Fine Art Including The Sir Robert Jones Estate Thursday, 26 March 2026 / 6:00 pm start

Robert Ellis - Motorway Journey

Realised: $70,000 plus premium

Lot Details

Robert Ellis (1929 - 2021) Motorway Journey oil on board signed & dated 1969 lower right; Ferner Galleries label affixed verso 1200 x 1200mm Provenance Estate of Sir Robert Jones In 1957, when Robert Ellis emigrated to New Zealand, London‘s population was more than double the entire population of our island nation. An opportunity to rebuild after the Blitz, the highways above ground and tube below became the essential “circulatory” system for the body of London city. Delayed in developing its own infrastructure, Robert lived in Auckland with his wife Elizabeth Aroha Mountain and daughters Ngarino and Hana. They were witness to the city’s industrialisation, especially as Robert learned to drive on Auckland’s new motorways and commute into work to lecture at Elam School of Fine Arts. What is at stake when an artist transplants himself into a country, into an art history? What does he bring with him, and what does he take? Heavily inspired by Māoritanga through his wife Elizabeth, Ellis’ works sought to bring together the iconography of Māori and Pākehā culture to promote biculturalism. His adaption of Māori weaving forms with his motorways demonstrates this unification visually. The vantage point is unique in the space it occupies in New Zealand’s art history. Painted as if above Auckland, the motorways stretch across the horizon like scars upon skin. Before his transition to New Zealand, Ellis was stationed in the RAF Photographic Unit for two years after World War Two. The images released which were taken by Ellis reveal the wreckage from ceaseless bombings, bringing other kinds of damage to the landscape. This vantage point became essential for the “Motorway Journey” series. Painted in 1969, many works in the Motorway Journey series juxtaposes the landscape meeting between suburb and bush, a dualistic encounter often painted by Ellis through dramatically lush greens to man-made reds, blacks and oranges to demonstrate what this landscape could look like without motorways. But here, almost as a last resort, Ellis has soaked the foreground in red to represent the bleeding of the land, or a scorched earth. We are far beyond what would have been if not for human interference. Lily McCowan