TJ McNamara: A fitting tribute to Frances Hodgkins

<i>The Weir, Bradford-on-Tone</i> 1934-5 is an example of why Frances Hodgkins holds her place in the neo-Romantic school of the 1930s. Photo / Natalie Slade

Art in Auckland has always been amazingly varied. This week is no exception. With the major part of the Auckland City Gallery out of action, the Triennial has occupied almost all the public art spaces and work by important artists that is normally accessible has been closed off. So the exhibition of works by Frances Hodgkins at John Leech Gallery is welcome. Of course they are for sale, a dealer gallery is a business, but a feature of Auckland's dealer galleries is that they are truly democratic and everyone is welcome.

This selection of drawings and paintings has enough material to make it clear why Hodgkins deserves her stature. There are quick, deft, stylish drawings like one of a man wearing a baker's hat. Several paintings show how the painter could weave a variety of spontaneous touches into a coherent whole and make it a harmony of subdued but rich colour. There were times the vigour of her approach betrayed her, notably in a portrait where face and chair share the same brick colour and the light on the left of his face is more a bandage than modelling.

Yet other work, such as Wild Violets and Honesty, which combine still life and nature show an exquisite touch, even a certain audacity where the handle of the brush has been used to indicate texture. If you have heard of Frances Hodgkins and wondered what the fuss was about, this show should make clear her place in the neo-Romantic school of the 1930s.

There is another echo of the past in the work of Jim Allen at Michael Lett. Two works in the show called Small Worlds are a reworking of pieces first seen at the late, lamented Barry Lett Gallery in 1969. At the time, work using masses of PVC and nylon in long hanging strips, like a wilderness to walk through, was a revelation of a new art experience. What Jim Allen did then would have not been out of place in this year's Triennial, 40 years later.

Memory suggests small differences in this work. Then it was a display of the sculptural possibilities of the medium. Although this work is similar in composition and material, there is more of a sense of metaphor. The piece called Small Worlds has two parts, one made up of thread that falls like rain, the other a tough inflated cube.

They are connected by being set on a carpet of flax fibre. The overall feeling is that when a multiplicity of things or ideas crowd together they can be pushed through, but single big concepts can be a barrier. The other work, A Tribute to Hone Tuwhare, is also a forest of hanging PVC and thread with wooden spheres occurring like hard thoughts in a mass of dramatic quotations from the poet printed on strips of paper. It is altogether a striking visual counterpart for the richness and density of the poet's work.

It is not always necessary for technique to be big and bold. At Ivan Anthony, work by Georgie Hill called Cold Shoulder is small, delicate, bright and brittle as glass. The artist confines cloudy delicate tints of watercolour within precise thin lines drawn with the utmost precision. The combination of the indeterminate and the geometric is very beguiling.

Each painting creates an interior with a tiled floor. The furniture is completely transparent but nevertheless done in accurate perspective. Female figures give a ghostly presence to these interiors, seen as dim images on the wall. In contrast, there is often the rich warmth of a blanket in the foreground. The blanket's warmth is conveyed with an immaculate technique of tiny dots which the eye mixes into texture.

A typical work is called Still Life with Poster, Wardrobe, Blanket and Glass Display and uses thin tints of blue, pink and grey. In other work, plants appear, often as masses of gingko leaves. This ancient genus suggests some gentle things persist and contribute to give delicacy in a manufactured world.

The exhibition has a surprising counterpart in the work of Ruth Thomas Edmond with the intriguing title, A Room, A Chair, A Window, Silence. In her show at the Anna Bibby Gallery, you will not find rooms, chairs or windows at all. Each painting is an amorphous mass of brush strokes suggesting close-up detail of something you might see while sitting quietly and looking out a window. A title such as Yellow Garden Mysteries conveys the nature of the effect intended. This is a patch of autumn colour densely worked in overlapping brush strokes. Each brush stroke is individual yet basically the same just as leaves are on a tree. It is also interesting purely as a use of the qualities of paint.

Each of the nine paintings has its own atmosphere; the most successful are dense and intricate. When the effect is spread too far it loses its mystery.

The exhibition also includes lively structures of corrugated cardboard that repeat the idea of similar shapes used in a multiplicity of different forms.

Two further shows rely on the nature of materials for their effect and they could not be more different. At the Tim Melville Gallery, Australian artist Jonathan Jones makes vivid use of fluorescent tubes patterned across an entire wall. The forms are rectangular but the defining tubes are varied, sometimes single, sometimes coupled together. The patterns are derived from Aboriginal art but the sculpture itself and the minimalist tense drawings that accompany it make highly sophisticated art.

On the other hand, David Blackburn at the Satellite Gallery takes modern things, such as violins, their cases and other found objects, such as a corset, a dress, a locket, and by stiffening them, or opening them up to reveal visceral forms of heart and lung, makes them speak of mortality and the passing of time. It is typical of contemporary art that it makes simple things highly sophisticated and found objects like instruments and small photographs are grim reminders of time and mortality.

AT THE GALLERIES

What: Frances Hodgkins: Paintings and Drawings
Where and when: John Leech Gallery, cnr Kitchener & Wellesley Sts, to April 24
TJ says: A chance to appreciate an artist with a place in New Zealand and British 20th century art.

What: Small Works, by Jim Allen
Where and when: Michael Lett, 478 Karangahape Rd, to April 17
TJ says: Re-working pieces first exhibited 40 years ago using PVC that were startling then and have taken on metaphor that makes them still modern now.

What: Cold Shoulder, by Georgie Hill
Where and when: Ivan Anthony, 312 Karangahape Rd, to April 17
TJ says: Cloudy transparent watercolour is linked with geometric precision of line in interiors that represent delicate states of mind.

What: A Room, A Chair, A Window, Silence, by Ruth Thomas Edmond
Where and when: Anna Bibby Gallery, 226 Jervois Rd, to April 10
TJ says: The artist is inside looking out and converting detail of nature into lively paint.

What: Wall sculpture and drawings, by Jonathan Jones
Where and when: Tim Melville Gallery, 2 Kitchener St, to April 10
TJ says: Large-scale use of florescent tubes to pattern a wall with light is matched by some precise drawings.

What: This is Not a Rehearsal, by David Blackburn
Where and when: Satellite Gallery, cnr St Benedicts St & Newton Rd, to April 10
TJ says: Found objects, particularly violins and their cases, are wired to suggest the human condition.
For gallery listings, see www.nzherald.co.nz/go/artlistings