KEY POINTS:
There are some artists with big ambitions and others with smaller aims. Chris Heaphy, whose exhibition Sea of Tranquility is at the Gow Langsford Gallery, aims for the stars. His work embodies skulls, heads and corpses that underlie the secret life of things.
One work called One Giant Leap for Mankind goes right back to evolutionary beginnings and shows two dancing apes. But most of his work shows huge skull shapes with smaller skulls at the bottom almost lost in the masses of images that are personal, local but ultimately evolutionary.
The works are done in acrylic on canvas or linen and have the sharp precision of computer-generated images. They have the clarity of early paintings by Richard Killeen and the precision of Gordon Walters.
In the work that gives the show its title, the eye sockets of the dominating skull are filled - one with a colour wheel as a symbol of diversity, the other with skeletons that suggest mortality as they alternate with bombs. The mouth is filled with hands of all colours joined with heart shapes to suggest the devoted work of "hands and days".
This is only the beginning. The shape itself is crowded with infinity loops, with profiles of various ethnicity, of a hint of Maori carving, of men in hats, birds, pipes, abstract shapes, gorillas and a kneeling figure that looks Egyptian. These are all the figures that clutter an individual's memory and imagination. Outside of them, the painting is filled with similar images on a smaller scale whose multiplicity and crowding suggest a world of thought, history and present activity.
Although the skull motif is predominant, the imagery is varied within the shape so Kingdom has animals of all kinds, including some that are extinct. Other works take their title from the activities of astronauts - Aldrin Tranquility and Armstrong Tranquility. They suggest an evolutionary journey from the past to the present and beyond to the moon and stars.
These are all works that are fascinating in their mood, colour and design and full of a graveyard wit. The wit is pushed too far when the principal image is not a skull but a Mickey Mouse shape. Mickey Mouse steps out ironically in One Small Step for Man and Hullo Mickey. These are amusing but in the show as a whole their comic book affiliations detract from the force of the big skulls.
Raw Material by Richard Maloy at the Sue Crockford Gallery aims to be fashionably smart. This show is made up of DVDs and photographs and shows the artist manipulating lumps of thick buttery pastry. The first work is called As Many Structures as I Can and shows Maloy's hands kneading pastry. It is intriguing to see him push and pull at the pastry but what he makes are shapes, not structures. Despite the title, nothing is really built.
A second 40-minute DVD is Yellow Grotto where the pieces of pastry are more like pounds of butter stacked up, rolled and continually pushed back into the mass so they lose their definition as the artist stoops, kneels and lifts the raw material.
The outcome of this activity is a series of photographs where the pastry has been spread on a surface. The material has become a bright yellow landscape pocked with hills which show the thrust of fingers and the shapes of hills and valleys. Each photo shows a unique landscape. In Raw Material 3 the pastry has been impressed with flowing shapes. Raw Material 1 reveals one big thumping event, probably done with the artist's elbow. A second series of photographs called Yellow Expression shows Maloy with his face covered in pastry. The exhibition is stylishly presented, clever and amusing but it is more style than substance.
There are more videos in the AUT gallery in St Paul St. The work of Christopher Braddock called The Artist is Present is three videos, all investigating an anonymous back although the title suggests it may be the artist himself. In one video we see a complete figure, naked, back to the viewer, working vigorously away at something in front of it, which cannot be seen. The back is a marvellous shape, rising from the buttocks and the play of light across it is intriguing.
Next door there is a much larger screen and the images are more close up, concentrating on the hollow of the back and the knobbliness of the spine. Here the movement is of the camera and the image shifts across the scene. A note of stern reality is introduced as the back sports a red pimple. On the third, much smaller screen, which comes in even closer, the unidentifiable parts of the back are lit in such a way as to have, at times, a pearly luminescence.
This academic exhibition demands a passion for the human form and the patience to observe it as lingeringly as a lover might.
Another exhibition that pays attention to backs is Memories of China by Marc Rambeau at the Lane Gallery. The artist's fourth show in Auckland is the result of a residency in China. The paintings are interesting not because they have China as a subject but because they have absorbed the flourish of Chinese painting. Two women seen from the back are done with a calligraphic manner which extends to some lively evocations of Beijing cyclists.
THIS WEEK AT THE GALLERIES
What: Sea of Tranquility, by Chris Heaphy
Where and when: Gow Langsford Gallery, 26 Lorne St, to Aug 22
TJ says: Ambitious paintings that embody memory, aspirations and fate within impressive skull shapes.
What: Yellow Grotto/Raw Material, by Richard Maloy
Where and when: Sue Crockford Gallery, 2 Queen St, to Aug 16
TJ says: The artist plunges his fingers into pastry and makes bright yellow inconsequentialities.
What: The Artist Will Be Present, by Christopher Braddock
Where and when: AUT Gallery, St Paul St, to Aug 22
TJ says: Three aspects of the human back relentlessly explored, testing the patience.
What: Memories of China, by Marc Rambeau
Where and when: Lane Gallery, 33 Victoria St East, to Aug 16
TJ says: Conventional subjects enlivened by the influence of Chinese brushwork.
