Martin Browne - from diplomat to art champion

Dealer Martin Browne with Australian works by Linde Ivimey and Tim Maguire that both created enormous interest at the Auckland Art Fair. Picture / Kenny Rodger

Of the 17 galleries that exhibited at this month's inaugural Auckland Art Fair, most were from Auckland, one was from Wellington, one from Dunedin and two were from Australia.

As Sydney dealer Martin Browne points out, though, both Australian galleries have deep associations with the New Zealand art scene.

Dick Bett, who runs the Bett Gallery in Hobart, was director of New Plymouth's Govett Brewster Art Gallery in the 80s and is the son of veteran Wellington art dealer Elva Bett.

Browne, who is reacquainting himself with Auckland, also claims a family connection.

His introduction to the local art scene was through aunt and uncle Patricia and Kobi Bosshard, who ran Bosshard Galleries in Akaroa and Dunedin.

"When I was growing up, they gave a lot of major New Zealand artists their first shows and were the main South Island dealers for many years for Ralph Hotere, Milan Mrkusich, Gordon Walters, Jeffrey Harris and Rick Killeen. All these people who are now the established canon were people who were around when I was a kid," he says.

"Gordon Walters and Margaret Orbell used to babysit me, as did Jeffrey Harris."

He remembers Harris, who was in his late teens, looking after Browne and his cousins and drawing family members with "guns and tanks and things coming out of their mouths".

Although it seems a foregone conclusion that Browne would end up working with art, he initially rebelled and did a degree in politics, ending up in the diplomatic corps in Wellington. But the art world beckoned.

"I found that in lunchtimes in Wellington I was going out to look at art galleries and things, and decided I was more interested in art. So I ended up working as a sort of private consultant."

During the 80s, he often flew to Australia to buy works from Sotheby's for clients.

Having worked for Cordy's and Webb's auctioneers while at university, Browne's experience quickly led him into the secondary art market in Australia.

"Webb's were notable in that they were one of the first auction houses internationally to establish a resale market for contemporary art, not just for historical things," Browne says.

Sotheby's was interested in developing a similar market so Browne was recruited to establish a department of contemporary art.

"Three weeks after I got there, the head of the painting department resigned so I was made head of the Australian painting department, of which I knew not a lot," he says.

Browne became known for championing the work of Colin McCahon in Australia, which led to an association with the McCahon estate.

He co-edited the publication for the 2002 McCahon exhibition A Question of Faith at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and helped with the I Am McCahon documentary.

"Consistently, either on my own behalf or on behalf of clients, I paid record prices for works, particularly at auction. I was the first person to sell a work of McCahon's for over A$1 million.

"The association came over that and then grew because I was interested and happy to be involved and basically keen to promote the work into overseas galleries."

Because of a shrinking secondary market, Browne now focuses on selling new work by contemporary artists, including New Zealanders Paul Dibble and Karl Maughan, as well as the Australian artists he exhibited at the Auckland Art Fair, McLean Edwards, Linde Ivimey and Tim Maguire.

"In Australia, the real problem is that there are far fewer works on the secondary market, particularly of quality. The auction houses and dealers like myself, and others in New Zealand and Australia, are competing for this ever-smaller group of pictures."

Browne did not hesitate to bring the work of Australian artists to the Auckland Art Fair, rather than more familiar New Zealand works.

The gamble paid off as Browne's stall sold work worth more than $250,000 over the weekend and Ivimey was invited to discuss a possible exhibition with a major public gallery.

"Because both Tim Maguire and Linde Ivimey are making work that is singular and has no equivalents in New Zealand, there was enormous interest. People's reaction to both artists' work was extremely positive.

"In a few cases there was initial uncertainty about the materials Linde uses in her sculptures - human teeth, animal bones, and porcupine quills - aren't the norm in contemporary art. But once people started to look more closely at the works, they were captivated."

Having an understanding of the primary and secondary markets, Browne is unimpressed with Michael Smither's campaign for artists to receive a percentage from secondary sales, an issue that has already been debated in Australia.

"It hasn't worked in Europe, it doesn't work in France, and I don't really see that it would work here," he says.

He says that what people forget is the artists whose work has most increased in value "sorely needed" the money at the time the work was originally sold. Their few supporters at the time helped the artist to sell anything at all.

"Somebody once said to me that, given all the things they'd bought that had gone up - and the vast majority more they'd bought that had gone down - did it mean that at the end of each year they could put in a submission to say, 'Well actually I want some money back on the ones that went down and I'll contra it against the ones that go up'?"

Who: Martin Browne, New Zealand-born art dealer based in Sydney