Home of the Month: An art-filled home created by two ardent Aucklanders.

Art is an essential element of this gracious Auckland home

How many times have you heard the complaint that life in New Zealand is expensive? So it’s good to hear that it doesn’t apply to everything that makes life worth living here. “New Zealand art is incredibly strong and incredibly inexpensive compared to art internationally,” says Stephanie Post with all the authority of a woman who is co-director of the Auckland Art Fair. “Take McCahon. One of his works might sell for several hundred thousand dollars here but work by artists of that generation sell for millions overseas.”

Stephanie has only been in New Zealand full-time for eight years but already she and Dutch husband Sjoerd have acquired several major local artworks – a commissioned Lisa Reihana, a small Shane Cotton, and photographs by Shannon Te Ao, Ans Westra and Siobhan van Heerden.

The art on display at their gracious Auckland home records their enthusiasms over the years beginning with life in London where Stephanie acquired two Masters of Arts (one in contemporary art, the other in art theory) before working for the Contemporary Art Society, while Sjoerd worked for Shell.

The couple pinged between London, New Zealand and Copenhagen before settling here in 2012. Sjoerd