Where It All Began: Billy Apple & Peter Webb

The launch of Webb’s in Wellington is an exciting moment for local collectors and art lovers. This step is testament to the enduring success of Webb’s, and the fact that New Zealanders are valuing our culture more than ever before. – David Maskill, Webb’s Art Consultant

Webb’s is thrilled to announce the opening of a new premises in Wellington in November 2021. This is an important step for New Zealand’s largest auction house, and for the market it serves. Situated at 23 Marion Street, the Wellington premises will provide a welcoming environment for our clients, a 450 square metre state-of-the-art gallery space, private meeting and viewing rooms and secure storage facilities. Over the past three years, Webb’s has been setting the pace in the auction business in New Zealand. We have gone through an astonishing time of success and growth. This has seen us engage with clients across the country. It is our intention to continue to develop these relationships. Carey Young and David Maskill will run Webb’s new Wellington office. Carey brings a distinguished track record as a former gallerist and Webb’s representative in Wellington. David brings his knowledge and experience as an art historian and educator to the role. They are a complementary pair in terms of their proven leadership and knowledge of both historical and contemporary art. Together they will provide a wealth of expertise to our growing clientele in the Wellington region and further afield. This is an important step for Webb’s as a business. Peter Webb, the founder of our enterprise, was instrumental in developing the market for modern and contemporary New Zealand art. His vision and drive to succeed saw Webb’s grow to be the largest auction house in the country. Under his leadership, it expanded into the distinct departments it features today – enabling the development of secondary markets for a broad clientele with diverse tastes. Webb’s today is proud of this legacy, and it informs our direction. We are defining the market now, much as Peter Webb did when he established the business. We’re driven to achieve results that change the way art and luxury collectibles are viewed, written about, and valued. This is our raison d’être. Our new Wellington premises will enable further growth and development of this distinct Webb’s vision.

23 Marion Street Te Aro, Wellington 6011 +64 4 555 6001

Carey Young Specialist, Art carey@webbs.co.nz +64 21 368 348 David Maskill Consultant, Art david@webbs.co.nz +64 27 256 0900

Billy Apple, Sold, 1981, acrylic on canvas, 2130 x 1520 mm, private collection. Courtesy of Billy Apple® Estate.

Tribute by Christina Barton

Billy Apple’s passing on 6 September 2021 was a shock to the art world, despite the artist being in his eighty-sixth year. Not only was he a regular fixture at openings around Auckland, or in whichever city he visited, but his status as a registered brand, Billy Apple®, somehow gave him the aura of invincibility. He would usually arrive in his black BMW Mini One with its red and green Apple logos, parking as near as possible to the entry, to minimise the time it took to get inside. He was often accompanied by Mary Morrison, his wife and collaborator, and their West Highland Terrier, Macintosh, and, once he had secured a drink, he would work the room. As he always said, these occasions were where the artist did their business; it was all part of his practice. He would talk to gallerists, collectors, and artists, plot new projects and secure commissions; he was as likely to pass judgment on the calibre of the wine as the art on the walls. I think the last event he attended was when the Arts Foundation celebrated its twenty-first birthday in early August. He was not well by then, and had to sit for the duration. He told me with a smile that he was surprised at the number of people who made a point of coming to talk to him, having heard the news that he was dying.

I know that in his final weeks Billy Apple never doubted for a moment the life he had led as an artist. He worked until the very end, setting in train a string of projects that will roll out long after he is no longer here to see them through. I was struck by his calmness and lack of fear. Perhaps his final illness was simply proof of one of his most profound but slippery statements: “The artist has to live like everybody else”. I also had the impression that he ‘could’ let go, because, only a few weeks previously, the signwriter Terry Maitland, who for forty years painted Apple’s canvases, had also passed. Billy was adamant there would be no more paintings without the expert craftsman who had been his “hands” as he put it. And there were other factors that calmed him: he has a respected dealer in London, James Mayor, who is making good progress in finding suitable homes for the artist’s early British and American works. There is a substantial monograph on the artist in print that is the final milestone of the retrospective exhibition staged at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in 2015. And two other books – by Anthony Byrt and Thomas Crow – have succeeded in knitting him into the early history of Pop art, his exclusion from which had hurt him deeply. With projects to look forward to, and promises made that the warehouse where he kept his possessions would be turned into a proper archive, I think he knew that while the man would no longer exist, the artist would “live forever”, another memorable statement that appears on a canvas linked to Billy’s immortalisation project (where the artist’s cell nuclei had been altered so his cells live on in storage and are available to medical researchers, a collaboration with Craig Hilton).