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Lot #2 - Don Driver

  • 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 #:
    2
  • Lot Description:
    Don Driver
    For a Taranaki Day
    perspex, canvas, wood, acrylic paint, industrial paint and plastic balls, 1968
    1065mm x 1400mm
    inscribed "For a Taranaki Day" by Don Driver No. 10A Govett Ave, New Plymouth, New Zealand and perspex, canvas, wood, acrylic paint, industrial paint and plastic. balls and dated 19/6/68 verso
  • Provenance:
    Purchased New Vision Gallery, Auckland. Accompanied by original purchase receipt, dated 7/9/1993.
  • Notes:
    This work is requested for loan for future exhibition Don Driver: Flayed Alive by Colour, Hastings Art Gallery, 1 September 2017 until 26 November 2017. The new owner may decide if they wish to place the work into this exhibition. ESSAY: In many ways this is a typical Don Driver wall relief with its classic red, wine, purple and blue rectangular composition, and vertical array of glowing pink and green balls. Although Driver never had a standard palette at any time, let alone of complementary saturated colours (with lots of reds, blue and green), you could be forgiven for thinking so, especially if you lived in New Plymouth, and met him in the conspicuously colourful clothes he regularly wore. Compositionally For a Taranaki Day is a little like a pinball machine, the key spherical elements positioned in a narrow prison bar window set in a porch's doorway; with square panels horizontally aligned along the lower and upper sides. It is impeccably organised with luminous blue and green vertical bands at opposite ends, and every detail (like column thicknesses) fastidiously crafted. The placement of its elements is purposeful and tight. Nothing can be removed. The work seems like a salute to Joseph Cornell but without the intimate space - for it shows a love of carpentry and interior wall panelled surfaces, and not the otherworldly European Romanticism Cornell specialised in. In its materials and references it celebrates the everyday, the manual skills of the weekend DIYer, with thin strips and batons emphasising rhythmic cadences and chromatic emphases. Driver made many wall reliefs like this, spread out over the years, emphasising hard-edged geometry and rectangular bands projecting out at different levels. This work though is exceptionally exuberant, musical and physical - because of its tonal contrast, glowing hues, and hovering 'bubbles' at its centre. With its fairground, stage set and doll's house ambience it creates a childlike sense of wonder; and For a Taranaki Day, an oddly unanticipated sense of nocturnal mystery and play. John Hurrell
  • Estimate:
    NZ$18,000 - 25,000
  • 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.



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