Buy an art collection for less than a million dollars

RE:VISION Trish Clark Gallery 1 Bowen St, Auckland

April 23 – June 10

For less than $1 million you can buy a superb collection of New Zealand and international art from a new group show which has opened in Auckland.

The Trish Clark Gallery, is the latest art gallery to open in the city, features a show of 17 artists, including senior New Zealand artists and a number of renowned international artists. The inaugural exhibition entitled RE:VISION shows works by artists that cohere loosely around the wide readings that can be drawn from the concepts of vision and revision. The unique vision of individual artists across time and the constant re-visioning of their practices is referenced alongside Trish Clark’s own re- visioning back into a gallery 30 years after she opened her original gallery in Auckland's High Street.

The works range in price from $1500 to over $100,000 and include photographs, paintings, video and craft art.

There are several early performance works such as one of Billy Apple’s first forays into his name change with the photograph Billy Apple Bleaching with Lady Clairol Instant Crème Whip of 1962, (£20,000) Anthony McCall, who has exhibited on several occasions in New Zealand, is represented by two works, including one of his seminal film works from 1972, Landscape for Fire ($US25,000). The work features the artist and assistants following a pre-determined grid torching 36 containers of flammable material across a field. US-based artist Marina Abramovic is represented by an image from one of her performances Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful (€30,000).

There are other photographic works, such As Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Lightning Fields (US $80,000), Alfredo Jaar's Tonight no poetry will serve (US $60,000) and New Zealander Ann Shelton’s three images David’s performance at the reopening of the Ambassador Theatre ($2200 each). One of the works that had already sold by opening night was Shaun Gladwell's Storm Sequence, featuring the artist skateboarding on a concrete platform on Bondi Beach in the middle of a storm. The video is slowed down, making it an hypnotic and graceful work recalling the romantic notions of the 19th century. The work was exhibited in the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2007, the same year the work last sold at auction for $A84,000.

Marie Shannon’s DVD What I’m Looking At ($1500) looks at the creative process itself in presenting all her communications from her partner, artist Julian Dashper, after his death. Stephen Bambury has several works that continues his investigation of the nature of painting through exacting attention to the nature of paintings including the resent It had a cinematic effect ($46,000).

Ann Robinson has several works on show including one of her recent bowls, Unite ($40,000), which combines the utilitarian and the abstract while John Edgar has two stone works, one of marble ($200) and another of serpentine and granite ($8500). Other artists are Roger Ballen, Bruce Conney, Michael Ghent, Eemyun Kang, Kimsooja, and James Turrell.