KEY POINTS:
The contemporary world is ablaze with colour but there is still room for the expressiveness of the light and shade of black and white photography. Two Rooms is showing work by two artists who specialise in this traditional medium.
In the late 80s, Mark Adams took a journey to the West Coast of the South Island, retracing the steps of the Maori who went through the passes from Canterbury to the West Coast to trade in pounamu. The photographs have recently been carefully printed in limited editions and make up a suite of seven double images.
They are compellingly beautiful. Long exposure means that every detail of rock and scree is clear, while the flow of rivers has the milky quality of snow water. These are long-reaching images where the curve of the valley sweeps into passes flanked by snow-capped hills. Apart from the first, which shows the Kaiapohia Monument, there is no immediate evidence of human activity. Nevertheless, his black and white treatment confers a mythical quality of endeavour on these lonely scenes. Knowing how much the Maori valued the greenstone, these images are testimony to the journey required to collect the precious stone from its remote source.
As well as recording the facts and memory of the legendary journeys, the photographs are wonderfully evocative of the South Island. The journey culminates in Milford Sound. Adams' photograph of the fiord does not conventionally emphasise the towering height of Mitre Peak but rather the water, the falls and the remote bays where specially prized pale greenstone was found. If the images were in colour they would be simply documentary. It is the black and white that confers the spirit and mystery on these photographs
In a complementary show, Fiona Pardington records some of the prized objects made from the greenstone brought with such toil from the South Island. She has photographed heitiki lodged in the Whanganui regional museum. These specimens are not classic tiki but odd and idiosyncratic versions which sometimes appear startlingly modern, looking like idiomatic versions of the big stone carvings of Jacob Epstein. Because of the play of light and shade over their carved surfaces and because they have been enlarged to monumental size, they loom out of their dark background with a profound sense of emerging from the past.
Upstairs at Two Rooms, video artist Clinton Watkins is showing the latest of his video loops that record immense container vessels and cruise ships passing Brown's Island on their way into port. The massiveness of these ships is emphasised as their slab sides slide by ponderously and seemingly irresistibly. And then they go past again, and again and again. Each time we observe more detail but astonishingly, even when he recorded a cruise ship, there was no sign of human movement. He has filmed a great red container ship, a white cruise ship but the loop on show at Two Rooms, the fourth in the series, is of a cargo ship with a vivid green hull and white superstructure. Its repeated passing and huge green presence is compelling viewing.
Black and white features in the work of Callum Innes at the Jensen Gallery. The two strongest paintings are called Monologue Black. The previous works seen here by this prominent British artist have, for the most part, been rectangles of dark colour contrasted with light that bleeds at the intersection of the plain areas, making the process of painting clear. In these latest works the bleeding runs right down the canvas. There are only two such works in the present show and one is tucked away in the office. The rest are more varied in form and the big black and white works are outstanding.
Four works on paper, which use monochromatic colour as well as black, change this flow into a fall consisting of complicated patterns of verticals. Particularly fine is the work of black verticals on red paper where the variety is extraordinary and the interaction between the paint and the paper is intriguing.
Black also features in the work of Lauren Lysaght at Whitespace. She has always used found materials. In this show, her best yet, she has used an amazing variety of things from playing cards to pins, to plastic piping, doorknobs, rope and ribbons to make a whole series of wheeled catafalques, invented variants on the subject of horse-drawn hearses. Each hearse is given a different character, from one Rococo concoction which looks like ice cream with transparent windows, through bright red and streamlined versions, to a dark Spanish version called The Torpedo from Toledo. Most of them drag a ball of memories on a chain behind them. These remarkable vehicles see death as rather a jaunt.
This curious exhibition is accompanied in the smaller gallery by a series of lively, colourful, lyric paintings based on cursive writing by Monica de Guingand. The intersection of art and writing is usually calligraphic in nature but the leaping joyous patterns of these works show quite different possibilities.
THIS WEEK AT THE GALLERIES
What: Photographs, by Mark Adams and Fiona Pardington; Cont Ship
3 and Horizon Line 1, by Clinton Watkins
Where and when: Two Rooms, 16 Putiki St, Newton, to Sep 13
TJ says: Black and white photographs of land and objects mythically associated with greenstone, and a video loop that makes a container ship colourfully epic.
What: Paintings, by Callum Innes
Where and when: Jensen Gallery, 11 McColl St, Newmarket, to Sep 26
TJ says: Prominent British painter returns with works powerful in presence and mysterious in process.
What: Life Coaching, by Lauren Lysaght; Paintings, by Monica de Guingand
Where and when: Whitespace, 12 Crummer Rd, to Set 13
TJ says: Coaches and hearses ingeniously made of found materials give character and a touch of wit to grim death; and a painter who gives energy to the act of writing.
