2014 - Art Print Market Review

Year of the Bird in NZ Art

2014 was the year of the bird in NZ prints.  The re-issued Native Birds of New Zealand poster nearly outsold "Mickey to Tiki", re-printed colour plates from Buller's Birds sold briskly alongside a menagerie of avian art from contemporary NZ artists.  Tui are definitely the new Nikau! And by the end of the year another big trend was shaping up - the circular print.  Yes, round is going to be a thing in 2015 - there were even artists so on trend they combined both with round prints of birds!

Native Birds of NZ
Poster

Publication News

The other exciting new prints published over 2014 included the first new print of a classic abstract Koru painting by Gordon Walters for a decade, the ongoing re-release of NZ's most popular artist Dick Frizzell's back catalogue as open edition prints, the expansion of the number of re-prints of genuine vintage posters alongside a huge number of new limited editions by NZ artists, especially the stunning work of veteran artist Michael Smither.  We also saw new prints of paintings by blue chip NZ artists like Hammond, Hotere and McCahon.  In 2013's art market review we said that tiki were going to evolve further and they certainly have, it's such an exciting area of NZ art we have now created a tiki category that numbered just on fifty different prints by the end of 2014.

Trends

The word picture/bus blind/eye chart has collapsed into a custom printed word association game that shows off the customisation potential of digital printing - editions of one for Kev & Julie's Wedding etc - think of 10 words and make sure you spell the names right. There are some good business models for printers in this now but the mainstream publishers are all saying that the place names bus blind and eye chart style typographical print has run its course.

One other change we have noticed is how remixed vintage style images are replacing straight photographic souvenirs like postcards. And yes, we are still waiting for the great NZ photography range to replace the stalwart poster selection published by Craig Potton Publishing a very long time ago.

Street art went mainstream in 2014, the market for Banksy prints and posters was by the end of the year a free-for-all, even the Warehouse imported some particularly grainy posters to flog through their daily deals site using our high quality offset prints (at the not exactly exorbitant $39.95) as the "why pay this much" tag.  The answer is of course that you get what you pay for, good quality paper stock, long life ink and perfect colour fidelity.  And in the case of some prints we saw, no pixelation either!  Over the Xmas holidays this writer even spotted an already discarded derivative canvas graffiti art style print in a provincial second hand shop, cast off with the speed of a poster of last year's boy band.  Great for business if people turn over their artworks so quickly, but we genuinely think the best value is purchasing an artwork that you will love for decades, the cost per view is quite high even if it's a cheap print if you buy something that can't sustain your interest much beyond the initial viewing.

What's in Store for 2015?

We think one of the artists to watch in 2015 will be Glenn Jones, he's pushing kiwiana in new directions and has quickly built up good distribution for his artwork through stores.  Jason Kelly is now on the same production train as Dick Frizzell, it would be great to see his previous success revisited as his "Kiwi As" series struck a chord with nearly everyone without looking like "made for tourists" kiwiana.

NZ WWII
Propaganda Poster

The 100th Anzac day could be the catalyst for sales of vintage war posters, recruitment posters and propaganda posters.  But whether they should be promoted beyond the walls of the social studies department is an interesting debate.

Custom printing of reproduction prints will be on the rise in 2015 but still faces issues around copyright, royalties, unit costs and complexity at the customer end. The expectation we hear from some of our customers is that the print retailer can simply print images off the internet, asking could they buy, for example Banksy's "Girl with Balloons" with the background wall on canvas one metre square. Although technically possible to print reproductions of art works on demand like this publishers still carry stock in standard sizes as the work involved in printing a single image still makes a print run of 10 more economically feasible because the set up times are averaged across more than one print.  In the case of the Banksy prints and posters we are still ordering physical stock from publishers in the UK that is air freighted to NZ at a price lower than custom printing here in NZ.

Large print runs done offset will continue to be a better value proposition than bespoke printing for reproductions for popular artists and famous paintings.  Local publishers using giclee or inkjet printing still backorder retail orders until they can print a batch of the same image and size if possible.

What we'd love to see in 2015? Some great new prints featuring NZ's favourite sports!  Like finding the perfect view of Christchurch (unlike Auckland with Rangitoto or Wellington's hillsides of wooden houses) this has been attempted a few times (for instance David John's "Changing Room" series of Julia Drake's "not quite the All Blacks" prints around the time of the 2008 World Cup).  But for a country passionate about sport we have pretty much had to make do with just alcohol sponsored free posters of rugby teams or those framed jerseys that end up in the back of the wardrobe after the school fundraiser for too long.   Our art should reflect what we care about and although sport resonates with New Zealanders there are simply not enough artworks that celebrate our sporting traditions to meet demand.

2013 - NZ Art Print Market Review

During the gift buying season that marks the end of another year all publishing and cataloguing of new prints screeches to a halt while we focus on simply getting the artworks out the door and delivered in time for Christmas.  So just before we descend into the busiest time of the year our catalogue manager takes a look back at 2013.  In this post Antony Ellis reviews the NZ art print market in 2013 from a trends and sales perspective to highlight the significant milestones of the year from our position as NZ’s largest art print retailer.

Art Print Trends during 2013

The best selling print for 2013 in NZ will either be Frizzell's  Mickey to Tiki (yet again) or the wonderful new “Native Birds of NZ” Poster based on the illustrations of J G Keulemans (the artist who illustrated Buller’s Birds of NZ).  The most popular categories of prints overall were Kiwiana and vintage posters but the street art collection is showing the steepest rise in traffic (it was a big year for Banksy with his unofficial New York residency - we also have finally secured a reliable supplier of Banksy prints direct from the UK so had a lot more street art prints to choose from by the end of the year).  The Native birds poster also boosted the popularity of native NZ birds as a theme (it’s a toss up between tikis and birds as the favourite subject of 2013), alongside perennial favourites, the NZ landscape and Coastal & Sea Views.

We have noticed one surprising drop in sales - that of prints on canvas.  Even though we include the value of both unstretched and stretched (mounted) canvases in this sales category (framing of prints on paper we measure as separate line item) sales of prints on canvas are down by nearly twenty percent on 2012.  It’s definitely not the end of the canvas trend full stop but it does point to canvas prints being part of the wall art mix rather than a replacement for reproductions on paper that some people in the industry were predicting.  Picture framers will be relieved if the trend for frameless (gallery wrap) canvas prints starts to abate.  At the lower end of the market (in art industry parlance, non “brand name” artists) the unexpected competition with hand painted canvas prints at rock bottom prices from China being may have hastened the end of generic designs on canvas that were stocked in vast numbers at new outlets for prints such as furniture shops and the bubble like profusion of “design” and “gift” stores that popped up throughout NZ over the last decade.

Publishing News: Prints, posters & limited editions new in 2013

New prints during the year started with us rounding out the range of reproductions of paintings from “gallery” or “fine art” artists not from NZ.  The strength of the NZ dollar against the US dollar and the Euro has made purchasing from overseas art publishers a much more pleasant experience.  We listed many more large art posters (usually the standard US 3 foot by 2 foot size) at prices between $NZ24.95 - $NZ29.95, by famous artists like Klimt, Monet, Mucha, Dali and Kandinsky as well as a good selection of new prints in various formats (such as the Whaam! diptych from pop artist Roy Lichtenstein).  After a few years building up our range of indigenous NZ vintage posters we also filled out the vintage range with new titles focussed around our food and drink category (NZ designers of the vintage period did concentrate on travel and tourism, if you want vintage wine and beer advertisements these tend to be French or Italian).  The top selling print by a non-NZ artist is still the “Holiday on Wheels” print by Boulanger but easily the most popular artist by total sales was street artist Banksy.

Also added were new reproduction prints by significant NZ artists like C F Goldie, Michael Illingworth, Colin McCahon and Bill Hammond.  Our photography selection extended with a large series of large format panoramic posters by photographer Richard Hume.  The biggest collective launch of NZ prints came right at the end of the year with the series of reasonably priced Dick Frizzell reproductions of some of his most well-known silkscreen prints and paintings, images such as Popduck, Grocer with Moko and Big Kiss.

NZ original printmakers like Michael Smither, Tony Ogle were busy during 2013 and limited edition prints from contemporary artists (and now also increasingly from designers/illustrators) such as Greg Straight, Jane Puckey, Susan Haywood Smith and Alec Tayler were listed for the first time.

New NZ Fine Prints Catalogue

The launch of our 2014 catalogue of “Fine Art Prints, Posters & Limited Editions” was a huge effort behind the scenes. Due to the earthquake disruption we skipped an update in 2011.  We must have been a bit rusty as there were more than the usual array of problems (colour matching, making the captions fit underneath every image and checking for typos) publishing this year’s catalogue (the entire first printing was recycled after the complete run was printed without the proof being signed off) so it was relief to see the pallet of brand new catalogues arrive at our warehouse even if they were six weeks late.  The way the auction houses manage to produce their beautiful catalogues of paintings every few weeks throughout the year (especially the dizzy array of designs from Art & Object) is astonishing to contemplate.

NZ Art Print Market Predictions for 2014

1. We will see prints becoming a little less pop and a bit more street.  
2. NZ vintage will no longer be seen as hot "trend" (the increase in supply of titles was responsible for the rise in profile of this category more than it simply being in fashion) but will become an enduring part of the market like it is in other countries. 
3. There will be more “modern vintage”, contemporary prints in a retro style hopefully more representative of modern NZ society than the increasingly simplistic “Kiwiana” style images that are too often simply watered down copies of more and more obscure nostalgic objects from our collective past. 
4. Dick Frizzell will continue to be the top selling NZ artist by overall print sales and by value, with a new and enthusiastic publisher by his side planning to print dozens of new prints alongside new silkscreen editions we’d be foolish to call the end of his reign as NZ’s most commercially successful artist and printmaker. 
5. Due to overwhelming demand we’ll be selling more prints pre-framed in our standard timeless framing styles as we slowly roll this out across all of Prints.co.nz but we still support the role of the custom picture framer as being a vital partnership in the enduring story of a business such as NZ Fine Prints.