The Sue Crockford Gallery was a contemporary art dealer gallery in Auckland, New Zealand.

History

Sue Crockford's career in the visual arts began with her role as an Arts Advisory Officer in the Department of Education. When she and her husband, art historian

Francis Pound Dr Francis Pound (1948 - 15 October 2017) was a New Zealand art historian, curator and writer. Works Pound's writings "challenged the writing of an earlier generation of art historians, including Hamish Keith, Gordon H. Brown and Peter Tomory, a ...

, travelled to New York in 1982 they visited a number of dealer art galleries. On their return, Crockford resolved to open a dealer gallery in Auckland and early in 1985 she opened the Sue Crockford Gallery on Albert Street. The following the gallery moved to Archilles House in Commerce Street and in 1995 to the second floor of the Endeans Building, where it remained until the gallery closed in 2012. Sue Crockford died in 2023.

Artists

The Sue Crockford Gallery opened with a group of eight foundation artists:

Gretchen Albrecht Gretchen Albrecht (born 7 May 1943) is a New Zealand painter and sculptor. Early life and education Albrecht was born in Onehunga in 1943, the daughter of Reuben John and Joyce Winifred Fairburn (née Grainger) Albrecht. She attended the Unive ...

, Jacqueline Fraser, Robert Jesson,

Richard Killeen Richard John Killeen (born 1946) is a significant New Zealand painter, sculptor and digital artist. Biography Killeen was educated at the Elam School of Fine Arts, where his lecturers included Colin McCahon, before graduating in 1966. He has wo ...

Maria Olsen Maria Olsen (born July 22, 1966) is a South African film producer and actress known for her many roles in horror films. These include ''Paranormal Activity 3'', '' The Lords of Salem'', '' Gore Orphanage,'' and ''Starry Eyes''. Non-horror role ...

, John Reynolds, James Ross and Denys Watkins. The gallery expanded this group over the years with artists including Billy Apple, Daniel Burren,

Julian Dashper Julian Dashper (29 February 1960 in Auckland, New Zealand – 30 July 2009), was regarded as one of New Zealand's most well known contemporary artists. In 2001 he was awarded a senior Fulbright fellowship to be based as an artist in residence at ...

Milan Mrkusich Milan Mrkusich (5 April 1925 – 13 June 2018) was a New Zealand artist and designer. He was considered a pioneer of abstract painting in New Zealand. Retrospective exhibitions of his work were organised by the Auckland Art Gallery in 1972 and 1 ...

, Marie Shannon, Yuk King Tan,

Kathy Temin Kathy Temin (born 1968) is an Australian artist who uses synthetic fur to create sculptural objects and installations. She is represented in a number of public collections in Australia and New Zealand and is a professor and Head of Fine Art at ...

and

Gordon Walters Gordon Frederick Walters (24 September 1919 – 5 November 1995) was a Wellington-born artist and graphic designer who is significant to New Zealand culture due to his representation of New Zealand in his Modern Abstract artworks. Education ...

Selected exhibitions

1992 Daniel Buren ''Coloured Transparency''

Buren (France) was one of the international artists who showed with the gallery along with

Sol Lewitt Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism. LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he pref ...

(USA) and

Pae White Pae White (born 1963) is an American multimedia visual artist who is known for her unique portrayal of nature and rather mundane objects through her creations of suspended mobiles. She currently lives and works between Sonoma CountySonoma County, ...

(USA). The gallery also worked with Buren to produce an artist's book for his exhibition. Buren's exposure in New Zealand through this exhibition led to him being commissioned to build one of the largest sculptures on the Gibbs Farm sculpture park north of Auckland.

1992 ''Post Black''

Ralph Hotere and Bill Culbert met at the Sue Crockford Gallery and in this exhibition laid the ground work for their joint installation on the façade of the City Gallery, known as ''Fault.''

1993 ''Richard Killeen''

This solo exhibition by Richard Killeen ‘engaged with some of the dialogue’ and used images related to the exhibition '' Headlands: Thinking Through New Zealand Art'' that had caused considerable controversy. The key issue in contention concerned Gordon Walters, a Crockford Gallery artist, who Killeen and others felt to have been demeaned both by his positioning in the exhibition and in an essay by art historian Rangihiroa Panoho.

2006 Julian Dashper ''It is What It Isn't''

Art critic Wystan Curnow wrote of the exhibition that it was, "one of those moments in an artist's career when the work suddenly makes a new and deeper sense to

he artist He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...

and to their most engaged viewers".

2012 John Reynolds ''Diptych of Triptychs''

This was the final solo exhibition to be held at the Sue Crockford Gallery.

Style

When the Sue Crockford Gallery opened in the mid-1980s, it was considered to be extremely progressive with its large exhibition space, its decision not to take part in the secondary re-sale market and a dedication to a carefully selected group of younger artists. Sue Crockford's sophisticated style was expressed in the New York look of the gallery with its high ceilings and wooden floors. The artist John Reynolds described the first exhibition space as ‘a clean white cube idea of a gallery – lots of light, lots of space for the art and minimal distraction.’

References

{{Reflist New Zealand art dealers