KEY POINTS:
It is a byword that art is international these days. All the same, there is something particularly stimulating when there are exhibitions in Auckland that speak to our New Zealandness and yet would stand comparison with anything overseas.
The Cave Paintings by W. D. Hammond at Ivan Anthony Gallery extend the rich mythology he has created about the nature of life on these islands. The deities of his created world are the great eagles which once inhabited New Zealand and fed on the moa until they and their food were extinct. The works are full of bones and reference to the moa is apposite because the paintings, among many other things, evoke the late Alan Curnow's great poem about the skeleton of a moa in Canterbury Museum. It has the magical line, "Not I, but some child born in a marvellous year will learn the trick of standing upright here".
The great creatures that inhabit Hammond's landscape are sentinels, hinting at what is to come in the development of our culture. They are suggesting how we might learn to stand upright.
The biggest work, Signal Box, sends signals to the future. The step forward in these paintings by Hammond, who always has the capacity to extend and develop his mythology, is that these paintings look outward from a cave. The opening of the cave is like a lens on to the landscape and the birds in the cave and beyond hint at symbols without being specific. The paintings have a fertile ambiguity, and viewers will respond in their own way.
In Signal Box the cave is painted with a rich blue transparent colour. Within, the creatures are sending messages. One climbs a ladder to leave paintings on the walls, another signals with semaphore flags, some consult together across a table, others beat a drum with bones, some light signal fires, one is poised symmetrically and transcendentally to become an insignia, others send messages by ringing bells. Memory is symbolised by bones. There is a continual interaction between the past and the future. As always with Hammond's creatures there is fascinating detail in the intricate patterns on the bodies of his bird people.
A new departure is that the rich green of his bush paintings has been changed for washes of blue or dark brown to create the cave settings. Throughout the whole show there is impressive use of gold interacting with the blue. In Cave Painting 5 the centre of the painting is a tiny gold moon in a sky of cirrus clouds touched with gold. The landscape with volcanoes beyond the cave has beautifully painted vegetation.
The drips and runs of paint of Hammond's work have been much imitated but no one uses them with his emotive effect. They make the caves more evocative and suggest the passing of time and the movement of natural forces.
This powerful show represents a stage in the evolution of one of our finest painters and hints at even more powerful things to come when some awkward details like the pose of the figure on the cave's rim signalling with semaphore flags in Signal Box are better integrated. Few exhibitions have the power of profound suggestion within a unique world such as Hammond has created.
The sculpture of Chris Charteris at FHE Galleries is linked to Aotearoa in a completely different but equally impressive way. The idea of carving local stone into shapes linked to aspects of Maori design of such utilitarian objects as fish hooks, adzes and weapons has become almost a cliché as the shapes are easily formed and polished with modern power tools.
Charteris reaches far beyond the clichés with sculptures full of energy but absolutely true to the stone. His most immediately striking work is done in andersite found in the Coromandel. He uses both the natural texture of the stone and the polished edges that can be conferred on it. Toa is like an adze with sharp edges but with curves that give it the thrust of a shark through water. It is only a pity that so strong a shape is carried on a rod rather than grounded. Matau has the weight of a boulder but the sharp curves of a hook.
What modern tools can do is apparent in the curve that cuts into the mass of Rerenga yet the textured surface preserves the weight of the stone and the forward thrust is massively energetic. Charteris can leave the stones to speak for themselves as in the giant necklace called Coastal Rhythm and, when he chooses to work in whalebone, the material is given tall elegant shapes.
There are also lots of clichés associated with the use of greenstone but in this exhibition the translucent quality of the pounamu is used to wonderful effect in a series of discs mounted in light boxes. By contrast, the same material is used aggressively in the striking Matau which gives its name to the show.
There is artistry in this show which lends a spiritual quality to materials in danger of becoming commonplace. It has the special qualities that combine things Maori and European in a way that perhaps those great birds in Hammond's caves foreshadowed.
Concepts from other Polynesian cultures also impact on our art. John Ioane at Whitespace Gallery is an expert carver in wood. Even when he is doing work that resembles painting he can't resist carving ripples that suggest the ocean into the panel on which he paints. On to the ripples of his sea he paints his particular pantheon of deities. They are at their most suggestive when their coiling forms recall an octopus. In the main gallery traditional paintings by Meredith Collins of her daughters tellingly show the outward reality and the inward spirit of the children.
This week at the galleries
What: The Cave Paintings, by W. D. Hammond
Where and when: Ivan Anthony, 312 K Rd, to Nov 8
TJ says: Splendidly painted extinct great eagles of Aotearoa become deities in the myths of our origin and evolution as a special place in the world.
What: Matau by Chris Charteris
Where and when: FHE Galleries, 2 Kitchener St, to Oct 20
TJ says: Outstanding sculpture: monumental in stone, elegant in whalebone and luminous in pounamu.
What: The Last Girl on Earth, by Meredith Collins; 9 Heavens, by John Ioane
Where and when: Whitespace, 12 Crummer Rd, Ponsonby, to Oct 25
TJ says: Delicate paintings of girls in reality and spirit; carved panels with gods and the sea.
* For gallery listings, see www.nzherald.co.nz/arts
