Careful what you wish for

“You know, they’re buying their country houses and they’re putting their kids in private schools and they need money.”

Art dealer Larry Gagosian discusses his responsibilities towards his artists in the NYT

“Back then, a museum’s fundamental role was about taking care of and protecting the art, but this century it’s much more about the visitor experience.” 
Neal Benezra, director of the SFMoMA talks about 1995

Fair enough

The Auckland Art Fair has announced the dealer galleries that will be participating in the 2016 fair opening on 25 May. The dealers have also named the artists they'll show. As you'd expect, it’s mainly an Auckland affair with nearly seventy percent of the galleries based there. Fifteen galleries are coming in from overseas of which 10 are from Australia and three from the South Island.

The male female ratio varies greatly between dealers with overall 63 percent being male. Just three galleries are exhibiting only women artists and they are all one person presentations. Eight galleries have only male artists on show.

This year you can also take advantage of My Art to grow your collection. The offer is that with a $2,500 deposit you can get a loan to buy up to $25,000 worth of art. Of course you have to pay it back at $2,500 per month over nine months. Nothing's perfect, but the payments are interest free. You can see the full list of galleries and artists here.

I robot

You know OTN is lookalike central, but who'd have thought we'd score a lookalike of an art dealer so close to home? Maurizio Cattelan once famously made a replica art collector and dumped it face down into a swimming pool, oh, and also gaffer-taped his dealer to the wall, but make another version? Not so common. Callum Morton, the Australian artist, went there. A decade ago, for his last Christchurch outing, he showed with chilling prescience a huge rock crashed through the roof of a shop, and now he has twinned Anna Schwartz in his latest work Reception. The robot Schwartz is looking a bit wonky on it (more farmer skinned by aliens in the opening minutes of Men in Black than Japanese Otonaroid) but Morton says this is intentional. 'It's a little bit Thunderbirds in a way and I kind of like that clunkiness.' Given that Anna Schwartz, is pretty much the opposite of clunky they’ll be easy to tell apart. You can read more about the good robot Schwartz and Morton’s work here in the SMH and, even better, some Roboschwartz live action here.

Images: Top, Roboschwartz. Middle left, Schwartz and right, Schwartz.01 and Bottom, left MiB farmer and right Otonaroid.

Don Wood 1938-2016

In the history of art dealing in New Zealand the death this week of Don Wood is a big marker. In 1960, when he was in his early 20s, Wood opened The Gallery (shortly after renamed the Ikon Gallery) with Frank Lowe, a fellow architecture student. It was one of the very early dealer galleries in New Zealand focusing on the contemporary art of the time. As examples it was the Ikon Gallery that was the first to show Don Binney’s bird paintings and Pat Hanly’s iconic Figures in light series. 

Wood was also an important early supporter of Colin McCahon who had three exhibitions at the Gallery in its Symonds Street location (it was rather wonderfully situated in the basement of Rationalist House). The impressive line-up included The Wake, the first showing of  Here I give thanks to Mondrian, the Gate painting Waioneke and the large banners Landscape theme and variations specifically designed by McCahon ‘to fill the Ikon'. In 1964 when the gallery shifted to Lorne Street as Ikon Fine Arts McCahon showed his Waterfall series there. 

When Wood sold 19 paintings by Colin McCahon to the American Edward J Danziger he also became a key player in one of the great art mystery stories of the sixties. Danziger, an ex movie producer (more Roger Corman that Goldwyn-Mayer) turned hotel owner, took the paintings out of the country to decorate his chain of hotels in the Gordon Hotel Group. The Bellini paintings vanished and became something of an El Dorado. Dealers would trawl the US in search of the lost mother lode until Australian based art dealer Martin Browne painstakingly located most of them. 

After a few brief years at the centre of NZ's emergent contemporary art world, the Ikon Fine Arts closed in 1964. Wood continued his involvement in art dealing most importantly working alongside Peter Webb, another of the heroes of art dealing in New Zealand. You can get a feel for Wood's architectural background, a field he worked in for most of his life, here in Wystan Curnow's account of his negotiations with Billy Apple over proposed changes to the Peter Webb Gallery in the 1970s. As well as being a patient man, Wood built up a collection of contemporary art and there is a rare opportunity to see his taste in action via this Art + Object catalogue that featured a good part of it.

Image: center, Rationalist House the site of the Ikon Gallery as it is today

After the fall

Art Fairs can be pretty tough on dealer galleries. The galleries have to apply to be included and at many fairs there are more dealers than slots. Primo Australian Gallery Rosylyn Oxley9 had the ignominy a few years back of being dropped by Art Basel after more than a decade of regular attendance. They're back in Art Basel Hong Kong but still it stings. The Art Fairs of course say the culling is in the interests of standards. We only have the best of the best is the usual claim, but what if the Best of the Best don’t want to play?

Ask the Melbourne Art Fair. Once an unstoppable force on the Australian art scene, it has just been announced that the 2016 Fair is a no go. Why? Turns out three of the big names in Australian art dealing - Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Tolarno Galleries, and Anna Schwartz Gallery - have all said thanks but no thanks. The idea that three galleries could bring down a well-established art fair (there were 90 other applicants for slots) is astonishing. Of course the Melbourne Art Fair has taken some hits. They’ve struggled to attract top end international galleries, there’s been criticism of standards and the launch of the Sydney Art Fair a couple of years back didn’t help. The alternate art fair Spring 1883 which might have been seen as a sign of symbiotic energy instead felt like a flesh wound to an impala already showing a pronounced limp. With that sort of pressure together with an increasingly crowded art fair calendar it’s either going to make you strong or bring you to your knees. The question now is whether Spring 1883 will go it alone. So far there is nothing on their web site to suggest otherwise.

None of this will be going unnoticed in the Auckland art world with an art fair slated for late May. Galleries are currently being selected with the Auckland Art Fair looking for dealers who, ‘show great art that actively contributes in some way to the current art conversation of the wider Pacific’. The selectors haven’t exactly got their hands tied. The number of galleries is, as usual, restricted to around 40 and it sounds as though about 25 of them will be NZ-based. In a recent interview in the Australian Art Collector mag, Hayley White and Stephanie Post (who run the rejigged AAF) were careful to mention the main NZ dealers and their artists: Gow Langsford (3 times), Hopkinson Mossman (4), Michael Lett (5), Starkwhite (3) and Jonathan Smart (1). A be-nice policy is probably being implemented at this very moment. Hey, maybe the dealers should have their own VIP lounge like the collectors do? Ok ... on reflection ... maybe not.

Image: the Melbourne Art Fair, not looking on top form for a quite a while (Thanks for the head’s up T)

… and change

The groan you can hear in the air is probably the tectonic plates of the art economy starting to shift. There’s Webb’s plucky experiment with the turnover model in Parnell, the fallout from the Bambury/Jensen settlement, Bowerbank/Ninow testing a dealer auction mash-up, My art offering collectors interest-free cash to buy stuff with, a corporate taking over the Auckland Art Fair and some very sharp words dissing auctions from the world of art dealers.

'If you are wanting to start an art collection, to go to an auction to buy the art is bad practice. You won’t get the best examples and you won’t learn anything: the work is a product, which is an anathema to us.

There are all sorts of pressures that go with auctions, let alone the competition. If you are bidding against one other maniac you will overpay – it’s too dangerous.' 
Dealers Tim Melville and Emma Fox reported in NZ Herald on Saturday
 
Ouch.

Finally there’s a cash and carry online model for art and collectibles being set up by the Fairfax Group of all people. And the media barons look as though they're going straight for the jugular with the simple proposition 'Get Stuff' riffing on the name of their eponymous website. In a sample Facebook page (you can see it here) for instance you could bid for a work by Rohan Wealleans starting with an opening bid of $800 or use the 'buy now' feature and get it directly off the shelf for $1,800. It's a technique that makes most art dealers go pale but in this case at least one (Ivan Anthony) is in on the game with his artists and contact details featuring as the art part in the launch offering. So, as far as art's concerned, even though the site is presented as an auction, the chances of getting a bargain look kind of remote. 

Image: Yvonne Todd. Buy now

Back in your court

We’ve now had time to read through the Judgment papers issued by High Court Judge John Fogarty in the case of Bambury vs Jensen. At 145 pages it must be one of the most expensive art texts written in this country! A number of readers have suggested that our initial post was somewhat unfair to defendant Andrew Jensen claiming Stephen Bambury as a clear winner. Despite our comment that the settlement was ‘a much reduced pay out based on the initial claim of around $700,000 about the much reduced pay out on the initial claim of around $700,000’ we also wrote up that ‘the High Court has found in favour of the artist’ so it’s probably a fair enough reaction. 

Here’s a little more detail about what happened. There were 41 items disputed by the artist (mostly around payments owing on paintings) of which 26 failed to convince Judge Fogarty for various reasons. Two other items were set aside because of the Limitations Act, a couple were granted leave to apply at another time and seven required payments being made to Bambury in the total amount of $139,200 plus some interest. Given the amount of money that must have been spent taking this action to the High Court there were probably no winners on the day. We’ll try to make a copy of the Judgment easily available on OTN if we can. It’s a fascinating insight (and a rare one) into the back office world of dealers and artists. 
Image: trajectory of a ping pong ball

Broken records

The long legal tussle between artist Stephen Bambury and art dealer Andrew Jensen has run its course. It's been an important case. It asked the court to consider the relationship between artists and dealers that are usually (given that there are few solid contractual agreements) conducted in a pretty fluid state. The way art is bought and sold in New Zealand can be complex with closely negotiated deals on prices, time payment, part-payments, packaging of works, exchanges, etc etc. Given that throughout their professional education artists learn diddly squat about how to run even the smallest business, it's not surprising that many artists end up with incomplete records and a sketchy idea of what’s in their various dealers' stock rooms or indeed who ends up owning their work.

This is the context in which Bambury questioned missing payments on sales made by Jensen’s gallery and Jensen, in the way of these things, counter-sued. Now the High Court has found in favour of the artist, awarding him over $100,000 plus interest accumulated over the years the complaint has been in dispute. Jensen’s counter-claims were put aside. Of course all this started with Jensen and Bambury working together very closely. Jensen was a believer in Bambury and Bambury a strong supporter of Jensen’s gallery with both benefiting. Unfortunately such friendships can also lead to the business practices associated with them being looser than usual. Dealings can get muddled via undocumented oral agreements, payments being used to offset other expenses, trade-ins and so forth.

Indeed the court found the Bambury-Jensen relationship to be so closely intertwined that the judge regarded it to be more like a partnership than a business relationship between two separate companies. As a result issues of trust were seen as less critical than they might be in business to business relationships. This maybe why some of Bambury’s more complex claims were dismissed. So, a much reduced pay-out based on the initial claim of around $700,000, but still significant. It will no doubt reverberate through the dealer gallery system and should be a wake-up call to artists look carefully at their own responsibility to keep track of their work and the money it brings them.

My big fat art fair

Funnier than a sitcom and with more twists and turns than a soap opera, art fairs in Australia deserve their own reality show. As Sydney Contemporary aka 'Australasia's International Art Fair' opens, the company that runs it and the Melbourne Art Fair Single Market Events has just announced it will no longer be involved with the city down South. That didn’t last long. Single Market Events only managed one outing in Melbourne and that was last year. Melbourne Art Fair chairwoman and gallery owner Anna Pappas told reporters, 'We found our objectives were different.' Whoops that meant breaking a 20-year contract with Single Market Events with only one year on the clock. 

So now SME really needs to deliver a big success with Sydney Contemporary at Carriageworks in Redfern this year. Creative NZ certainly believes in them shelling out $117,000 to get nine NZ dealer galleries into Sydney Contemporary booths. 

Across town in the CBD a bunch of NZ galleries (Hamish McKay, Michael Lett, Robert Heald, Ivan Anthony and Hopkinson Mossman) have opted to show in the breakaway fair Spring 1883 at the Establishment (#deeplyironicname) Hotel. They get to hot-bed in their ‘galleries’ keeping costs down while at Carriageworks booths go from $10,000 to $50,000 a pop plus shipping etc. Even on 50 percent commission you’re talking around $100,000 worth of sales to go home smiling. 

But win or lose, the cocktail specially designed by artist Fiona Lowry for Sydney Art Week will offer comfort. The Pink Frost involves Hendrick's gin, blood orange liqueur, rose water and (the art bit) an orchid sealed in an over-sized ice cube. Cheers

Greedy artists make it tough for dealers to earn a buck

In the 1980s Wellington had a dealer gallery called 

-->331/3. The name was painted in blue right across the entire front of the bright yellow building. Why would you call a dealer gallery that? It was simply the rate of commission that art dealers took off artists in order to sell their work back then. Later it jumped to 40 percent and more recently 50 percent. What’s an artist to do? Run might be a good idea as a new threat looms on the horizon - German academic Magnus Resch. He's looked at data from 8,000 galleries based in Germany, London and the U.S and he is not impressed. In fact Resch discovered that 30 percent of the galleries weren’t making a profit at all. Change your business model says Magnus in his new book Management of art galleries, and change it fast. Apparently the problem is fourfold:
•  Rents are too high
•  Unique product is increasingly hard to find
•  Gallery staff are paid too little and..oh, oh…
•  Artists make too much money.

The solution, from this German anyway, is to raise the commission to a 70/30 split and we’ve got to tell you that 70 percent is not going to the artists. Impossible you say? You'd think so, but had you suggested to Gallery 331/3 that one day it would have to change its sign to a 50 they'd have laughed in your face.

Image: Adam Parker Smith’s 2013 painting I’m Looking for a Gallery Better Then This One

Dealt to

The moment we saw them we figured that some artist would find them irresistible. And so Mathieu Malouf took his dealer Lars Friedrich down to get scanned and is now offering a pint-sized limited edition of him carved in sandstone and printed with his image. Still, Friedrich fared somewhat better than Emmanuel Perrotin who Maurizio Cattelan dressed as a pink rabbit/penis for his entire show or Massimo De Carlo who Cattelan gaffer-taped to the wall of his gallery for two hours at an opening.

Images left to right: art dealers Lars Friedrich, Emmanuel Perrotin and Massimo De Carlo (thanks M)

What webs they weave

Over the last year a number of dealer galleries have clustered (as they do) on Arch Hill. Originally dominated by Two Rooms the area is anchored by the Great North Road. With typical perversity, Michael Lett chose last year to return from his Great North Road location to K-Road. And not just to K-Road but as a very close neighbor of Ivan Anthony and just across the road from Artspace. Anyone who visits this area will have seen another large empty space lurking on K-Road itself. Lett used it for a one-night dinner at the opening of his Implicated and immune exhibition as it’s part of the same ex-retail bank space he occupies. Now it seems another gallery is set to open its doors. Webb’s loss looks as though it might be K-Road’s gain as a couple of ex-Webb people are rumoured to have just signed the lease. As the current Webb’s current staff list has no head of department for fine art, and no one at all for wine, we’re guessing Charles Ninow will be one of them and probably Simon Ward the other. (Turns out the Simon is actually Simon Bowerbank who used to work for Ivan upstairs and also for Webb's - ok that makes us the simple ones, sorry Simons) What sort of gallery would these ex auction guys run? There is certainly room in the secondary market, especially to discreetly place high-end work. Watch that space.
Image: the K-Road site back in the days when you could bank on it being....a....bank.

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Sydney sider
Having been hammered to death from 2007 to 2009 the artist resale royalty popped up again in the Sunday Star Times. Weirdly artist Grahame Sydney came out against it calling its supporters "Greedy. Immensely greedy." He went on to say that a sale was a sale and that as such it was "A firm, final contract between two parties - the implicit agreement being 'I will give you this thing I have made in return for this amount of money I have asked for, or we have mutually agreed is fair'. At that point, as with any sale, I relinquish my ownership rights to it.” Presumably he exempts copyright payments, the other artist royalty system, from this hard line position.

Art chart  A couple of years ago we looked at the male/female ratio in dealer galleries. Has the situation changed at all since then? Well yes it has. It’s not mega but there has been a small increase overall in the representation of women: just one percent up to a still pretty bleak 34 percent overall. In dealer galleries run by women the percentage increase was 10 percent (to 52 percent) with galleries run by men dropping their representation of women by 5 percent. If you want to look at the representative list of galleries we based these figures on you can see it here.

Gold 
The golden trumpet for stretching description beyond recognition goes this month to New Plymouth Mayor Andrew Judd for: "The Govett-Brewster is a cornerstone of contemporary art globally.” You may smile now.

By the numbers: Venice edition

0  the number of artists who have used the Marco Polo airport as a venue

1    the number of times we didn’t go because et al. annoyed the PM

2         the number of venues being used by Simon Denny

7         the number of times NZ has been represented

41       the number of NZ at Venice patrons

44       the percentage of NZ Venice participants who have been female

45       the average age of artists representing NZ

33       the age of this year’s participant Simon Denny

56       the number of art biennales that have been held in Venice

75       the percentage of women who had to show as part of a two-hander

80       the percentage of men who had solo shows at Venice

88       the number of countries that participate at Venice

197     the days the Venice Biennale will run in 2015

Miniatures
If you haven’t seen the tiny furniture by set designer John Parker on OTN’s site, it's beyond cute. And for all miniature fanatics this great behind-the-scenes clip of tiny LA being constructed for the movie Earthquake.

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Paper tiger    Is Wellington really the Cultural Capital of NZ? Not if its local paper the Dominion Post has anything to judge by. Its 150-year anniversary history, Paul Elenio’s The Dominion Post: 150 years of news, is defiantly arts averse. There's just one entry with art possibilities, “McDonald’s opening” but it turned out to be just that. Hamburgers. Te Papa gets a couple of pages but only about the building and how Te Papa’s critics were body-slammed into the dust by the first CE Cheryll Sotheran (insert hollow laughter here). Oddly, the line the DomPost has dished up to its readers over more recent years that “Te Papa is losing its gloss” didn’t make it into history.
 

Bambury cross    Like Dickens' interminable legal fest Jarndyce v Jarndyce the Bambury v Jensen court case won't leave the spotlight. Back in March 2014 the two adversaries (it’s one of those who-sold-what-to-whom-and-when-and-what-happened thingos) were waiting for a slot in the High Court. It now looks like the days of reckoning are at hand so it's probably time for the boys to make up before the legal system really starts piling up the costs. Given the current legal firm charge out rates ($317 an hour for partners according to the Law Society #soundslow) vs dealer commissions and Bambury paintings (top price at auction $36,000, so let's estimate around $60,000 a pop) it’s hard to see how there can be much profit left in the case for anyone outside chambers.
 

A quick response    The latest round of Creative NZ's Quick response grants listed 20 named artists and one collective in the Visual Arts section. The boys did best (well there were more of them at 12 to 8) getting $68,600. That's an average of $5,716 a grant which was couple of hundred dollars above the total grant average. As for the women, they got $44,304 in total with an average of $5,538. Yes, it's below the men (again) and also below the average amount given over the whole round. #musttryharder. 
  

You have to strut before you can run   Dealers are experiencing a bit of an income freeze thanks to Te Papa’s mighty struggle to snag a million dollar plus painting by English artist William Strutt from a dealer in the UK. Strutt has been a big thing in Australia for some years now with his epic history paintings so we can expect some NZ content for our dollars. Efforts to get the Strutt into the collection along with a review of the buy-at-any-cost policy that has been operating at Te Papa since it was invented has meant a hold on contemporary purchases. What's causing the trouble is that in the last five years the best price Strutt has managed at auction is around $15,000 (you have to go back to 1998 to find one that got over $100,000 and then just over). Te Papa is no doubt struggling to get independent valuations anywhere close to what the vendors are asking and ends up making offers that don't cut it.  
    

MC DCNZ    has made some productive connections with curators over the years and one of them is now director of the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington. Melissa Chiu was born in Darwin and helped found the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney. She was then snapped up by the Asia Society Museum in New York as its first contemporary curator. In 2004, the same year she was made director, she curated Paradise now? Contemporary art from the Pacific in 2004.

By the numbers

To anyone (that’s anyone living below the Bombay Hills) who doesn’t believe that Auckland is now the Cultural Capital of NZ, here’s some numbers based on the Walters Prize and the Venice Biennale. And they are kind of compelling. Compelling that is if you believe that representation by a dealer gallery is one possible measure of an artist's standing. Anyway, of the 25 artists who have been finalists in the seven Walters Prizes, all are represented in Auckland and just seven in Wellington. Then in the last two Prizes non of the eight finalists are represented in Wellington at all. Of the nine artists who have carried the NZ flag at the Venice Biennale, only three are represented in Wellington. Over both of our major art events then less than 30 percent of the exhibitors are represented by a Wellington dealer. As to the South Island, someone down there can do that sorry sum..

And for the record, the lists:

NZ’s representation at the Venice Biennale:
2001 Jacqueline Fraser and Peter Robinson
2003 Michael Stevenson
2005 et al.
2009 Francis Upritchard and Judy Millar
2011 Michael Parekowhai
2013 Bill Culbert
2015 Simon Denny

Walters Prize:
2002
Yvonne Todd
Gavin Hipkins
John Reynolds
Mike Stevenson

2004
et al.
Jacqueline Fraser
Ronnie van Hout
Daniel von Sturmer

2006
Francis Upritchard
Stella Brennan
Phil Dadson
Peter Robinson

2008
Peter Robinson
Edith Amituanai
Lisa Reihana
John Reynolds

2010
Dan Arps
Fiona Connor
Saskia Leek
Alex Monteith

2012
Kate Newby
Simon Denny
Alicia Frankovich
Sriwhana Spong

2014
Luke Willis Thompson
Simon Denny
Maddie Leach
Kalisolaite Uhila

Prepare for glory: 100

The Art Review 'Power 100' is out again with its list of 75 powerful men headed by Nicholas, David and Iwan. This year a woman did sneak up into  the top ten. It was Marina Abramovic of course up from possie number 11 last year and judged to be more powerful than Jeff Koons. In the top 25 there were seven women with three of them in the top 10. They included two artists with Cindy Sherman taking slot 10, up from 13 last year. The criteria may be dubious but who can resist a list? There are even some NZ connections to be made. Two Walters Prize judges made the top 100 - Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev at 19 and this year’s judge Charles Esche on the list for the first time as number 87.  A number of the 'powerful' artists have shown in NZ but the City Gallery scored two big ones Rosemarie Trockel (slot 63) and Yayoi Kusama (slot 52) who both had solo shows. And that's not to forget the National Art Gallery's solo exhibition of Cindy Sherman way back in 1989. Then, with the rise and rise of the dealers, lets give a nod to Simon Denny’s German dealer Daniel Buchholz who came in at number 67. You can study the full list here.

Image: OTN breakdown chart of the Art Review 'Power 100' occupations

Good to know

“Art prices are not pulled out of thin air”
ArtBusiness

Collective

How interesting is it to get a look inside the homes of art collectors? #rhetoricalquestion For a start it's a chance to see art, possibly for the first time, outside the context of the good old neutral white space that's still endorsed almost unanimously by both art dealers and art museums. We're talking Space Odyssey rather than home-sweet-home. Occasionally public art museums have a swing at re-creating the domestic art experience but it's always awkward. The Auckland Art Gallery made an effort once with a patrons' exhibition (Present Company: Works Presented by the Patrons) but the result was an uneasy hybrid.

At this year’s Frieze art fair in London one gallerist (the HellyNahmad Gallery) has jumped the shark and created a set of rooms (living room and study) supposedly owned by a fictitious collector of the pack-rat archivist variety and set in Paris, 1968. According to Art Market Monitor it's “a statement against art as an asset” so who knows which planet they're living on. Still, it's a nice idea and one that has been done before by at least one artist (Elmgreen & Dragset, Death of a Collector, 2009). So now that we have dealers who clearly feel they can also make art. Oh well, there's another old and respected division of labour all shot to hell.

Images: the  HellyNahmad Gallery's installation at Freize

Art throbs

Here’s some good news for art dealers  (well the male ones anyway) you’ve just been elevated to the role of primo date bait on a posh NZ singles site.

Fair go

They’re at it again. Following up on their breakaway art fair a couple of years ago a group of Australian dealers are back with another one. The poor old Melbourne Art Fair must rue the day it went mainstream and allowed this sort of thing to happen. This time the Art Fair you can go to when you’re not going to the other art fair is called SPRING 1883 (14-17 August). There’s a taste of what they’re up to from the list of NZ galleries that have signed up for the ride - Gloria Knight, Hamish McKay, Hopkinson Mossman, Michael Lett and Robert Heald. The dealers behind SPRING 1883 are Vasili Kaliman (Station), Geoff Newton (Neon Park) and Vikki McInnes (Sarah Scout Presents). Kaliman and Newton are also well-known in the NZ art scene from their participation at the Auckland Art Fair and a close relationship with NZ artists.

SPRING 1883 will be held in the historic surroundings of the Windsor Hotel. This grand nineteenth century building was where the Australian constitution was drafted and was known for many years as the Duchess of Spring Street. The art fair’s name SPRING 1883 is said to refer to the Windsor Hotel’s opening date (no it’s not the address) although most sources give the rebuild of the Grand and its reopening as the Windsor as 1884. But given that at least one of the team of three is a known trickster maybe there is more to the art fair name and that date than meets the eye.