Sydney by accident and went on to study in Britain before practising her art from inner-western Haberfield while also teaching at Cranbrook School. She was a close friend of Roslyn Oxley, in whose gallery she exhibited regularly. In her 22-year career she is said to have produced some 290 works. It has been suggested that her death by suicide may have been hastened by exposure to copper.
Sydney-born Del Kathryn Barton is a contemporary art figure whose name will be new to some, her auction career taking wing after she won the Archibald portrait prize twice, in 2008 and 2013. Her large work Satellite Fade-out 2 - a study of a big-haired feathered female against a background of dots and dashes - brought $204,000 at D&H, well above estimate and an auction record for the artist. Barton's Girl #9 also sold above estimate at $78,000. Barton's previous record was Keeper of the Polka-Dotts, sold for $192,000 at D&H in Melbourne in August 2011.
In August, D&H sold her But Passion Has Made His Face Like Pale Ivory for $120,000. But Barton's Punk, Spunk and Green Rain for the Heart- a nude with prominent breats and vulva - was passed in at Sotheby's Australia in Sydney on November 25. Another female artist, Yayoi Kusama, scored the top price at the D&H sale, with the Japanese-born international artist's Infinity Dots (HRT) bringing $492,000. The work came from a Sydney collection and will remain in the country.
Other serious prices included Brett Whiteley's Sydney Harbour in the Rain at $504,000 and Jeffrey Smart's Ostia at $444,000. Bringing in $192,000 was Lloyd Rees's Near Orange - a work revealed as being commissioned from the artist by the MacSmith family (Saleroom, November 13) for Boree Cabonne, the showplace property near Orange in western NSW. Unsolds included Fred Willians's One Tree Hill and William Robinson's Nimbin Rocks in Fog.
Among the Aboriginal art that formed the second session of the sale, the top prices were for Kimberley artists Rover Thomas for Gulabal- Snake at $144,000 and Paddy Bedford for Winperrji- Police Rock Hole at $108,000. Four works by Emily Kngwarreye were unsold, including Anatye (Bush Potato) with a presale estimate of $80,000 to $120,000. The D&H sale raised $4.29 million from the two sessions., with some 74 percent of lots sold from the first session and 63 percent for the second, an overall average of just under 70%.'
left: BRONWYN OLIVER, Bloom, 1998, Sold for $192,000 (inc. BP)
right: DEL KATHRYN BARTON, Satellite Fade-out 2, Sold for $204,000 (inc. BP)