What inspired you to start the business?
I used to work for Auckland Art Gallery, and at the time we were relocating its whole collection from a facility downtown to one further south. There were roughly 26,000 pieces of art that needed to be prepped for transport and then shifted into this new facility.
One of my colleagues at the gallery was Matt Arbuckle, who’s a good friend of mine. We put our heads together and saw that there was no one who was really providing premium art transport services around the city.
At the gallery, we were using a removalist to move everything we had prepped, and we saw a bit of a gap considering we both had an institutional art background, which lent to a high standard of practice.
Art Corp has a small but highly skilled team trained to handle artworks of all sizes, like this piece from artist Emma McIntyre.
What does it take to move art safely and securely?
Quite a few considerations go into it. The surface of paintings is often really fragile, and when things get really big it requires pretty detailed planning. You really have to think about the worst-case scenario before you do it, and then make sure you don’t do that. We’ve got systems in place to mitigate for almost anything that could go wrong.
We’ve also got a truck that’s designed for moving art. It’s carpeted, and has very specific heights to enable strapping, but in a way that the art is recessed, so if we put anything flush against the wall, nothing is protruding. We also use a lot of foam around the painting before we strap it, so nothing’s putting pressure on the work.
Are there any pieces you’ve moved that stand out?
There have been quite a few, although discretion is quite imperative in our industry. We did handle a Picasso at the end of last year, which was really cool. One highlight project we did was installing a really large Barry Brickell ceramic tile work in the Taupō Airport. I really love ceramics, so it was cool to see and install such a large one of his, because he’s such an icon.
We also ended up going to American Samoa late last year to install all of the art in the new Mormon temple there, so that was super interesting.
This large ceramic mural by artist Barry Brickell was installed in Taupō Airport by Art Corp’s team.
Did you always have an interest in art handling?
I was doing commercial photography for a while, and then lost the urge to continue doing that. I started doing more photography as art and having exhibitions, and then it was very serendipitous.
My friend and I were putting on a photography exhibition in New York roughly 10 years ago, and I met a random woman at a bar one night who said she was from the photography museum in Amsterdam, which is where I happened to be living at the time. We invited her to our exhibition and she came, and then said I should come and work at the museum.
When I got back to Amsterdam, I emailed them and thought I was going in for an exhibition pitch, but it turned out it was basically a job interview to be an installer there. I hadn’t really done it before, but I said yes. This really lovely team of Dutch art handlers trained me for two years, and then I came back to New Zealand and started doing things here.
What would be your advice to a budding entrepreneur wanting to start a business?
The main piece of advice I would give is that you have to be fully committed to whatever it is you’re doing. I know how much mental energy it takes to run a business, and if you’re only 50-60% there, it’s probably not the right thing to do.
Do you have a small business story you want to share? Send your pitches to tom.raynel@nzme.co.nz.
Tom Raynel is a multimedia business journalist for the Herald, covering small business, retail and tourism.