TJ McNamara: Flights of exquisitely executed fancy

Every culture has its folk art, telling stories that are strange and appear to drift up from the selective subconscious, with an outward story and an inward meaning. A number of modern artists, notably the outstanding Paula Rego in Britain, have used folk stories as the background to their work.

In the same way Jane Siddall at Oedipus Rex uses elements of folktale in her exquisitely made images. Her show, The Bird Wife, is linked to all those stories about how the attractive wife turns out to be a sea nymph, a seal, a bird, or a mermaid. In Siddall's work the woman has the qualities of a bird. The bird motif exactly fits the artist's fascinating skills with embroidery. Feathers, delicately stitched in brilliant colours, play an enormous part.

The embroidery, with its accent on traditional women's skills, matches technique exactly with the subject. It is interesting to see how the original ideas of each work have been developed. Part of the show is the studies for the major work. These are done with a combination of collage and the artist's own accomplished pencil drawings. The studies are attractive in themselves but the finished work is much more rich. Each work is contained within an ornate handmade folding-box format that stands freely when opened and can be closed with brass hardware fittings that complete the ensemble.

Nevertheless it is the images that matter. In the boxed triptych that gives the show its title, The Bird Wife is perched on a chair wearing a long dress worked in silk in such a way as to suggest feathers but is still convincingly a dress. Long, red hair emphasises the Pre-Raphaelite quality of her beauty. Behind her hangs a drape which recalls the materials behind some Venetian Madonnas. The whole is a fine image that has the strength to carry the length of the gallery but it is even more fascinating close up.

The folklore element is particularly evident in Good Bird Gone Bad, a wild-eyed bird woman in flight. Her hair is tangled and her splendid legs end in talons. She is attended by another bird. There is nothing coy or sentimental about this bird _ it evokes stories of witches and demons flying through the air on Walpurgisnacht, the pagan holiday. She seems to know something only women know.

Not all the images are so bizarre. Some are very quiet and one with a woman in an Elizabethan bodice and ruff, holding two flamingos, is as colourfully ornate as any Baroque painting. It is a marvel of imagination and technique, in several ways truly a work of fine art.

John Walsh, whose work is at the John Leech Gallery, also works at the level of folklore and myth. The presence of spirits is sometimes explicit, sometimes implied.

The most explicit work is Hunkered in Hut 9 showing a hut deep in the bush with the dogs outside, a light in the window and smoke from the chimney. By the door hangs a carcass. Beyond lies the dark blackness of the bush and a glimpse of night sky.

The work effectively conveys the menacing and unusual situation in the modern world of a place where there is no electric light apparent. There is no way the darkness can be dispelled by the flick of a switch. It is a situation where it is easy to think that movement in the top of the trees is a spirit passing.

Other work is more plain, like Mothish where a tall pale woman stands on the bank of a river, with a dark questing man on the other side. Yet the mythic, mysterious quality remains.

Walsh's atmospheric landscapes are always filled with indications of activity. One big work, Pare to My Place, acts like a gatekeeper to these mysterious landscapes. In the centre is a curious figure with the traditional three fingers and three toes surrounded by totems and trophies. It is a truly strange guardian. Here, as elsewhere, there are details which seem simply odd, like the shin pad on the creature's left leg.

Totally different mediums are used in the work of Stella Brennan at Starkwhite Gallery. She expresses her ideas with tents, television and bark chips. When you enter the gallery the pungent smell of the bark fills the air. Three tents are in the midst of this space. One is empty, another (which you need to stoop down to look into) has a remarkable video of a post-hole digger driving deep into the earth with a wriggle and a shake that makes it look alive, and then withdrawn with its trophy of earth taken from the hole. The third tent shows text which discusses the relationship of humans to the land.

The installation makes an interesting comment on our relationship with the natural world and makes evident that, although we have a desire to become one with the natural landscape, we still need intermediaries, shelter, messages, instruction and mechanical devices to come to terms with it.

Although this is a worthy meditation, there is the inescapable feeling that the thought and skills of Siddall and Walsh produce impressive objects which have a continuing life of their own where installations such as Brennan's work must by their nature be ephemeral, however interesting they are at the time.

There is a return to vividly coloured oil painting in the work of Ian Kingstone at Aesthete Gallery in Parnell. The characteristics of his symbolist work are twisting patterns of composition, intense colour and ambiguities of expression.

In the best, there are two aces that meld into one form to show their relationship. The device is worked very musically in the rich Gauguin's Garden and in Medlands Tremors.

AT THE GALLERIES

What: The Bird Wife, by Jane Siddall
Where and when: Oedipus Rex Gallery, Khartoum Place, to October 3
TJ says: In her first solo exhibition here, Siddall uses her splendid embroidery skills to make vivid, folkloric images of birds trapped as women.
What: Paintings, by John Walsh
Where and when: John Leech Gallery, cnr Kitchener-Wellesley Sts, to October 9
What: Installation, by Stella Brennan
Where and when: Starkwhite, 510 Karangahape Rd, to October 3
TJ says: This is a very worthy installation of bark and tents that comments on how we relate to the natural environment but is handicapped by its demonstration quality.
What: Stolen Moments, by Ian Kingstone
Where and when: Aesthete Gallery, 251 Parnell Rd, to October 9
TJ says: Colourful symbolist painting done with invention and a flourish and full of references to painters of the past.

For gallery listings, see www.nzherald.co.nz/go/artlistings