Statesmen head list of double acts

Michael Smither's C#. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

This week exhibitions fall into pairs. One pairing is work by two esteemed elder statesmen of New Zealand art, Bill Culbert at the Sue Crockford Gallery and Michael Smither at Artis Gallery.

One is a Europe-based artist who frequently returns home, and the other has always been part of the scene here. Both have refined their art to a point where they deal in the essence of their artistic ideals.

Smither has abandoned the heightened realism that made his reputation and has concentrated on musical composition, as well as art. His show, Shared Harmonics, is colourful abstractions based on harmonic progressions. Sometimes these are not much more than elaborate diagrams. Others are much more lyrical and painterly. The painting simply called F develops from a basis of black through a series of bands of opulent colour with textured surfaces that give life.

Closest to the quality of music are the sharp-edged works where the colours float in space. Best is C#, where the colours are softly laid on and the under-painting shows through. Culbert works with fluorescent light. Flat Out goes back to his earliest exhibitions, where suitcases played a major part. In the past, the fluorescent tubes thrust right through the suitcases. Now the suitcases are flattened out and their spread-eagled bodies are crossed by a vivid fluorescent tube. The suitcases still convey a sense of history, time and experience. The experience of the past is illuminated by the vivid light of the present.

The same process applies to the large Flat Out, which is nine peeling window frames arranged in an abstract pattern, crossed by fluorescent tubes. This contrast works here but is less effective in Flat White Door which remains flat, white and nondescript. Fluorescent tubes play a big part in the work of Australian Grant Stevens at Starkwhite. Stevens is the very model of a major multi-media talent.

The exhibition, Fazed, has work in a variety of styles. The gallery is illuminated by blue fluorescent tubes that lend the walls an extraordinary stark-whiteness. A work shows the artist's dog behind a special glass that makes it look three-dimensional but is the complete embodiment of kitsch. Then there is a photograph of the biggest and most gross hamburger you ever saw, called Blow Out.

A video work is purely abstract patterns. There is a photograph of clasped hands and a cloud-shaped mirror. Finally, a video loop captures the eye and wrings the emotions. There is a text about a relationship breakup. The way the words emerge, disappear and arrange themselves in relation to each other conveys anguished thought jumping from point to point, accompanied by a play of bright lights and Chopinesque piano music if you listen through the headphones. The work is outwardly simple but heartbreakingly true. The pairing here is with another Australian, James Lynch, at Michel Lett just along the road. He combines painting with found objects. These ordinary chairs, one of them burnt beyond repair, are negligible except they contribute to the feeling of the show, which is about memories. It is called Always in Our Thoughts.

Each painting shows an interior stacked with paintings that are fragments of memory. Bye-Bye Howard has the former prime minister upside down, a figure holding a banner with 'Long Live the King' and another with a placard 'The King is Dead.'

Another work, Bloody Kennett, is all weeping paint and ruins and an obscure reference to an armoured St George. Riot is more fiery and Quakers more quiet but they all suggest that memory is a large lumber-room. The handling is dry except for delicate touches of reflections on polished floors.

This show pairs up with the colourful Waiting Rooms by Kate Small, at the Anna Miles Gallery. These images are of high-ceilinged rooms with walls that are fields of delicate colour, representing a variety of emotions. Figures sit surrounded by these emotions, sometimes solitary, sometimes in pairs. Some of the rooms have one door and others none. There is a way in but no way out. The effect is not melodramatic but soft and intense. The figures are awkwardly drawn but the awkwardness is part of the whole scenario. They don't communicate.
The effect is ambiguous. There is a pale intensity and a sense of waiting for a verdict. Irresistibly, they suggest Waiting for Godot even though their titles are as banal as Masterton Medical or Chapel Street Family Doctors.

The exhibition Acclimatising by Nic Moon at Whitespace is also ambiguous. She conveys enjoyment in the shape of old garden tools but revenges their cutting attacks on natural things by decorating them with rose thorns.

The best of these works use saws with elegant leaf patterns cut in them, in contrast to the rip and tear suggested by their teeth. The patterns are not decoration but confrontation.

The largest work is a bandsaw blade painted red and laser-cut with a leaf skeleton pattern. The outstanding work is a saw blade bent in a great arc, creating the arms of a shape made of flax fibre and rose prunings. The addition of the bones of predators makes this an extraordinary icon of the interplay of mechanical force, animals and the natural world.

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

AT THE GALLERIES

What: Flat Out, by Bill Culbert
Where and when: Sue Crockford Gallery, Endeans Bld, 2 Queen St, to September 5

TJ says: Vivid use of the blinding light of the present in contrast to old suitcases and windows redolent of the past.

What: Shared Harmonics, by Michael Smither
Where and when: Artis Gallery, 280 Parnell Rd, to September 6

TJ says: Inventive, colourful endeavours to match abstract colour to music.

What: Fazed, by Grant Stevens
Where and when: Starkwhite, 510 K Rd, to September 5

TJ says: This show winds its way through a variety of mediums and culminates in a heart-wrenching video loop.

What: Always in Our Thoughts, by James Lynch
Where and when: Michael Lett, 478 K Rd, to September 5

TJ says: Memories of past protests with the odd note about the shortness of life and a burnt chair to set the scene.

What: Waiting Rooms, by Kate Small
Where and when: Anna Miles Gallery, Canterbury Arcade, to August 29

TJ says: Pale fields of colour and isolated figures convey mixed emotions of waiting.

What: Acclimatising, by Nic Moon
Where and when: Whitespace, 12 Crummer Rd, to August 29

TJ says: Sharp edges and thorns contrast tools and nature, with the most telling contrasts shown by use of band saws.