T. J. McNamara: Archaeology of past lives

You have to make a pilgrimage to get there but when you arrive you find a remarkable monument to memory, death and resurrection. The object of your journey is an installation work by Professor Cho Duck Hyun of Seoul University. Called Dark Water, it is part of the annual CBD public arts programme organised by the Auckland City Council's new manager of public art, Pontus Kyander.

The pilgrimage involves travelling to Starkwhite Gallery in K Rd, negotiating your way through an installation by et al in the main gallery, going through the office, crossing a courtyard, going up a flight of steps, through a gate, across a platform, down more steps, through a narrow passageway and up another flight of stairs.

The climb is worth the effort. The installation is a large box-like room that contains what appear to be faded photographs of wedding couples. The images are actually charcoal drawings made from old formally posed wedding pictures. The gain made by drawing the images is that they can be much bigger than the print made with a plate camera and the surface is much more delicate and subtle.

Crowded together in this setting and equipped with elaborate frames, they are marvellous evocations of the past. The images come from archives in Auckland and the couples include Maori, European and Japanese groups. The details are fascinating. The largest work shows a group from the 1920s indicated by the short wedding dresses of the bride and attendants as well as the women's wide-brimmed hats. Other wedding dresses are elaborate with long trains and all the trimmings.

There is no interaction between any of the couples, though this apparent stiffness may be a result of the long exposure needed at that time to take photographs. What is also evident is exposure of another kind. Some of the images have been obliterated. Others are stained with watermarks.

This is the result of being immersed in seawater. Part of the whole work is a ceremony of resurrection. Every work - painting, drawing or photograph - is one of death. We know the people depicted are long dead.

Cho Duck Hyun arranged for the images to be put in a container that was sunk in the water near Queens Wharf. On April 19 a crane, in the presence of official spectators, lifted the container from the water and it was carefully opened. It was like archaeology but archaeology of people rather than artefacts. The process of lifting the works from the water is shown in a short video loop that is an important part of the exhibition. It adds drama and a sense of ritual.

The combination of image and ritual, discovery and history, combines with intense human interest to make this a truly memorable manifestation of contemporary art as installation.

To reach the work you are obliged to go through another installation by our own specialist in the genre, et al. This piece is typical of her enigmatic Kafkaesque gloom although it is about supporting a variety of causes.

The floor has been marked off by tape into a maze of offices. Some are divided by wire fences with alphabetical signs on them. Within each marked space, office shelving is laid out flat. A little box is on each steel rectangle and each piece bears the title of an international trust fund. The little container is a collection box for donations. Fronting the installation are two large blackboards with chalk provided for viewers to add comments.

The whole effect is grey and gloomy. Everything, including the guide to the trusts, is deliberately worn and tatty. The dull feeling is complicated by its ambiguity. The show purports to be asking for funds but even the openings in the collection boxes are hard to find. What it really conveys is the utter futility of supporting anything.

The pattern of two simultaneous exhibitions is followed by the Artis/Jonathan Grant pairing of galleries in Parnell. On one side is a very interesting show called Auckland - A History in Paintings. A watercolour by Rev John Kinder shows the first grammar school on the road to Epsom and another by J. B. C. Hoyte, who was drawing master at the school, is one of a group showing the harbour.

Of particular interest are two watercolours by Miss E. B. Kelly of the Queen St Wharf and Queen St itself at the turn of the 20th century.

Next door at Artis, the paintings by Pamela Wolfe show the huge changes in art practice a century can make. The works, which are exceptionally big, are flower paintings. Lilies, tulips and roses thrust energetically forward. The dark backgrounds divorce them from any particular place or time. First Light and Determination are exceptionally vibrant.

There was a time when Wolfe's flowers were decorations placed around the edge of her harbour views. Her development in confidence as an artist has been sensational.

Rather more quietly delicious are the abstract paintings of Miranda Parkes at the new location for the Antoinette Godkin Gallery at the City Art Rooms in Lorne St.

These are done in candy colours, mostly in stripes, and the mannerism that makes them special is that the painted canvases are crumpled into deep hills and valleys. The effect is charming as the relief elements add a play of light and shadow.

Unstriped colour that washes around the contour is particularly successful, especially in the thick pigment of Bubbler and the pale pastels in the deep crumples of Piper.

At the galleries

What: Dark Water, by Cho Duck Hyun
Where and when: Starkwhite, 510 K Rd, to mid-May
TJ says: Emerging from the dark waters of the harbour, this installation by a distinguished Korean artist tells eloquently of passing time and memory.

What: Painting 09, by Pamela Wolfe
Where and when: Artis Gallery, 280 Parnell Rd, to May 17
TJ says: The spectacular development of this artist's talent continues with more of her thrusting, over-life-size paintings of flowers.

What: Pearler, by Miranda Parkes
Where and when: Antoinette Godkin Gallery, 28 Lorne St, to May 9
TJ says: Parkes cast a glamorous spell with her first pastel abstractions crumpled into relief sculpture.