TJ McNamara: Nation's essence shines in symbolic work

Let's Come to Terms with Birds by Nigel Brown. Photo / Sarah Ivey.

Some artists attain iconic status and occupy a place in the nation's art by virtue of having an important role in the tradition. They may attain a notable presence in the public galleries or relate to something special in the heart and life of this country. This week is rich with paintings by three such artists.

John Reynolds, at the Sue Crockford Gallery, created a unique achievement when he painted thousands of tiny canvases lettered with wording in silver expressions characteristic of our vernacular slang. The huge cloud of these paintings is now enshrined in Te Papa, giving it the accolade of iconic status.

Throughout his career, Reynolds has been preoccupied with mark-making and messages. Using words in his painting was, for him, just another way of signifying messages.

The theme of this new show is again the transmission and tracking of messages. Since the communications are represented symbolically by lines of silver dots, the messages and their destinations are not defined but they clearly reference electronic transmission. The backgrounds have apparently been made hazy by exposure to rain.

The paintings are not miniature this time but easel size and each one has its own colour combination. These individual colour compositions make the background of each painting a special context across which lines of bright dots spread and ricochet.

The works are part of a series called The Meaning of Nowhere. One, No IV, is a vivid orange work, clouded, dripping and spatially obscure. It suggests a hot situation, even the heat of chemical reaction, and the lines that surge across it eventually run out of force. Another, IX, is all shades of blue distance and the lines are born in the painting and apparently go beyond the edge .

A triptych, I-III, is dark and cloudy, black and grey, with a violent red in the centre where the messages become forceful and dense. It reads like a scene of conflict and war.

The length, the beginning and the destination of the transmissions are related to the context, whether it is sunset and sky or richly purple proclamations where lines intersect and link.

The backgrounds are not particular but suggest many things. The result is a series of works that are at once decorative, forceful and give immense scope for the exercise of the imagination working on the modern world. It is linked with Reynolds' previous work but is a new variation, typically intellectually strong but dry in manner despite the effect of the rain.

The iconic status of the late Pat Hanly was never in doubt at the time of his death. His special place was as courage-giver to a generation of painters. He showed that it was possible to gain a reputation in Europe, yet return to New Zealand and find something here that would give purpose to an outstandingly creative career. Not the least of his achievements was his vivid painting in fulfilment of public commissions.

One such commission, negotiated by Hamish Keith in 1975, was The Seven Ages, a series of paintings that has not been seen by the public because it was incorporated in a new extension of the University of Auckland's School of Medicine in Grafton. The paintings are now on show at the Gus Fisher Gallery while the extension is being refurbished, and will later tour nationally.

The building had seven floors, with a painting for each floor on the landing of the lifts and staircase.

One colour that Hanly handled well was red, and six of the works contain vivid reds. There was an obvious association with blood and surgery but there is nothing macabre about his great streams of painterly red, which suggest life force and surges of joy. One such stream of red surges through the panel called Youth. The titles suggest stages of emotional maturity rather than simply of physical growth.

Although these are abstract, the excitement and spectacular effects of the way they are painted so freely convey emotional force and makes the paintings as fresh as if they were done yesterday. Only in the last painting, Grace, for the seventh floor, is there serenity as the forms fold into something like a pale rose.

The work is iconic in providing an early exemplar of a public work true to the painter, the situation and to the fertile and joyous possibilities of art and life.

One painter who has devoted his career to making icons for New Zealand is Nigel Brown, who has a large exhibition of his recent work at Whitespace Gallery. He has not only adopted the format of an icon with a rubric lettered around the edge of the works but he consistently uses a symbolic figure that he established many years ago.

This is the figure of the rugged New Zealand male clad in a singlet. This strong, rough man is full of a brooding intensity. Other symbols that Brown has used for years crowd around him: ferns, Captain Cook, ladders, telegraph poles as crucifixions, James K. Baxter, waterfalls and big, motherly women. In this show, all of these and more cluster around images of birds. This is in keeping with the title, Short Lives of Birds. It is suggested that the care of birds is necessary to preserve our feeling for nature and nurture and also suggests that there are tears in the heart of things here.

At times these ideas are expressed simply, as in I Just Want the Birds Back Now where the black-singleted figure cherishes birds tenderly although he wears a trophy feather in his hat.

Brown has never been daunted by size and the exhibition has several large works that hammer away heavily on his theme.

The ambition and size are impressive but the detail is sometimes awkward, particularly on the birds' feathers. Making a symbol of owls makes them human but comically quizzical. The symbol of disruptive man has no face at all, with a Ned Kelly helmet concealing his countenance.

Despite the oddities, these paintings do assemble a polemic force and they relate passionately to New Zealand. Brown's art may be often rough and crude but it is driven by a messianic sense of purpose.

At the Galleries:

What: The Meaning of Nowhere by John Reynolds

Where and when: Sue Crockford Gallery, Endeans Building, 2 Queen St, to December 23

TJ says: Not so many words this time but Reynolds is still sending messages - this time dotted signals across a variety of contexts indicated by colour.

What: The Seven Ages of Man, by Pat Hanly

Where and when: Gus Fisher Gallery, 74 Shortland St, to January 8

TJ says: Hanly at his vivdly emotional, colourful best in works commissioned for the Medical School and not seen by the public before.

What: Short Lives of Birds, by Nigel Brown

Where and when: Whitespace, 12 Crummer Rd, to December 24

TJ says: Typical Brown paintings straining after the epic in size and style and mostly succeeding by dint of manifest sincerity.

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