KEY POINTS:
In a lively show, Artland: USA, on the Arts Channel, two art commentators travel around the United States on an Art Bus stopping at galleries outside the main centres.
Recently they visited the Chinati Foundation in Texas and there are links between this institution, founded by extreme minimalist sculptor Donald Judd, and two shows this week by local artists. It emphasises their international flavour.
Julian Dashper, whose exhibition Pretty Minimal is at the Sue Crockford Gallery, was an artist in residence at Chinati in 2001 and his consistently minimalist, conceptual art must have fitted exactly into the foundation's style.
Parts of the show are extreme. The work that gives the show its name is a tiny dot on the wall. Blink and you'd overlook it. Another work, Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue, consists of three plastic chains hanging on the wall, short, medium and long; red, yellow and blue. It means that artists who avoid primary colours are in chains of convention but it does not add excitement to the chains.
More impressive is a work consisting of squares of framed plexiglass with the title For Richard and Donald both born 1928.
Richard is the artist's father and Donald is Donald Judd.
This is the nature of Dashper's work: the combination of the simplest of found materials with extremely abstruse reference to himself in particular and the art world at large.
It is curious that among all the framing of commonplace materials to make art, there is one work called Flag for BP where BP stands for the late Blinky Palermo, another minimalist artist.
It is a fine piece of design with a bright white circle in the middle framed in red rag paper whose raw edge, the result of the process of its making, is a human touch lacking among the absolutes elsewhere.
Another work is an untitled piece involving a bar of neon. The wires that lead to both ends of the neon tube make the space between them like the area of the picture with the tube as lighting, but there is no picture. You have to imagine it there: a perfect Dashper piece.
The Chinati Foundation is also home to several works by Dan Flavin, who used neon lights as his medium.
Paul Hartigan, whose Chromophobia is at Artis Gallery, also uses neon tubes; he was one of the first to do so here, and has specialised in their use throughout his long career. His variation is to twist them into spirals whereas Flavin used the straight commercial tubes.
In this display there are four of Hartigan's neon constructions. As in the work of Dashper there are references to art overseas and to 20th century art history.
One blue and red neon construction has something of the optical art of Vasarely. Another with a red centre hints at the wit of Miro and a third has the arbitrariness of Marcel Duchamp, but the loveliest and most complex of all is a tribute to the passion for colour of the late Pat Hanly.
This work's background is white but the glowing colour of the neon works through two shades of blue, then green, yellow, purple, green again and orange. Its vivid joy in colour would have delighted Hanly's heart.
The rest of the exhibition is made up of Hartigan's extraordinary prints. J. R. Lariat Jnr is a neon cowboy seen from below so he is all pants and no head. Hartigan is particularly fascinated by the evolution of the modern iconography of signs in variations on a single image.
Puff Daddy is an image from the past of a stereotypical, pipe-smoking, benevolent daddy whose name evolves into a modern rap singer. White Christmas is a luminous version against a white background with overtones of Bing Crosby and Two Bob Puff Daddy smokes complacently against a black background.
Hartigan is one of those artists whose style, through all its variations, is instantly recognisable among other things by its bright, brittle colour. The title of the show is odd; he is a chromophile not a chromophobe.
In the 19th century, art students began with careful figure studies and drew and painted plaster casts, nudes and still life before they went on to weave their skills into big dramatic historic tableaux.
Zarahn Southon has reversed the process. He burst on to the art scene with big figure compositions and then, reputation made, went to Europe to perfect the skills of his academic style.
He had what earlier painters would have called their Wanderjahren, years of wandering as journeymen. Some of the products of Southon's journeyman years in Europe can be seen in the show Studio Works at Soca.
This show is made up of self-portraits, a technically brilliant still life and groups of nude studies and paintings. They show the artist's time has been well spent.
He has acquired brilliant academic technique, seen in the way his figure studies stand firmly on the ground and in the way his acute observation of detail is transferred into paint.
His two self-portraits show his control over lighting and make it clear he has looked hard at Rembrandt and Caravaggio.
This show seems subdued when compared with the rhetoric and size of his early work but it does presage a return to his spectacular compositions with even more powerful effect.
Dark colour and moody lighting is also found in the lovely nocturnes by Elizabeth Rees at Milford Galleries.
The show, Rapture, taps into the rich emotions evoked by light and reflections on still lakes in the gathering dusk.
These moods are created by sweeping handling of paint in sky and mountains and allowing the drip of loaded paint to give substance to the interaction of land and water.
The transition of colours at the edge of dark land and reflecting water is particularly well done.
This week at the galleries
What: Pretty Minimal by Julian Dashper.
Where and when: Sue Crockford Gallery, 2 Queen St, to Oct 11.
TJ says: The unrepentant minimalist goes to extremes dictated by overseas mentors and private preoccupations.
What: Chromophobia by Paul Hartigan.
Where and when: Artis, 280 Parnell Rd, to Oct 12.
TJ says: Years of experience of neon tubes as art and neon signs as art prints make for a luminous show.
What: Studio Works by Zarahn Southon.
Where and when: Soca, 74 France St, to Oct 6.
TJ says: A return to fundamentals by a gifted academic artist makes for solid traditional nudes and self-portraits.
What: Rapture by Elizabeth Rees.
Where and when: Milford Galleries, 26 Kitchener St, to Oct 11.
TJ says: Moody nocturnes of mountains and lakes painted with sweeping assurance that energises large, confident images.
