The fine art of forgery on display
The ghost of famous forger Karl Sim will be back to stalk his home town of Mangaweka in November when the 10th anniversary of the Fakes and Forgeries art competition is celebrated.
Sim, who changed his name to Carl Feodor Goldie, was the guest of honour at the inaugural biennial competition in 2007.
Sim also put Himatangi and Foxton on the map when he ended up in court for forging the works of CF Goldie and Petrus van der Velden in the mid-1980s.
He was convicted on 40 counts and ordered to paint the Foxton town hall and public toilets as part of the 200 hours of community service to which the judge sentenced him.
He then changed his name to Carl Feodor Goldie so he could legally sign his Goldie works. He died in Auckland in 2013.
The competition is organised by Mangaweka’s Yellow Church Gallery owner Richard Aslett, who like many people who knew him, saw Sim as a ‘‘loveable rogue’’ as much as anything. The precise date of this year’s competition hasn’t been finalised yet, but will be around the second or third week in November, timed to coincide with the Christmas Fayre in the nearby hall.
There are three main rules for the competition, Aslett said: Entries can be an exact copy of a well-known work of art, a copy with a twist or a piece inspired by an artist or their work. Hence the likes of the Moona Lisa or The Girl with a greenstone (or paua) earring have featured in past competitions.
Aslett, a west Yorkshireman who hails from Dewsbury, near Leeds, set up the gallery in the onetime Presbyterian Church fronting State Highway 1, in 2006.
Dewsbury got scandal sheet the Daily Mail excited a couple of years ago when the British tabloid called it a breeding ground for jihadis ‘‘where even the ice-cream lady wears a burka’’.
The competition usually attracts about 100 entries, with $500 for the work Aslett likes best.