KEY POINTS:
Refurbishment has its compensations. The rebuilding of Auckland Art Gallery means that some of its lesser-known holdings are on show in the exhibition In Shifting Light at the New Gallery across the road. Changes at the Waikaremoana Visitor Centre means that Colin McCahon's great painting The Urewera Mural is on loan to the gallery as part of the exhibition.
The work, which has a chequered history, retains its power even out of its context in Waikaremoana and its raw exposure on a broad white wall in the gallery. Abducted, damaged and restored, it still stands as a great national treasure.
Three panels speak of the passing of time, the nature of the land and the spirit that imbues it. In the first panel we see the massive rhythm of hills and the distant golden gleam of the lake water. The centre panel is dominated by a huge form which is at once a cross suggesting the sacrifice of Christ, a great fall of light showing what the spirit gains from the land and suggesting a tree trunk symbolic of nature and growth. The shape is also Tane who separated the land from the sky. The third panel makes specific reference to the Tuhoe people with emblems of prophets whose values still resonate.
The sombre colour which among the hills is immensely subtle, lends its own power to the painting.
The Urewera Mural, painted in 1975, is matched in its way by the famous Takaka Night and Day (1948) hung at the entrance. Once again the rhythm of the hills and the light are used symbolically. The light of the spirit is beyond the ridge, reflected in the valley between the enclosing darkness of the hills, suggesting the possibility of enlightenment between the darkness before birth and after death.
These famous paintings are part of an exhibition that explores the landscape, urban and rural, as seen through the eyes of our artists.
Some of the paintings have not been seen for a while. Charles Blomfield's numerous paintings of the Pink and White Terraces are well known but his ability to render the contrast between darkness and light and his biblical pre-occupations are shown in Lot's Wife, a highly competent painting of the Waitomo caves which features a tall white stalagmite.
The rest of the show is a lively collection of paintings and photographs that includes two towering prints of clouds called Sunday by Jae Hoon Lee done as recently as 2005 as well as studies of state housing by Ava Seymour from 1997 called Valley of the Fruitcakes which are as offensive now as they were when they were first unveiled.
The exhibition is about as good as we can get with the main gallery currently closed.
Next door, the John Leech Gallery is offering paintings from all stages of McCahon's career. Towering over all is a preliminary painting for The Urewera Mural. It has an impact comparable to the final version although the colour and details are not as subtle.
There are reminders of how excellent a colourist McCahon was and how intense his small paintings could be.
Other exhibitions also arise from long artistic careers. At the Milford Galleries Works Unseen is a collection of paintings Robert Ellis has retained in his studio over a long career. They show the quality of his work at every stage from the cityscapes that made his name through to his synthesis of Maori and European attitudes to the land.
Few other artists could achieve this and include a fighter jet as part of the composition.
The Anna Bibby Gallery is showing an exhibition by Stanley Palmer, who in print and painting has long laboured to convey his vision of New Zealand landscapes. In this show he has taken his skills offshore to the Chatham Islands. His feeling for the interpenetration of land and sea is given full scope as well as his unique palette of soft colour that unifies his work and suggests the quality of the light in the islands.
A work like From Te Matarae Road, Shed and Lagoon shows the way he pulls the features of the land and human occupants into a satisfying composition. He also catches the wind in the trees and the way boats, essential to the Chathams, sit in the water in a work called Arrival and Departure. Such work, the fruit of a long career, continues to gain in subtlety.
These works by our own old masters have a stimulating rival in a big show by veteran Australian painter Dale Frank at the Gow Langsford Gallery. His paintings are large, energetic, dark and luscious. He makes them by laying a prepared canvas on the floor and pouring resin on it. He has close control over the coloured varnish he uses. He tips the canvas and lets the colour run in many directions and allows it to mix and swirl. The first colours are very thin and bleed into each other easily. Then on top he releases a thick tsunami that rolls across the canvas and is suddenly stopped in its tracks.
The results are beautiful combinations of intense colour with dark elements reaching across them. Sometimes this produces effects of great depth; other times there is a feeling of a monstrous threatening.
Most are eloquent works like Abcoulomb succumbing the pencilled thoughts which is a beguilingly lyrical painting with a typically Franksian mysterious title.
This week at the galleries
What: In Shifting Light.
Where and when: Auckland Art Gallery-New Gallery, to April 12.
TJ says: NZ light and landscape; great national treasures mingle with less familiar paintings and photographs from the gallery's collection.
What: Colin McCahon.
Where and when: John Leech Gallery, cnr Kitchener-Wellesley Sts, to November 7.
TJ says: Works from all stages of McCahon's career are reminders of his gifts as draughtsman and colourist.
What: Works Unseen, by Robert Ellis
Where and when: Milford Galleries, 26 Kitchener St, to November 1.
TJ says: Vivid, corner-turning paintings that Robert Ellis has retained in his studio over his long career.
What: Chathams, by Stanley Palmer.
Where and when: Anna Bibby Gallery, 226 Jervois Rd, to November 8
TJ says: Pleasant meditations on light, land and sea in our offshore islands.
What: Paintings, by Dale Frank
Where and when: Gow Langsford Gallery, 26 Lorne St, to Nov 7
TJ says: Big, spectacular abstractions where colourful resin varnish is allowed to mix and surge to energetic, mysterious effect.
* For gallery listings, see www.nzherald.co.nz
