Kia ora Lonnie, welcome to Studio Channel Art Fair.
I wanted to ask really about trying to earn a living or make it work as an artist and how that works.
You do quite a lot of public commission work as well as doing work in the private area.
How is it for you? Are you supplementing your income with other work? How does it work?
Well first of all thanks Mark for inviting me.
How does it work? Well it gets kind of steadily better every year as it goes.
But commission work, I like working on commission work because I know that there's money going to be coming in.
And I know how much.
Are you getting paid up front often with commissions or the public commission?
Commission work usually either work with a third at the beginning, a third in the middle and a third at the end.
Sometimes it's 50% at the beginning and 50% at the end.
And who's negotiating there? Do you have an agent or a dealer that looks after your public?
I've been doing it all.
I've made a few mistakes but you just keep learning about the process and each process is slightly different depending on what you're making
or how involved you are, if it's actually a standalone piece or integrating with architecture.
Is it an ideal situation for you to be doing it? Would you prefer?
Do you like that kind of thing of organising yourself or is there an ideal direction?
Sometimes I wish I had an administration assistant because the admin is quite full on.
Usually I've got a project manager but there were a few that I project manager as well.
Wow, so you're doing all the admin as well.
Are you occasionally in a situation where you can afford to bring somebody into the office?
Sometimes, but then you've actually got to train someone and then you find that you're actually doing it anyway.
But that's what you have to do so that they get used to the way that you work and they need to know what they're doing.
It depends on the artist. Some people, it's just not really their temperament, their personality,
to kind of in a sense build a negotiation whereas other people maybe it is.
Well, there's a few artists I know that are working in the public realm as well, making public artworks.
And they're quite good project managers. You kind of have to be.
If you want to get a reputation or a good reputation, you need to actually know the business side.
And you need to not be afraid to ask for more if you feel that it warrants more.
It sounds like some of the work we do as a public art program, letting space is a similar kind of situation sometimes.
What about the dealer galleries? I know Jonathan Smart represents you in Christchurch.
Yeah, Stephen does down in Dunedin and Alison Bartley and Wellington, but I don't have a dealer gallery in Auckland.
Yeah, what's going to ask you about that? Why?
Everyone's amazed at that. They always say, I can't understand.
What does that work? I mean...
Well, it's actually good in one way.
Do you like having a distance?
It actually works for me.
I don't seem to have any problem getting work up here in Auckland, and it's working really well.
So if I did have a dealer here in Auckland, and maybe they did take over some of the administration,
because at the end of the day, I mean, when you have a dealer show, it's 40% going to the dealer,
but when it's commission work, it's a bit negotiable there, so 20% to 40% falls in that area,
but 20% to $200,000 is a lot of money, and they really need to work hard for that.
Were you opened for offers from a dealer?
I am, but I think they were a bit intimidated by me in Auckland.
Probably because I know what I want and what I want to do.
What about exhibiting then? I mean, you make a range of sorts of work.
So where do you choose to exhibit if you're not using those spaces where a dealer is giving you an annual space?
Institutional spaces, like the Auckland Art Gallery, the Gas Fisher, the galleries like the Mangere Art Centre.
What about selling the work then? So it's not explicitly got a price tag on it,
but do you social enough that people are coming to you?
People come to me.
Some people actually go to my website to see my dealers, and then they get in touch with like Jonathan and Christchurch,
but they live up here in Auckland.
Oh, all right. Is that okay? I mean, how does it work with Jonathan and Alison?
Do they get snarky at each other when one's getting all the phone calls?
No, not that I know of, and I don't actually want to be part of that conversation.
I'm interested in the dealer representation for, I guess, artists of Pacific descent in Auckland,
mainly because for me, one of the most exciting things in the visual arts in recent years
is just this huge surge of really interesting, emerging, strong Pacific work.
And I just don't see it very well represented in the dealer goers here at the show,
and I'm wondering why that is.
Yeah, well, I think if you look around at all the dealer galleries,
they probably only have at least one to two brown people on their box,
and that's kind of the limit, really.
I suppose it's kind of the territories might be different to negotiate for dealers,
but then I kind of think this is an opportunity for another dealer gallery that specializes,
and I've actually been approached a couple of times about doing that.
And I'd love to do it.
We just need the finance to be able to do that.
We need some backers to be able to do that.
So we could do with some brown dealers, essentially?
Yeah, but we do have some.
We do have a couple.
The rest of the infrastructure has sort of grown, hasn't it?
I mean, even artists that have been around a bit longer than myself, like Lisa Rahana,
they're not represented by any dealer here.
I think the Manawahine, the brown woman, the Māori woman, the Pacific woman,
it's kind of like this unknown territory with the dealers.
Oh, they are almost afraid of you guys because you are so strong.
Well, they must be.
Yeah, probably.
Yes, I'd say so.
Well, maybe there's other ways to do it.
I mean, it's working together, like you were sort of saying.
Yeah, I think probably a good example would be Home AKL that the York Canard Gallery did last year.
I mean, that brought a lot of, it gave a lot of Pacific artists publicity in Auckland.
And there were a few artists that got picked, like Janet Lilo, to go ahead into the Auckland Trianale.
Which was great, yes.
I mean, she's in Art News.
She feels like she put a posting on Facebook yesterday that, you know, it lasts.
I'm kind of like a real artist because I'm in Art News, you know?
You come into the Auckland Art Fair, and I don't think it's a criticism of the art fair because the art fair reflects what the dealer system is.
And there's projects like New Zealand's McFall or Israel Birch.
But there really isn't the Pacific presence that you might expect from what is distinctly in Auckland,
something that reflects Auckland and what people see coming in here.
In Auckland, I mean, the biggest Pacific city in the world.
And yeah, where there is no, I think it will start, the things are slow.
It just takes a while for things like this to happen.
But that Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust did get given a space here and they've put Nicky in that space.
Right, yes.
It's a start.
That you've actually, that maybe Pacific artists are slowly being acknowledged as actually having some value or some worth.
I mean, maybe artists need to be a bit more able to be a little bit like you,
more independently minded, able to do a whole range of different things.
And Pacific artists are actually showing a lot of other artists how to do that.
Yeah, I mean, like, I've had a lot of support though from people in the most mysterious places.
You know, Christchurch, you know, is very supportive of me.
I'm really lucky there.
A lot of really well-known New Zealand artists, people like Neil Dawson and Julia Morrison
have always given me support and I've been very lucky there.
I think also teaching at Canterbury, which I had no Brown students at all.
Right.
Yeah, those relationships too and maybe that was just kind of good timing for me and my career.
Yeah.
Yeah, but I think it's really exciting if you're young and Brown and the arts and Auckland at the moment.
There's so much going on.
Hey Lonnie, thanks for joining us.
Thank you.
Thank you.
