KEY POINTS:
New Zealand art does unease very well. The photographs by Yvonne Todd at Ivan Anthony make the point again. They deal in sparkling glamour, yet the lovely young women that appear in them seem predatory but also bruised and wary. Most photographs look documentary; these have a large presence but they also have layers of suggestion rather than just recording appearance.
The largest, Klerma, shows a model wearing a stunning costume from the 1970s. Worn by the dancer Mitzi Gaynor in one of her television specials, it is a confection of nude leotard, white sequins, huge ostrich feathers and topaz rhinestones.
The young woman wearing it is beautiful but her slightly prominent teeth, her long orange fingernails, the Photoshopped false sparkle in her eyes, which have a hint of red, make her more vampirish than any obviously Gothic make-up could. All these details are subtly conferred on her by the artist to convey her point of view about the world, women and glamour.
The exhibition, Dawn of Gland, includes Self-portrait as Christina Onassis. Its smudged eye-shadow and contrasting diamond necklace suggests that immense wealth can be a burden.
Valley of Candle shows two young women wearing the same superb dress but there is no communication between them. One is staring straight past the other, whose back is revealed by the gown in a way that makes her look utterly vulnerable. The show is completed by an image of a lace-up high boot that is the essence of kitsch.
The remarkable photographs are more than technically brilliant; they reveal a philosophy that understands the uneasy contradictions of life.
Also on K Rd at Michael Lett is further cause for unease, not only because the images are odd but because the purpose of the work is hard to fathom. Steve Carr's piece, A Shot in the Dark, consists of an artificial moulded bearskin which lies flat on the floor with its plastic jawbone on display.
The second part is a large photo of the torso of a man, hairy from neck to navel. His pelt has a parting running right down the centre. There is a similar plait of hair on the back of the bear. No other connection is apparent.
Such installations usually leave plenty of room for the imagination to work but this is so beyond any interpretation that it sparks little response at all, except unease about where Trash Art is going.
Perhaps K Rd should be called Uneasy Street. One room at Artspace projects text about the aims of its current exhibition. It says Thai Rirkrit Tiravanija will create, in association with the staff, "a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organisation of a unitary ambience and a game of events".
This means the gallery will provide space for a programme that includes reading, eating and drinking, music and a presentation on the plight of endemic New Zealand frogs and a lot of other things perhaps loosely linked to the art.
The ultimate aim is to make a magazine out of the events. It will be purely visual without text and will stand alongside similar records of activities in Tokyo, Oslo and Berlin. This is a mild festival turned into a work of art. The publicity says the artist has "transformed the notion of conceptual art". On the evidence it's a questionable judgment. Artspace receives major funding from Creative New Zealand. Only a publicly funded gallery could stage such an exhibition.
Come Closer, by Frances van Dammen at Oedipus Rex, is not so much uneasy as visually ambiguous. Her images have the appearance, detail and shiny surface of photographs but close inspection shows they are paintings. It also shows the wizardry of their making. Deft, rhythmic touches of paint create patterns of grasses and the kind of plants that have a circular growth. These densely crowded images are seen from directly above. The viewpoint and the tight, almost unnatural rhythms insist that the images are a construct rather than a representation of a particular place.
Each has its own pattern. The rhythms of Tall Fescue have a different energy to Paspalum or the even spread of Clover Field. The best of the work captures hidden drama in this miniature world of grasses.
The show is a revelation of the intense life of plants and of the secret energies of paint.
The landscape photographs in the work of Hannah and Aaron Beehre at Vavasour Godkin Gallery have two things that lift them from chocolate-box images of wooded parks.
The first is that the dye process used for the static prints gives them intense, startling colour. The more expressive feature is that some of them are interactive. When visitors approach them a dance of fireflies begins in their darkness. Approach too close and the lights are seen to flee. This could easily be just a gimmick if it were not for the way the images are darkly mysterious in themselves. This is particularly notable in two works that feature an immense oak.
THIS WEEK AT THE GALLERIES
What: Dawn of Gland, by Yvonne Todd.
Where and when: Ivan Anthony, 312 K Rd, to Sep 6.
TJ says: Striking photographs where superficial glamour hides deep malaise.
What: A Shot in the Dark, by Steve Carr.
Where and when: Michael Lett, 478 K Rd, to Sep 6.
TJ says: A two-piece show, grotesque but indecipherable.
What: magazine station no.5, by Rirkrit Tiravanija.
Where and when: Artspace, 300 K Rd, to Sep 6.
TJ says: A festival of events, one of several throughout the world, designed to have a magazine as an outcome.
What: Come Closer, by Frances van Dammen.
Where and when: Oedipus Rex, Khartoum Place, to Aug 30.
TJ says: Paintings, detailed and shiny as a photograph but made to show the rhythmic, energetic life of plants.
What: Interactive art work, by Hannah and Aaron Beehre.
Where and when: Vavasour Godkin Gallery, 35 High St, to Sep 6.
TJ says: Photographs that would be convention if it were not for the vivid colour of some and others that begin a dance of lights as visitors approach them.
