The Star: August 31, 2023

The Star Thursday August 31 2023
14
NEWS
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz
Hammond painting breaks $1m mark
Late artist
now ‘all
time great’
• By Rachel Maher
AN ARTWORK by late Lyttelton
artist Bill Hammond was sold
with a huge million-dollar price
tag on Monday.
Melting
Moments 1 sold
for $1.715 million
at a Webb’s
auction event – a
new record for
Hammond.
It was sold to
an online bidder
after the auction
was over.
Bill
Hammond
The painting, an acrylic on
canvas work measuring roughly
1.6 x 2.1 metres, was expected to
fetch around $1.5-$2 million.
The most expensive piece of art
to be sold in New Zealand was ‘Is
there anything of which one can
say look this is new?’ by Colin
McCahon, which sold for $2.45
million at auction in September
2022.
Another Colin McCahon piece
POPULOUS: Melting Moments 1 by the late Bill Hammond sold for $1.715 million at an
auction on Monday.
sold at Monday’s auction for
$173,000.
Even though the painting did
not break the record, Charles
Ninow, the director of art at
Webb’s auction house, said it is
“incredibly rare” for a painting
to be sold for that price in the
New Zealand market.
“Very, very, very few paintings
have sold to those sorts of
figures,” Ninow said.
“This is the first painting by
Hammond that’s achieved more
than a million dollars and it
cements him as one of the alltime
greats.
“Melting Moments I is
a museum-level work of
national significance. Its detail,
storytelling and sheer presence
are representative of one of our
most important artists at the
height of his artistic powers.”
On Webb’s auction house
website, it explained Melting
Moments 1 was painted by
Hammond a decade after his
1989 trip to the Auckland
Islands.
“Melting Moments 1,
Hammond presents us
with a busy, populous, noisy
habitat, in which the cacophony
of birdsong is drowned out by
clanging bells and aeroplanes,”
the website states.
“The composition is inhabited
by Hammond’s now iconic
mythical creatures — half
human, half bird, which first
appeared in his paintings in
1993.”
Other highlights of the auction
included Brent Wong’s The
Bequest, selling for $173,000,
$30,000 above the estimated
price.
Hammond was born in 1947
and attended Canterbury’s
University’s Ilam School of Fine
Arts in the middle of the 1960s.
Towards the end of the
decade he graduated and
started making and selling
wooden toys while living in
Lyttelton.
Although he didn’t start
exhibiting his artwork until
the 1976, he quickly rose
to prominence, eventually
becoming one of New Zealand’s
most celebrated painters during
his lifetime and one of the few
to win acclaim outside of our
borders.
His star has continued to
climb since his death in January
2021, firmly establishing him as
one of our genuine “blue chip”
artists.
- NZ Herald
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