A Morning of New Zealand Art

We took a water taxi into town and was pleasantly surprised to find the weekend markets trading at the esplanade. As we had an agenda for the morning, we moved on from our browsing.

Believe it or not - these are soaps, not cupcakes 

So this morning it is all about appreciating and finding New Zealand art and every gallery we visited were hospitable to us and only to happy to impart their art knowledge to us.

I won't name every gallery we went to but I will show images of some of the artwork we viewed in all the galleries. I will say that each gallery we visited emphasised on local artists' artwork. There were some really outstanding pieces on offer and I can see why NZ artists are emerging in the art world.

However I will make special mention of the last gallery we visited. It was ArtBay Gallery. Pauline Bianchi, a director of the art gallery welcomed us with flutes of sparkling wine and mini cupcakes. Absolutely delightful! She even closed the gallery just for us Gorgeous Girls! I was fascinated to hear that ArtBay offers Appro and E-Appro services.

Appro provides the opportunity for the potential buyer to take an artwork from ArtBay Galery to 'try out' at his/her home. The art can be chosen from their website, their gallery walls or from their touch screen art library. I would assume that if the buyer likes what they tried out, they finalise the purchase. If they didn't, they would return the artwork back to the gallery (artwork in one piece and undamaged).

E-Appro is Art placed on your wall 'virtually'. This is done by using ArtBay's customised Art Placement software. The potential buyer emails an image of their wall space, with the width measurement, ArtBay superimposes the image of the chose painting on the wall space. The image with the painting is then emailed back to the potential buyer. If you like what you see, you can then place the order for the 'real' art.

How cool are these services? I think it's great! Buying art is such a personal thing, a 'mistake' buy can be a very expensive mistake.

We met 2 of their artists in residence. They were Emma Butler and Rachael Errington. Interesting to hear how the artists go about creating their pieces of work. So much so, this gallery (amongst all the galleries we visited) sold the most number of pieces to our Gorgeous Girls!

We then adjourned for lunch at Botswana Butchery. I had the Whitebait fritters with white bread. A very traditional and iconic Kiwi meal. The Botswana version leaned towards an omelette style but I did like it and I do like my eggs. I could have had a couple more pieces of the white bread but I made do. :)

All in all, a lovely morning of art appreciation.