Steve Braunias: The strange, sad tale of Billy Apple's Golden Apple

Billy Apple in March 2015. Photo / Brett Phibbs

And then there was the time he made an apple out of solid gold. To be precise, 103.559 ounces of 22-carat gold, melted and poured into the mould of an apple bought from a fruit shop for 25 cents.

Billy Apple, who has died aged 85, was a conceptual artist and as such an ideas man - getting others to do the work was a great idea in itself, but the concept of a golden apple was all his own work, his own inspired thinking. The story of Apple's apple and its surprise ending serves as a poignant tribute to the manufacturer of some of New Zealand's strangest works of art.

It began at a dinner party in Takapuna in 1983. Apple, who owned a Porsche, was friendly with car dealer Jonathan Gooderham. One of Gooderham's neighbours – he lived just a few houses away in a beachfront mansion – shared their interest in motorsports. They all got to talking over dinner at Gooderham's home. The third man was none other than Ray Smith, a name synonymous with greed and financial ruin as experienced in Auckland in the 1980s; Smith was chairman of Goldcorp, which collapsed a year after the Black Monday crash of '87. Angry creditors, bankruptcy, jailtime for Smith…But one thing survived, a rather beautiful souvenir of that decade of excess – the Golden Apple.

The artist got others to make the mould and melt the gold. It was unveiled at the Auckland Coin and Bullion Exchange, and sold to a private owner for $85,000. At the time, it was the most expensive artwork made by a living New Zealand artist.

Asked what it looks like, Christina Barton said, "I see an extraordinary symbol of the 80s." Barton is the author of a book on Apple's life and work. "It sort of captured everything that was going on at the time, people's avarice and desire for material wealth, but somehow Billy turned it, as he so often did, into something that when you actually saw it, the work was extremely – I don't know, there was something about it that was quite humble, and delicate. It was small. It was tiny. It could fit in your hand."

It was a precious metal, and great care and decorum went into the only two occasions the Golden Apple was displayed in art galleries. A security guard stood beside it every day in 2006, at Artspace, and in 2015, at Auckland Art Gallery, Armourguard were hired to bring it in each morning and take it away each night. The owner kept it in a bank vault.

Asked whether the Golden Apple was still in private ownership, Barton said, "This is quite weird in terms of you asking about this right now, because we only recently discovered that the owner has actually melted it and sold it for the gold. It's gone. It just doesn't exist anymore.

"They destroyed one of the most important artworks of the 1980s, to my mind. But the person who owned it was no lover of art, and was always rather resentful of people asking for it to be lent for exhibition. And so a tragic end."

Well – not that tragic for the owner. Kent Baigent, 73, described it thus: "A weight around my neck." He knew Billy Apple and Ray Smith – Baigent was into motor racing as well, and won the 1985 National Touring Car Championship – and buying the Golden Apple seemed like a good idea at the time.

"But it was the most useless form of art that I could ever possess. You couldn't have it on the mantlepiece at home. It's just a pick up and grab." (As Barton said, the Golden Apple was "delicate…tiny.") He continued, "You'd be a target for theft. And when people wanted it for an exhibtion, we had to get special couriers to do it, and insurance – it was virtually a nightmare, then I'd get it back it back again and have to get into a bank security box. So melting it down was the only thing to do to get value out of it."

He said he'd asked Billy Apple to sell it to another owner, but that came to nothing. "Who'd want to buy it? How would you protect it? They'd have the same problem as I did. It just wasn't on."

And so the Golden Apple is no more, just a golden puddle – but actually it could be reborn. Kent Baigent said, "I have the mould it came from. I bought that as well. I made sure I got that, so if anyone wanted to do another one, I can always cast the mould and do another one. Gold is a very fluid substance, when heated and poured, and easily moulded. So it would flow in and there would be another apple…."