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Symbolism is the name given to a late 19th-century movement in art but it also has general application when a painter represents an object in a way that conveys emotions or ideas. The symbols convey the meaning.
Two artists who belong to different generations are showing symbolist art this week. One has the weight and high seriousness of an older generation and the other the bite and irony of more recent trends.
Nigel Brown's exhibition at the Warwick Henderson Gallery until September 29 is called Will to Meaning.
The meaning of many of Brown's symbols has been consistent over the years. He uses a man in a black singlet as a New Zealand Everyman. He also adapts from the Bible and from McCahon's rubric "I AM" to represent permanent existence and personal self-assertion. He makes these letters huge, thick and sculptural.
In this show he adds to his usual system of symbols objects derived from the work of Coromandel potter Barry Brickell. In these paintings Brickell's pots become symbols of craftsmanship and creativity. And because they are ceramic, which is almost indestructible, they are symbols of permanence. They stand tall and twisted alongside the big lettering.
The prevailing earthy tones of Brown's painting sit well on these symbols and on the hills behind them or the brick interiors which show the potter at work.
Everything is monumental and fixed against the ravages of time, often symbolised by candles that appear in the work and the tiny figures that dot it, including the poet James K. Baxter, the god of Brown's idolatry.
This show reveals a new symbol of change - the curving form of a wave which towers over everything else. In one spectacular painting, Sea Rising, rank upon rank of these waves assault the constructions of civilisation and threaten to overwhelm them, while a man and a woman figure are thrust despairingly to the side.
It is a bold attempt to convey what poet W.B. Yeats called "the murderous innocence of the sea".
The whole feeling of the exhibition is summed up in Let Time Be Still Who Takes All Things. This painting draws a curtain aside to show a bird which is the spirit, the sun which gives life, indications of vegetation and habitation, and those ceramic vases as permanence. A figure - not in a black singlet, but in casual clothing - accompanied by the black dog of depression, is standing on a fresh green grave.
The large work that gives the show its title is upstairs in the gallery. It successfully uses great slabs of construction in deep perspective, attended with little symbols that look something of an afterthought.
This is a large exhibition, the result of dedicated work and honest thought. It dwarfs most shows.
The sense of labour in the work and in the symbolism gives a feeling of deep sincerity which provokes admiration and an unexpected sense of detachment.
The symbolism in the work of Sam Mitchell at the Anna Bibby Gallery until September 28 is much more acid and the work itself more graphic and less painterly than that of Brown.
The works are all done in acrylic paint on Perspex so they have the flat surface of a window.
The window allows us to look into the minds of a range of characters. We see their heads and what is inside their heads. The contents are exposed by a scattering of images.
In 1985 we see a man in a showy bowtie and big glasses whose head is full of the images of glamour girls that he lusts after. There is an edge to the images because of the presence of snakes and the way one of the women is roped to a stake. In each head there is something that has a vitriolic sting, so in Fanta, where the wide-eyed image of a young woman has a head full of ponies and one little unicorn (a symbol of virginity), there is a pun about loving her cat.
The images reflect the colour and style of tattoos and the letters push them towards irony. They include "Mummy" and "Daddy" - and Mummy has a dagger in her head.
A variation on these heads are several little paintings of birds which Mitchell has always done well. These birds are symbolic of relationships. Another Day shows birds in a partnership that extracts sharp dialogue from them.
Another word much in use is "referencing", where a work of art makes a comment on another work of art. The effect can be powerful. In the City Art Rooms in Lorne St there is a big stylised shark in polystyrene made by Clinton Phillips.
It hangs suspended in the gallery until September 23, referencing the famous shark in formaldehyde by Damien Hirst. Like the original, it has considerable presence but meaning is reduced simply to comment.
There is some painting that cannot be neatly categorised. Swimming by Kate Small at the Anna Miles Gallery until September 29 shows swimming pools with people at their edge.
There is no symbolism, though the figures cast odd shadows. Nor does it reference anything except its own pastel colours, clever use of underpainting and naive drawing which contrasts with simple formal outlines.
What the paintings mean is difficult to determine but in their own quasi-innocent way they have a quirky individuality.
