Last held in 2016, the fair saw 40 participating galleries sell art valued in the region of between $2.5 million and $3m. On average, paying guests spent $4952 on art while VIPS — those with free access — spent an average $7545 on art.
"By holding an art fair in New Zealand, that is more and more about the art being made in the Pacific-rim region, we position New Zealand as having a really important contribution to make to the art of the region of the world we live in," says Post.
She says by virtue of their achievements, our artists are already making this happen but an art fair draws all the strands together by showing in one place the wealth of art being made, commissioned, collected and exhibited in this country and the wider Pacific rim.
And many of our artists are excelling on the international stage.
Luke Willis Thompson has been nominated for the 2018 Turner Prize in London but, this month, won the 2018 Deutsche Börse photography prize for his film installation Autoportrait; Simon Denny last year exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York while Lisa Reihana's work will be included in the Oceania exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London this September. That exhibition marks 250 years since Captain James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific.
As the fair begins, auction houses Art + Object is preparing for one of its more unusual sales. It is auctioning the collection of artist and academic Peter James Smith, about 230 pieces that filled the Melbourne semi-detached home Smith shares with his wife.
Art + Object co-director Hamish Coney says it's a unique collection because it includes almost exclusively contemporary work, rather than historical paintings, mainly from NZ and Australia.
Smith says he grew up surrounded by art, partly courtesy of grandmother Rosa Laing who trained last century at Elam School of Fine Arts early before marrying a farmer and heading north to Ruawai. The mathematician, who also has an MA in Fine Arts, recalls Laing's paintings — large and impressionistic — hanging on the walls of the family's farm homestead.
"I would say that the beginning point of my collecting was when I left home and started going to Auckland University," he says, guessing that the first painting he ever bought was by Colin McCahon, in about 1972, from the Barry Lett Galleries.
"I knew to buy a McCahon even then instead of a pair of shoes and it was the price of a pair of shoes!"
That painting, Light Falling Through a Dark Landscape, is now estimated to be worth $30,000—$40,000. Smith advises those starting a collection to visit art fairs, auction houses and dealer galleries as well as reading about art, but the rule should always be to buy something because you like it.
The sale will mean more space for some of the other things he collects including stamps and eye baths.
"I've got a collection of eye baths; you know, those things you have with eye wash that you wash your eyes out with? You can get some beautiful little glass ones from the turn of the century; I've got nearly 100 of them and these things can make beautiful little installations in a house because they're personalised things."
Smith is interested in early and historical stamps especially revenue stamps and those used on government documents because they show information about social conditions and interactions of the day.
"They're quite tied into the culture — just like art is."
• Peter James Smith speaks at Art + Object at 3pm, Saturday, May 26; All Possible Worlds: The Peter James Smith Collection is auctioned on Thursday, May 31.
