KEY POINTS:
This is a week of witty and clever small things in both painting and sculpture.
The Warwick Henderson Gallery in Parnell hosts a show of shaped paintings by Eion Stevens until June 29.
Stevens exhibits regularly in Auckland, where his work does not have the profile it deserves. The work is highly individual in its simplicity, wit and invention.
This exhibition is a departure for Stevens.
These paintings, all done on hardboard, have irregular shapes following the outline of his forms, replacing the conventional rectangles of his previous work.
Each Stevens' painting implies a sparse, intriguing narrative which is not explicit but results from the interplay of the shapes, mostly painted in flat, plain colour.
In a painting such as Mountain Ark there is a boat shape, a hill shape and a ladder to get off the boat and up the hill. You add your own story. Who climbed the hill, Noah?
In Fanfare there is a blasting trumpet shape that reaches across the painting from dark into brilliant light, like an announcement: "Someone is coming."
These lively little interactions between shapes can be very simple, such as Homebody, where the painting has a roofline shape at the top and a pale house with a tiny door that is flopped open like an escape hatch, and a bold, black, high-heeled boot as if someone had escaped from the sheltering confines and stepped stylishly out.
The interaction is entirely visual and each one encapsulates a different human experience and emotion. This is an unpretentious, lively and amusing exhibition.
Christchurch sculptor Neil Dawson is known for his large public commissions but these are his symphonies compared with the chamber music of the small sculptures he is showing at the Anna Bibby Gallery until July 6.
Vanishing Points are made of painted steel and play variations on a long cone shape tapering to a fine point. Within this basic shape there are elaborate open patterns which revolve around the cone, often in a double helix.
The forms of these patterns are mostly linear but some employ fine metal mesh.
Oblique lighting gives the works a fascinating interplay between three-dimensional and two-dimensional form.
The cast shadows are flat but because of the extraordinary perspective of the patterns of the steel the forms in the shadows read as more cubic than the metal reality.
There are 15 of these works. All have the same title yet each one rolls towards its vanishing point in a highly individual way, reinforced by the colour chosen for each piece.
The art lies in the invention. This is a set of variations comparable to a series of musical variations, precise, formal, with differences only in rhythm and emphasis.
Some variations are fractionally more interesting than others and it is the open works with an emphasis on perspective constructions within the shape that are most intriguing.
Here it is the red perspective cones of Vanishing Point 1 or the blue cylinders of Vanishing Point 9, or the blocks of Vanishing Point 11 that intrigue more than the pale intricacies of Vanishing Point 12.
It is a big jump from this formalism to the sharply observed humanity of the local scene in Ponsonby, an exhibition of sculpture by Greer Twiss at 40 George St until July 14.
This is cafe society in sculpture and a good deal of the work features the kind of pushchair that has big wheels so an athletic mum can jog behind it.
The child faces forward, well wrapped up and covered with a plastic sheet against the rain. Twiss works these prams as a loosely handled lump of bronze with wheels.
In the free-verse poems that accompany the works he refers to Manet and the vigorous working of the surfaces of the figures is comparable to the dashing brushwork of the Impressionist master who was also an artist of everyday life.
There is lots of life, albeit slightly grotesque life, in these figures.
The attitude of two women looking and gossiping is delightfully captured in Watchers, in a piece where two women and a pram are balanced across the work by an attentive little dog done with considerable vitality.
These little pieces are not uniformly successful but some, such as Pusher, with a mum in tank-top and shorts jogging swiftly with her infant in front, are wonderfully full of life and energy.
There are two larger works made of galvanised steel, heavily soldered together.
One is a baby, full of curiosity, crawling towards some seagulls that show Twiss' great experience in depicting birds while keeping them sculptural.
The other is a group where two men are lost in conversation while a woman - just as in Manet's Dejeuner sur l'Herbe - is pinkly naked. She ignores the men and gives full attention to her cellphone.
The construction of the figures looks clumsy but there is fine detail in this work, the bulge of a thigh, the spreading buttocks of the men, the woman's firm derriere and the way the fingers of the left hand tap on her knee as she talks on the phone. It encapsulates vividly an aspect of Auckland life.
These sculptural figures are supported by some exceptionally lively drawings in wiry line and a splash of wash.
These sharp images capture the movement and attitudes.
One of the best is a person running behind a pram. The torso and head, all hurry and agitation, are conveyed by a mass of impetuous line.
Drawing is also the essence of the work of Jo Bruce-Smith at Bath Street Gallery until June 23. This series of abstract works is called Carbon and is a showcase of mixed techniques, not only conventional drawing but also masking, scratching, combing and abrasion.
These are made possible by the quality of paper used and by careful preparation of ground in the paintings. These exercises are done with considerable assurance.
