Ten years for dealer gallery

Press, 29 May 1985, Page 20

Ten years for dealer gallery

By

GARRY ARTHUR

The all-women show which opened this week at the Brooke/Gifford Gallery in Manchester Street celebrates the tenth anniversary of Christchurch’s largest dealer art gallery, launched by two enterprising women in May, 1975. Barbara Brooke, who had been secretary of the Canterbury Society of Arts, invited Judith Gifford to join her in starting their own gallery — something which Christchurch artists had been urging each other to do for years. They found suitable space in what had been the repair department above a motorcycle shop and transformed it, at the expense of much time and effort, into a spacious art gallery with three exhibition spaces, a stock room and an office. Patrons had to enter through the antique shop which succeeded the ground floor motor-cycle business, but changes now in progress will give the Brooke/Gifford Gallery its own entrance direct from the street. Barbara Brooke had been involved in a previous attempt to run a dealer gallery in Christchurch. She and her painter husband Andre Brooke opened Gallery 91 in Cashel Street in 1959, showing the work of some top New Zealand artists, including Colin McCahon, but Christchurch was not ready for it, and the gallery closed after a mere 12 months.

The Brooke/Gifford has been through some lean

times too, but patience and determination have paid off, and Judith Gifford now has no hesitation in saying that the gallery is a success. Both women started with the advantage of knowing all of the serious painters and sculptors. Both were married to painters, although Barbara Brooke and her husband separated and Andre Brooke went off to Tahiti, where he still lives. Judith Gifford is married to the painter, Quentin Macfarlane, who still helps out at the gallery with the hanging of new shows. She has a history degree and worked for several years in an architect’s office. She has found her experience of office procedure invaluable in running the gallery, which she has done single-handed since Barbara Brooke’s death five years ago. Fortunately, these last five years have seen a surge of public interest in buying original works by New Zealand artists, although Judith Gifford notes that Christchurch is much slower than Auckland and Wellington in that respect. “There’s a lot of corporate buying up there,” she says, “whereas Christchurch has been aptly called a ‘branch office city.’ There’s been a big boom in contemporary art in Auckland especially. I think it’s suddenly hit them, and people are seeing art as an investment. It’s nicer to have a painting than stocks and shares.

“Rich Auckland ladies have suddenly decided to

equate art with status, and they’re paying really big prices.” Predictably, Christchurch is more sedate, but established big-name artists have their . following. A recent exhibition at the Brooke/ Gifford of oils and watercolours by the Christchurch painter, W. A. Sutton, was rushed by admirers of his work; it virtually sold out in one morning. Exhibitions by the Auckland painter Patrick Hanly can be counted on to generate a similar response. The gallery has established a “stable” of artists that reads like a who’s who of contemporary New Zealand art. As a dealer gallery, the Brooke/Gifford deals personally with each artist, acting as agent and selling the work on commission. The standard gallery commission is 33'A per cent.

Work unsold from exhibitions is often kept in stock. “A lot of work is sold from the back room,” says Judith Gifford. “That would be the bulk of my selling.” She has a policy of encouraging promising young artists, and will often mount exhibitions of their work even though she knows the show will be an economic write-off for the gallery. Artists are often sensitive, temperamental creatures, and Judith Gifford finds she needs to provide an emotional support system. If the works do not sell as well as expected, the despondent artist has to be helped through the bad patch. “It can be very draining and emotionally exhausting

supporting all the egos,” she says. “Although artists may seem confident, they are often very nervous about showing their work.” The emergence of women’s art has been a significant feature of the gallery’s first decade, which is why Judith Gifford decided to mark the anniversary with a women’s show.

“Women’s art is taken seriously now,” she says. “Ten years ago a gallery could have an exhibition representative of New Zealand art and not include any women artists, and there would have been no protest. It’s different today.”

Most of the artists in this show are from Auckland, except for Julia Morison, a Christchurch artist who is showing two large abstract works, and Philippa Blair who — although an Aucklander — is now artist in residence at the University of Canterbury. She is showing three of her folded and painted "cloaks,” all done since she moved to Christchurch.

Gretchen Albrecht, one of New Zealand’s most successful women artists, is showing some of her abstract prints, including a large framed paper “pulp” which she completed in

New York, where she had an exhibition recently. One of the seven, Claudia Pond Eyley, is a feminist artist whose three paintings depict shields which she sees as symbolically protective devices.

Three drawings are exhibited by Maria Olsen, who was one of the New Zealand representatives at the Edinburgh Festival last year. Sylvia Siddell has four of her grotesquely humorous etchings in the show, and Merylyn Tweedie, another feminist artist, is showing three photographic collages.

The exhibition closes on June 14.