WORKS OF ART: Early Consignments

Article

14 Oct

As we ramp up our consignment campaign for the final Works of Art catalogue of 2025, we take a look at some of the exemplary artworks already entered into this highly anticipated live auction.

KARL MAUGHAN

“Paint what you know … what you love. Just paint it. Don’t overthink it. Stop talking!” is how Dick Frizzell, Karl Maughan’s lecturer at Elam, describes Maughan’s ideology at a time when Postmodernism and ‘Theory’ (with a capital T) almost brought good ol’ fashioned painting to its knees (Karl Maughan, Valentine & Stead, eds., Auckland University Press, 2020). And yes, Maughan’s paintings exude a carefree joie de vivre.

Throughout his career, Maughan (b. 1964) has captured private and public gardens onto large-format paintings—in full Technicolor, impressionistic, and seemingly filtered through perpetual summer and the endorphins it evokes. This has made him a regular in fashion, music, wine, and mass media circles as well as analysed by serious academia.

His work has been examined through the duality of 'decorative' vs 'fine' art; as 'art about art' given his predilection for nature that has been modified by landscape designers. There has been discussion about his paintings being portrayals of control, of humans dominating a natural force that would look entirely different and grow in unexpected patterns as soon as the pruning and watering stop.

The exquisite Karl Maughan painting offered in the upcoming Works of Art live auction is a perfect example of everything that has made him a coveted household name: kaleidoscopic, exuberant fronds that are at once escapist as they are intoxicating; approachable and deeply layered.

Early Consignment

Karl Maughan, *Richmond Road*, 2017, oil on canvas, 1420 x 2140mm. EST. $70,000—$90,000

DON BINNEY

Don Binney (1940—2012), renowned for his graphic depictions of native birds and sweeping landscapes, maintained a strong artistic connection to the Northland region. Tokatoka, a remnant of the plug of an extinct volcano near Dargaville, became the subject of several of his significant paintings in the late 1970s. The peak’s dramatic form and natural context—made up of expansive skies, native bush, and abundant birdlife—aligned seamlessly with Binney’s visual language and thematic concerns.

As noted in the book Don Binney: Flight Path, by Gregory O’Brien, Binney expressed his fascination with the “curiously vertical volcanic plug,” a geological feature he discovered to be “an extension, northward, of the Anawhata-Te Henga area rock faces, islands and headlands.”

This sumptuous Don Binney artwork that will be offered in our forthcoming Works of Art Live Auction is a hallmark of his mature style, featuring flattened forms, sharp outlines, and controlled paintwork. The work presents two views of the volcanic plug—one distant, one closer up—divided across the canvas. The artist simplifies the landscape into abstracted, harmonious patterns, balancing impasto and smooth brushwork to create unity. This painting reflects Binney’s shift in the 1970s toward treating the landscape as a subject in itself, moving away from his earlier bird-focused compositions. It stands as both a signature piece in his oeuvre and a key work in the development of a uniquely New Zealand visual tradition, rooted in the country’s distinctive landforms and light.

Early Consignment

Don Binney, Two Aspects of Tokatoka, 1980, oil on board, 1200 x 920 mm.
EST. $350,000—$500,000

BILL CULBERT

The late 1960s were particularly tumultuous in France, where New Zealand artist Bill Culbert (1935—2019) had been a practicing painter for some time. In 1968, a mixture of student activism, violence, and cultural shifts erupted in Paris, and rippled globally, shaking—and in some cases even upending—governments, changing policy and re-writing civil and workers’ rights worldwide. Every power structure was up for reassessment and many a cultural endeavour was there to mirror or give voice to that disruptive zeitgeist.

It was within this heavily charged context that Culbert made a conscious decision to give up painting—a medium he had studied at Ilam School of Fine Arts (1953—56) and the Royal College of Art in London (1957). He began experimenting with photography, light installations, and sculpture, all under the looming influence of Pop Art and Italy’s Arte Povera (‘impoverished’ or ‘poor’ art). The latter was a movement that rejected consumerism and made works from ready-mades and objects that went against the perceived pretence embedded in ‘high-art’.

Culbert would spend many hours in the refuse tip of his town in southern France, collecting industrial design objects that would eventually define his highly prolific and successful career. Enamel, Tupperware, food packaging, construction materials—all became part of his vocabulary, all stitched together by his painterly passion for light, colours, and patterns, all grounded by solid conceptual foundations.

The sculpture on offer here forms part of this intriguing set of Culbert explorations: an old suitcase pierced by his signature fluorescent tube. It is a fully formed Culbertian object: no frills, no embellishments, yet a robust representation of a visual language that is unmistakably of his authorship.