Lonnie Hutchinson show at Gus Fisher Gallery. Photo / Sam Hartnett
Lonnie Hutchinson show at Gus Fisher Gallery. Photo / Sam Hartnett
There seems no end to the ways of making art and festival exhibitions continue to show a lively variety of artistic expression.
Scottish artist David Shrigley, at Two Rooms, is showing work he has made while artist in residence. He is notable for his drawings and has done sculpture but this show is of paintings. He has made 16 in 16 days. They are a spontaneous demonstration by an artist of great visual invention. The quickness provides an element of wit in thought and expression.
His bold, apparently effortless images are a demonstration of relationships at work. Among the several paintings titled It's OK is one with loose triangles of colour hanging from the top of the canvas opposing similar shapes springing up from the bottom edge. This happens in a field of pure yellow. The force here is opposition: a colour-coded image of defence and attack.
Untitled (Space) by David Shrigley
Another It's OK painting is a field of thickly textured black paint and that's okay if the mood is dark and minimalism is your thing. Another painting is lettered with GOOD giving the force of approval to yellow sky, a blue monolith, clouds in the sky and green grass.
There is a corresponding BAD for a painting of awkward forms. Ledges is four thick black lines supported only by the edge of the canvas. Space is created by colours straight from the tube crowding one behind the other with a white space at the centre.
Colourful, charming and confident, these appealing paintings appear simple to the point of naivete but they make light of a good deal of painterly intelligence.
Upstairs is equally filled with invention. It is always remarkable how the shape of the human head remains recognisable no matter how it is treated. The ever-inventive Julia Morison has 27 sculptural variations on the head in her show Headcase. The basic shape is no more than a wig block and none of the astonishing variations are comfortable. They have the surreal quality of nightmare. All are hard-headed in the sense that they are made of glazed stoneware or porcelain. One is connected by rubber tubing to a closed survival system. Another uses iron filings and is shaped like a rusty furnace. Others dribble wire or weep into little buckets. Mouths become a snout. Headcase 9 is an armoured head that snorts into a drainpipe. Headcase 20 has two pairs of eyes and separate spares. They are all ranked on a long shelf. Only those that vomit have a table to themselves.
They are a triumph of invention. Each has a distinct character but these personalities are hard to link with any human reality, although they do have a powerful individuality. But then so do people.
Heads also feature in an exhibition by three overseas artists at Hopkinson Mossman. One work is a colour film by Runa Islam, a Bengali film artist living in London who was shortlisted for the 2008 Turner Prize. The film is of a bronze Roman head of the young Emperor Augustus found in Meroe, a city on the Nile. It has retained the enamel eyes that such portraits have usually lost. The head is examined from every angle and even turned upside down. Sometimes two images of the head blur together and this raises questions about the differences of filmic looking and reality.
Australian artist David Noonan makes his images with silkscreen on linen. They show faces of an attractive woman against a background of Japanese textile patterns. Each one contains a diagonal fold to emphasis the sense of unfolding and revelation.
David Noonan screenprint at Hopkinson Mossman. Photo / Sam Hartnett
The third artist is Renee So, born in Hong Kong. Her bright clear pictures are knitted in wool but her ceramics are dark and solid. The ceramics, which contain faces, are called Bellamines after the medieval wine jars that featured satyr-like features of the bibulous Cardinal Bellamine. The faces are almost obscured by bunches of grapes.
In Lonnie Hutchinson's work at Gus Fisher she cuts patterns and figures drawn from her Maori and Samoan background in black builders' paper in such a way that the cut images are repeated but the integrity of the sheet of paper is maintained.
One impressive example runs the full length of the main gallery. It alternates patterns of foliage with figures while a cut-out portion of the work hangs down like feet. The impressive centre work of three tall panels at the end of the gallery combines a figure with the sense of a tree with deep roots.
In the small gallery a video display laments the exploitation of Polynesian women enslaved by men on pearl-fishing boats. A naked woman's agonies are accompanied by a sound track of groans and the creak of cordage.
At the galleries
What:
Oil paintings by David Shrigley; Headcase by Julia Morison
The oil paintings by Shrigley, the visiting Scottish artist in residence, are spontaneous, inventive and witty; the two dozen or more heads by Julia Morison show astonishing invention within a fixed shape.
What: Busts by Runa Islam, David Noonan and Renee So Where and when: Hopkinson Mossman, 15 Putiki St, Newton, to April 4 TJ says: Three London-based artists contribute work in film, silkscreen, ceramic and knitting wool, all in some way featuring faces.
What: BlackBird: A Survey 1997-2013 by Lonnie Hutchison Where and when: Gus Fisher Gallery, 74 Shortland St, to May 2 TJ says: A welcome survey of the work of an artist who combines Maori and Samoan themes with use of drawn material on video and her characteristic striking patterns cut in strong black building paper.
