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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen-Webb's
• Sale Name:
  Important Paintings and Contemporary Art
• Sale Date:
  07 Aug 2017 ~ 6.30pm (NZST)
• Lot #:
  25
• Lot Description:
  Pat Hanly
  Pacific Free
  enamel and oil on hardboard, 1984
  900mm x 1200mm
  signed Hanly and dated 84 incised lower centre, inscribed Pacific Free incised lower left; inscribed Pacific Free and dated 1984 in brushpoint verso
• Provenance:
  Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 1984.
• References:
  ILLUSTRATED: Russell Haley, Hanly: A New Zealand Artist (Auckland: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989), p.200; Gregory O'Brien, Hanly, (Auckland: Ron Sang Publications, 2012), p.230, pl.48.
• Notes:
  A particular aspect of Pat Hanly's practice reached a crescendo in the 1980s and it is one to which the term 'exuberant activism' may be applied. Pulsating from beneath the surface of Hanly's paintings of this time, there is a joyful essence to be encountered and Free Pacific is no exception to this. As the painting reveals itself to the viewer, it emblazons a message of hope and resistance onto our souls. The bold treatment of colour and form in Free Pacific is awe-inspiring, and Hanly's reputation as New Zealand's foremost master of colour is asserted through this work. In each abstracted icon of land and geography, we encounter the joy of our national identity: the joy of colour. Hanly has drawn on the creative liberties of collage and applied them in such a way that each form exists in a paradox of harmonious disconnect. Vivacious shades of red, blue, green and yellow coalesce herein, each seeming to hum and thrive in the potency of its own force field. The transcendence and purity of the work also lends a deeply personal quality to the act of viewing. In perceiving the bright and modular shapes existing in choreographed dialogue across the canvas, we instinctively respond to these as emotive symbols and signposts, each relevant to our own personal quest for meaning. Free Pacific was realised at a critical moment in the unfolding of our modern national identity, when the fight to retain New Zealand's nuclear-free status was coming to the fore. Considered in this context, the painting's title is all encompassing; it serves, at once, as a protest banner, an imperative and an epigrammatic urging to retain our moral liberty. For contemporary viewers armed with the power of hindsight, it is impossible not to appreciate the timely prescience of this message - the work was completed just one year before the Rainbow Warrior was bombed in Auckland Harbour. Hanly's expressions of dissent were not delivered solely via the medium of the paintbrush, by the way. He was well known for protesting from sailboats on Auckland Harbour. The stylised white form of a ship at the centre of Free Pacific may be read as a memorial of this form of water-based freedom in which the artist delighted. Ultimately, the importance of Free Pacific lies in its ability to unite us through the universality of our shared national experience. Looking beyond the immediacy of the protest at hand, there is a timelessness to the work. It serves as an affirmation of our common humanity, weaving Aotearoa's existence into a thread of joyful and shared triumph. RACHEL KLEINSMAN
• Estimate:
  NZ$95,000 - 125,000
• 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.