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Lot 16: RICHARD KILLEEN How Do We Learn?

Est: $25,000 NZD - $35,000 NZDPassed
Webb’s – Specialist Auctioneers’Auckland, New ZealandNovember 23, 2020

Item Overview

Description

Richard Killeen

How Do We Learn?

1992

acrylic and collage on aluminium

signed Killeen, dated 1992 and inscribed How do we learn?/Cat no. 1458 in ink lower edge

1090 x 1215mm (variable)

PROVENANCE

Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Peter McCleavey Gallery, c1998.

Richard Killeen - How Do We Learn?

Essay by NEIL TALBOT

"No ideas but in things," said the famous American modernist poet William Carlos Williams. This is an aspiration that comes as second nature to Richard Killeen. There are plenty of ideas within Killeen's practice, but they are constructed with bits and pieces, by dispersed particles, by visual and physical incidents. Killeen's work has always been about congeries of parts, concatenations of bright things, particular shapes and coloured configurations, which one feels prompted to pick up and rearrange. In fact, since 1978 (the year of his first cut-outs), Killeen has literally acted out and fostered this stimulus to pick up a pictorial fragment, and to seize and reposition the optical universe bit by bit. Killeen's busy visual arrays involve simplifications and reductions of the world's profusion into graphic signs, diagrammatic units and snappy motifs. It is as if the artist has set himself the lifelong task of codifying, item by item, as much of the planet as possible in order to fill a huge graphic Noah's Ark: a manic compendium of the visible, a visual primer of everything translated into memorable icons for storage against some cataclysmic future forgetting. Even Killeen's title, How Do We Learn?, implies the careful work of matching and categorisation employed by encyclopaedists and fastidious cataloguers submitting small details to the demands of their overarching systems.

When Killeen made his first cut-outs in 1978, every shape was painted in one flat colour so that each piece of lacquered aluminium read as a declarative silhouette. The artist's attraction to things cleanly delineated and to the dialectic of figure and ground was apparent in his earliest figure compositions, and then intricately mapped in the tessellated geometric abstractions that followed. The shapes - of animals, birds, fish, insects, tools and less recognisable abstract objects - appeared as flat designs on plain grounds in several 1977 paintings. In the actual cut-outs, the pieces of aluminium became the 'figure' to the white gallery wall's 'ground'; in this way the paintings extended themselves into the literal space of the art gallery - they started to ingest their surrounding environments.

How Do We Learn? (1992) is a series of numerous rectangular and square cut-out aluminium pieces, some hung at an angle to create a diamond shape, disrupting a grid of pieces and creating a more random look to the grouping. The parts of the whole are awash with creamy, light-yellow brush strokes, with more-detailed elements that sit on top. A hand, a kitchen knife, a dog, a vessel and some beetle wings, to name some of the easily identifiable visual aids. Others are abstracted forms, undefinable. Perhaps the title is a reference to how we learn to read a painting and build a visual language.

The assortment of 'image things,' or visual objects, is typical of many of Killeen's paintings in its mixing up of the natural and artificial worlds: birds, teeth, seed pods and plants, with chair legs, cutting tools, chevrons and combs. As Killeen's methods of graphic simplification and associational shapeshifting proceed, he becomes as much a collector of modes of depiction and invented things as of things that actually exist; the boundaries between natural and artificial become strangely elusive. The artist's unstoppable documentation of the world turns into the part-by-part fabrication of a totally surrogate reality.

Artist or Maker

Payment & Shipping

Payment

Accepted forms of payment: American Express, COD (cash on delivery), MasterCard, Money Order / Cashiers Check, Other, Visa, Wire Transfer

Shipping

SHIPPING
For shipping both national and international we recommend the services of Pack and Send Ltd, who work closely with our business to enable the safe return of your new purchase.
All costs associated with the freight of your goods (packaging, shipping, consumables etc) are to be paid by the purchaser, in addition to the winning bid.

Details for Pack and Sends are listed below, or please feel free to organise another contractor of your choice.

Pack and Send Ltd
+64 9 909 9099
aucklandcity@packsend.co.nz
Contact: Neel

COLLECTION
Purchases are to be taken away at the buyer's expense immediately after the sale once payment in full has been made. If this is not done, Mosgreen-Webb's will not be responsible if the lot is lost stolen damaged or destroyed. Any payment by cheque will not be considered paid until the payment has cleared. Any items not collected within seven days of the auction may be subject to a storage and insurance fee. A receipted invoice must be produced prior to delivery of any lot.

Auction Details

Works of Art

by
Webb’s – Specialist Auctioneers’
November 23, 2020, 06:30 PM NZST

33a Normanby Rd Mt Eden, Auckland, 1024, NZ

Terms

Buyer's Premium

17.5%

Bidding Increments

From:To:Increment:
$0$499$20
$500$999$50
$1,000$1,999$100
$2,000$4,999$200
$5,000$9,999$500
$10,000$19,999$1,000
$20,000$49,999$2,000
$50,000$99,999$5,000
$100,000$199,999$10,000
$200,000$499,999$20,000
$500,000+$50,000

Terms & Conditions

Terms & Conditions For Buyers

1. BIDDING
The highest bidder shall be the purchaser subject to the auctioneer having the right to refuse the bid of any person. Should any dispute arise as to the bidding the lot in dispute will be immediately put up for sale again at the preceding bid or the auctioneer may declare the purchaser which declaration shall be conclusive. No person shall advance less as a bid than the sum nominated by the auctioneer. A bid may be withdrawn before the auctioneer declares that bidding on a lot is closed.
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All lots are sold subject to the right of the seller or his agent to impose a reserve.
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Purchasers shall complete a bidding card before the sale giving their own correct name address and telephone number. It is accepted by bidders that the supply of false information on a bidding card shall be interpreted as deliberate fraud.
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The purchaser accepts that Mossgreen-Webb's will apply a buyer's premium which is charged in addition to the hammer price (unless otherwise stated) together with GST on the premium, which combined sum shall be the total purchase price. The rate of Buyers Premium is published in each catalogue online in conjunction with the catalogue. Please note that there is a minimum Buyers' Premium of 17.5%.
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8. COLLECTION
Purchases are to be taken away at the buyer's expense immediately after the sale once payment in full has been made. If this is not done, Mossgreen-Webb's will not be responsible if the lot is lost stolen damaged or destroyed. Any payment by cheque will not be considered paid until the payment has cleared.
Any items not collected within seven days of the auction may be subject to a storage and insurance fee. A receipted invoice must be produced prior to delivery of any lot.
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d. To store the lot whether at Mossgreen-Webb's own premises or elsewhere at the sole expense of the purchaser and to release the lot only after the purchase price has been paid in full plus the accrued cost of removal storage and all other costs connected to the lot.
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f. To retain possession of that or any other lot purchased by the purchaser at that or any other auction and to release the same only after payment of money due.
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h. To apply any payment made by the purchaser to Mossgreen-Webb's towards any money owing to Mossgreen-Webb's in respect of anything whatsoever irrespective of any directive given in respect of or restriction placed upon such payment by the purchaser whether expressed or implied.
i. Title and right of disposal of the goods shall not pass to the purchaser until payment has been made in full by cleared funds. Where any lot purchased in held by Mossgreen-Webb's pending i. clearance of funds by the purchaser or ii. completion of payment after receipt of a deposit the lot will be held by Mossgreen-Webb's as bailee for the vendor risk and title passing to the purchaser immediately upon notification of clearance of funds or upon completion of purchase. In the event that a lot is lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed before title is transferred to the purchaser, the purchaser shall be entitled to a refund of all monies paid to Mossgreen-Webb's in respect of that lot but shall not be entitled to any compensation for any consequent losses howsoever arising.
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Where the highest bid is below the reserve and the auctioneer declares a sale to be "subject to vendor's consent" or words to that effect the highest bid remains binding upon the bidder until the vendor accepts or rejects it. If the bid is accepted there is a contractual obligation upon the bidder to pay for the lot. However a bid may be withdrawn by the highest bidder at any time before the vendor accepts the bid. Once accepted by the vendor a contract has been formed.
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The above conditions shall apply to all buyers of goods from Mossgreen-Webb's irrespective of the circumstances under which the sale is negotiated.

Shipping & Collection

SHIPPING
For shipping both national and international we recommend the services of Pack and Send Ltd, who work closely with our business to enable the safe return of your new purchase.
All costs associated with the freight of your goods (packaging, shipping, consumables etc) are to be paid by the purchaser, in addition to the winning bid.

Details for Pack and Sends are listed below, or please feel free to organise another contractor of your choice.

Pack and Send Ltd
+64 9 909 9099
aucklandcity@packsend.co.nz
Contact: Neel

COLLECTION
Purchases are to be taken away at the buyer's expense immediately after the sale once payment in full has been made. If this is not done, Mosgreen-Webb's will not be responsible if the lot is lost stolen damaged or destroyed. Any payment by cheque will not be considered paid until the payment has cleared. Any items not collected within seven days of the auction may be subject to a storage and insurance fee. A receipted invoice must be produced prior to delivery of any lot.