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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen-Webb's
• Sale Name:
  The Warwick & Kitty Brown Collection
• Sale Date:
  17 May 2017 ~ 6.30pm (NZ time)
  18 May 2017 ~ 6.30pm (NZ time)
• Lot #:
  36
• Lot Description:
  Bill Hammond
  Slow Game Good Game
  acrylic on aluminium, diptych, 1987
  1115mm x 1200mm (overall size), 550mm x 1200mm (each)
  signed WD Hammond and dated 1987 in brushpoint centre of upper panel, inscribed SLOW GAME GOOD GAME lower centre
• Provenance:
  Purchased Peter McLeavy Gallery, Wellington. Accompanied by original purchase receipt, dated 12/7/1988.
• Notes:
  ESSAY: Many Kiwis were burnt when the sharemarket crashed 30 years ago, on 20 October 1987. Bill Hammond saw the signs and painted on them. His 1987 diptych, Slow Game Good Game, spreads grey, blue, black, red and emerald-green paint over the smooth surface of salvaged aluminium. Curling waves reach through each half like fingers. Ahead of these grey tsunamis, animals flee and washes of colour are shunted forward. Hammond treats each rectangular half of the diptych like a separate composition, plotting rapid recession into depth with sharp, fragmentary walls. Atop one in Slow Game, a lean swimming figure balances, poised mid-reach, doing a leisurely Australian crawl. Much momentum is suggested by all this suspended animation but there is no one direction. Silhouetted figures, with arms akimbo or posed contrapposto, observe the scene from every angle. Red and black blockheads proliferate: revellers at a marine-themed carnival. Elsewhere, the breaking waves resolve into koru shapes, stacked up the picture plane like a Chinese scroll and topped by a mountain peak. Hammond gained his Diploma in Fine Arts from Canterbury School of Fine Arts in 1968, worked in a sign factory, then made jewellery and wooden toys, before returning to painting in 1981. A drummer in a rock band during the heyday of postmodernist pastiche, he appropriated imagery from Asian art, comic books and record sleeves with equal irreverence. Mixing up high and low culture, he enjoyed applying his acrylic-laden brush to ready-made surfaces: cupboard doors, the back of printed wallpaper, Holland blinds, pegboard, metal signs and, finally (as his income improved), canvas. Famously reticent about offering interpretations of his work, when asked by a newspaper journalist in 2002 to explain certain shifts (such as the use of birds) in his painting, Hammond responded, "There's no big break. It's just a slow game." Linda Tyler
• Estimate:
  NZ$60,000 - 70,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.