Imogen Taylor's abstract painting, Pillow Biter, is trapezoid in shape. Photo / Sam Hartnett
Imogen Taylor's abstract painting, Pillow Biter, is trapezoid in shape. Photo / Sam Hartnett
Once again Artspace is making generous use of space when presenting an artist.
Imogen Taylor, who has rapidly gained prominence as an artist, has been given the large main room for her paintings. They hang from the ceiling around a sloping platform arena that could hold a hundred or more people but in the meantime draws attention to a zine, written and illustrated by Taylor, placed judiciously in the centre.
The effect pushes the work beyond an exhibition into an installation. The break with earlier shows is the trapezoid shape of the paintings. This makes them tensely edgy and adds to the clamour for attention. In one painting, a knotted rope penetrates the canvas and hangs down limply.
The works are powerful, direct, abstract painting done forcefully with decisions made and carried through, apparently without hesitation. They are inventive decisions. Each swoop, line, circle or angle leads to another and contributes to the constant surprises of shape and colour. Nothing is precious but everything is firm and often has depth in a sculptural way. One shape drives into another, sometimes with hints of figures in the forms.
Taylor's practice shares some elements of style with cubism from the early 20th century, notably the geometry of the art movement known as Orphism, though her colours are more severe and less adaptable to fashion and design. Some of the forms are shaded. None are loosely expressionist although they are often in movement.
In Bumping Ugly, which has areas where coarser canvas is collaged on to the surface, the thrust of the work extending from a yellow circle is upward and outward. In the larger Pillow Biter, with similar collage elements, the movement presses downwards toward a breast-like form near the bottom edge of the work.
The most ambitious is an exceptionally large painting, Beast with Two Backs. This work is full of thrust and weight. The collage is at the bottom of the work. Above it circles pile up, yet there is more space and more green than in the other paintings.
Although each painting has an individual flavour, they all have the feeling of being improvised as they move from one form to another. Yet the improvisation produces work that really holds together and moves from part to part with energy and skill.
Added to the painting is a wall of spontaneous drawings that are a quick response to ideas done with whatever materials and media came to hand. They complete the picture of a young and thriving painter with huge potential.
Closed by Michael Parekowhai is made of aluminium with flashing LED light bulbs and neon.
The career of Michael Parekowhai is well-established, mostly by his large, sometimes colourful, though often enigmatic sculptures.
His work at Michael Lett contains one monumental piece. A huge sign dominates the large room. It is made of aluminium with flashing LED light bulbs and neon. In big letters, each with its own colour combination, it flashes the word CLOSED. Sometimes this is compressed to LOSE.
The sign, lit up and visible from the street at all hours, is mounted on a floor to ceiling scaffold with only the narrowest entry into the gallery hidden at one end. This gives access to the rest of the room that is lined with wall statues of an anonymous, diffident, bowler-hatted man in a coat with an umbrella and a satchel. They are multicoloured and are alternately facing the wall or looking out. Almost hidden around a corner is a television showing a French black and white film of a stylish group of men and women ritually massacring rabbits and grouse.
Does the "Closed" refer to closed minds, closed season or closed government? The simple word evokes so many restrictions.
The sense of restriction is emphasised in another remarkable installation upstairs. Parekowhai's practice has often consisted of monstrously large versions of childhood toys and teaching aids. The toy game, Pick Up Sticks, plays a part in this show. The door to the upstairs gallery, guarded by a bristling array of huge, colourful spiky sticks, denies access.
Just visible inside the gallery are a number of school chairs, each with an oak back and polished brass legs. All are aggressively thrust through by sticks. One separate stick launches itself through the window.
The past, school or life, had its problems and, although they are closed off, they remain prickly. Each chair is like a thrust through the heart. The show makes extraordinary use of inanimate objects in a uniquely strange way as elaborate metaphor standing for all that the mind is closed against.
At the galleries
What: Body Language by Imogen Taylor Where and when: Artspace, 300 Karangahape Rd, to December 10 TJ says: An impressive exhibition of abstract paintings presented in a manner matching the sense of purpose of this forthright young artist.
What: Rules of the Game by Michael Parekowhai Where and when: Michael Lett Gallery, 312 Karangahape Rd, to December 19 TJ says: With a gigantic sign in lights, an army of small figures and enlarged spikes of childhood Pick Up Sticks, Parekowhai makes metaphors for all that is closed in society and the shutting away of harmful memories.
