Kim Wright collection

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33717, 14 December 1974, Page 24

Kim Wright collection

The Kim Wright collection of New Zealand paintings at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery was organised by the GovettBrewster gallery of New Plymouth with the assistance of the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand.

Kim Wright was bom in 1938 and would appear to have lived a very nomadic life by New Zealand standards. A graduate of Lincoln College, he worked as a shepherd and travelled overseas before attending university. From 1964 to 1966 he worked for the State Advances Corporation as a farm appraiser. He then moved to Australia where he worked on sugar plantations, farms, and in the main cities.

He returned to Auckland, bought a run-down concern, and sold it two years later. He then worked from time to time as a truck-driver, a taxi-driver, a wharf labourer, an attendant at the Auckland City Art Gallery, and as a fruit-picker in Hawke’s Bay.

In 1972 he lived for a time in the south of England, hitch-hiked across North and East Africa and then through Europe, the Middle East, and South-East Asia. Since then he has worked as a carpenter’s assistant in Auckland.

That Mr Wright has found time to put together what

amounts to a comprehensive collection of paintings numbering 53 is quite amazing, and while not all the painters whose work he has chosen to collect are widely represented, his works by Rita Angus, Colin McCahon, Patrick Hahly, and Toss Woollaston would grace any public collection. His six Illingworths show a development that most of us in the South Island would be

completely unaware of. They move from Miro and Klee like images to his present personal style. The 12 McCahon paintings and drawings contain examples from most of his major series, including a very beautiful painting from the Titirangi series called "Pohutukawa.”

His collection of Hanlys is also extensive, numbering 13 and including prints and drawing as well as paintings from the “Figures in Light” and “Fire Series.”

The Christchurch painters Don Peebles and Phillip Trusttum are both represented in the collection— Peebles by a 1967 example of his “Linear Series,” a large dense blue, minimal work, and Trusttum by two paintings, the major one being “Fat Chord” (1969), a work rich in surface treatment.

Milan Mrkusich, Gordon Walters, and Brent Wong are others whose work has been collected by Mr Wright. The Kim Wright collection is on extended Joan to the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and the Christchurch season will close on December 29 —G.T.M.