Sue Crockford Gallery

Buren (France) was one of the international artists who showed with the gallery along with Sol Lewitt (USA) and Pae White (USA). The gallery also worked with Buren to produce an artist's book for his exhibition.^[5] 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.^[6]

Ralph Hotere and Bill Culbert met at the Sue Crockford Gallery and in this exhibition laid the ground work^[7][8] for their joint installation on the façade of the City Gallery, known as Fault.^[9]

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.^[10] 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.^[11]

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 [the artist] and to their most engaged viewers".^[12]

This was the final solo exhibition to be held at the Sue Crockford Gallery.^[13]

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.^[14] 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.’^[15]