TJ McNamara: Through the lens, sometimes darkly

'Buried Dwelling' by Peter Gibson-Smith. Photo / Greg Bowker

Photography is ubiquitous - it is everywhere: in films, television, newspapers, magazines and even in mobile phones. At least four galleries in Auckland are showing photographic exhibitions.

When, out of the mass of images, does photography become art? The work of all the artists reveals a sense of struggle to establish levels of meaning beyond the skilful recording of a person or place.

At the Bath Street Gallery, old documentary photographs become the basis of a special view of the world in the hands of Peter Gibson-Smith. The show, called Buried, is a range of images of trees and houses covered with ash from the eruption of Mt Tarawera. These desolate scenes have been enhanced to create a surreal earlier, imagined New Zealand. The additions are convincing except for the one that shows King Kong buried up to the neck in ash but even that has an element of wit.

Others are more serious and related to the artist's earlier work which featured sculpture made of the spines of books illusionistically painted on wooden blocks. An impressive work such as Buttress has the ruins of a house with books laid like masonry covered in grim, grey ash. The books, which include dictionaries, are all about language and related to the idea that disasters are recalled in speech and writing.

Even more spectacular images create this special place. Adam and Eve are found in a blasted forest made piquant by the tiny spot of red - the fruit in the hand of Eve. Most impressive of all are two works that feature grand monuments. One is a sculpture of a lion attacking a horse and other is of two giant heads made strange by the footprints in the ash around them and the sky beyond.

That this is a created world is shown by a large work that has a big fissure and buried giant ladders close to human figures that are tiny in comparison. Close scrutiny shows the ladders are made of pencils. Most of the images contain a turbulent tumult in the clouds above the landscape. These are emphasised by the monotone colour which is intriguing because it is made up of parallel lines of shading,

Each work has slightly curved panels covered with wax in an encaustic process that adds to the mystery of the technique as well as giving a sense of solidity to each eerie image. The only notable colour is on the edges of the panels and emphasises their thickness and the sense that they are tablets from the past.

The whole shows an extraordinary imagination manifested in something that looks documentary but is transformed by computer and drawing techniques into something rich and strange.

At the Gow Langsford Gallery, the prominent German photographer Thomas Ruff is transforming some of his sexy photographs into art by shifting the camera and blurring his subjects into movement and generalisation. In the most explicit, two nudes in net stockings on a bed become a symphony in yellow with bright indications of red for vagina, lips and nail polish.

These large prints are superb in quality and so are other subjects that are sharply rendered to exist as images in their own right even if the place or face is unknown to the viewer. Hence a photo of a stylish house emphasises its geometry and typicality.

Most interesting of all are silkscreen prints of two photographs of the same person with slight differences of mood signalled by tiny shifts in lighting and tone. Ruff comes with a big reputation and this exhibition goes some way toward making clear why he is considered so highly.

Equally close to commercial photography is the attractive work of Australian Andrew Curtis at Orexart. What lifts it beyond commercial art is a clear thematic unity of style.

The images are of young women all photographed with their faces illuminated by the light of the screens of their mobile phones that they are busily using. Most of the works are large but two are duratran prints in lightboxes, which adds to their effect since light is as much the subject of the work as the charming young women.

Sarah with the light of the moon behind her - or is it a round electric light - gains from the extra luminosity. Overall, the lighting is very effective. The rim-lighting of the girl's hood in the green harmonies of Alice is a notably clever detail.

The pictures, all glossy lips and fine complexions, are closely linked to advertising techniques but the variety of backgrounds and the total engrossment of the young women in their messaging sets them apart from high-class glamour shots. The effect of their total absorption in their communication is to emphasise not only their loneliness but also, perhaps, that of the voyeuristic viewer.

Typical of what a bright young graduate from a modern art school can produce after exposure to the debates of the art Mecca of Berlin is the work of Boris Dornbusch at Starkwhite.

The conceptual wit and games begin as you step in the door and tread on a work called Clear Moods and the bubble-wrap of its construction goes pop. The twists continue with Slow Change where the image is photographed framed in a digital display frame in a frame inside another frame. It shows a hand with the imprint of coins on it. The money is gone; the imprint will fade. The implication of the framing is unclear. The Great White is a great white shark on a great white sheet.

The ultimate enigma is a sentence in Braille embossed on aluminium called A view through the trees to a couple standing in the snow. This is an eloquent phrase and emphasises difficulties in communication. If we were not told we would not know. You have to be blind to see it. It is on such paradoxes and word plays that the concepts of this show rest.

AT THE GALLERIES

What: Buried, by Peter Gibson-Smith
Where and when: Bath Street Gallery, 43 Bath St, Parnell, to April 24
TJ says: Photographs of the aftermath of the Tarawera eruption, enhanced to create something rich and strange in a surreal world.

What: Photographs, by Thomas Ruff
Where and when: Gow Langsford Gallery, 26 Lorne St, to April 24
TJ says: Prominent German photographer gives examples of his polished work that range from the raunchy to the stars.

What: Cell, by Andrew Curtis
Where and when: Orexart, Upper Khartoum Place, to April 24
TJ says: Stylish photographs of beautiful young women with their faces illuminated by the light of the cellphones that are their defence against loneliness.

What: Phantom Limb Construction Sites, by Boris Dornbusch
Where and when: Starkwhite, 510 Karangahape Rd, to April 24
TJ says: A young conceptual artist with varied and inventive works, visually obvious but full of oblique meanings made more clear only by the words of the titles.

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