Two sheds and a power pole, Dick Frizzell

Curator’s talk with Peter Shaw, Saturday 9 Oct 11am.

Two sheds and a power pole, Dick Frizzell.

During the years 1956 -1977 the Kelliher was New Zealand’s premier art award. It was the intention of the wealthy owner of Dominion Breweries, Sir Henry Kelliher, to establish an award to encourage artists to “paint the visible aspects of New Zealand’s landscape and coastal scenes in a realistic and traditional way.” The competition reflected his personal taste. Sir Henry had no sympathy for or interest in contemporary Modernism.

The annual openings of the Kelliher Art Award were grand social occasions. In 1960 the judge was the Australian painter, Rubery Bennett who gave the Second Prize to the 18 year old David Barker for his painting Beach Strays, displayed in this exhibition. “Here is water that looks like water,” he told the large and appreciative audience assembled at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

The Kelliher paintings were seen by many. The exhibitions received enormous publicity. Sir Henry ensured that many of the Award paintings found their way into the public rooms of DB hotels all over the country where they could be admired by patrons. Others were hung in his company offices or in his large home on Puketutu Island on the Manukau Harbour. It is these that formed the basis of the Kelliher Art Trust’s collection.

Although the Kelliher Art Award ceased to exist after 1977, the Kelliher Art Trust has maintained its founder’s interest in landscape painting. It has also added more recently painted works to the collection. Times have changed. Sir Henry Kelliher, who is said to have disapproved of judge Sir William Dargie’s award of a prize to Paul Olds’ Wellington in the 1959 Award, would never have purchased a work by Toss Woollaston. The artist would never have exhibited in the Kelliher Art Award yet a fine example of his landscape painting now hangs in the still growing collection.

The works on display at Uxbridge Creative Centre include pieces by Justin Boroughs, David Barker, Austen Deans, Owen R. Lee, Peter McIntyre, Stanley Palmer, Rex Turnball, Richard McWhannell and Sir Mountford Tosswill Woollaston. This exhibition is part of the Manukau Festival of Arts.
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