TJ McNamara: Hazy space obscures its artists

Sam Mitchell paints the Freudian goings-on inside the heads of young women and boys. Photo / Supplied

There are two kinds of galleries around town: the dealer galleries in business and the public galleries, supported by subsidy. The principal public gallery is the splendid Auckland Art Gallery but its special importance lies in its collections. Also in the inner city is Artspace, which has changing exhibitions. As a public gallery, it performs the excellent function of being a forum for work that is interesting but would be unsaleable at a dealer gallery because of its avant-garde or experimental nature. Nevertheless, that does not absolve it from the duty of communicating with the public.

The new exhibition at Artspace, called Caraway Downs, says little. What the puzzled visitor may feel is a sense of self-indulgent curatorship and artistic endeavour. It could be a showcase for young new artists but no real attempt is made to communicate. Although a reception desk has been installed, it was unattended. The work consists of paintings, videos and installations. Five artists are involved and, on inquiry, it seems which artist is responsible for what is deliberately left hazy. There are no numbers, titles or catalogues.

The puzzles begin at the door. Is this pile of timber and a bit of rope something left over from the installation, or is it an artwork? Some narrow containers, like planter boxes, are filled with stones.

In one they are coloured black, in another white, in the third black and white. A pot plant on the floor rests on bits of tatty green carpet.

The anonymous paintings, each devoted to one little effect, are small and diffident. A video at floor level shows the feet of somebody sliding down a hill, then the interior of a warehouse, which becomes washed over by the sea. We are told by a text across the screen, "It just looks like a performance".

The long gallery is barred by string so you can't enter, and in the distance a painting is turned away so you can't see it. It can be supposed only that it is a work about stimulating curiosity.

In the third small gallery, the puzzled visitor has to duck under another crude barrier to watch another video on floor level, which repeatedly shows the head of a shifty looking man and the text, "Don't worry about it, it's all fine". What is all fine? Irony? The dealer galleries communicate more. They have to. The Gow Langsford Gallery is hosting a big show by prominent painter Karl Maughan. Everybody loves gardens and flowers, and Maughan delivers spectacularly and has done so for years. His paintings have a formula which makes them recognisable instantly. His gardens have masses of colourful shrubs painted in high-key colour. This is impressionism done with vivid modern paint and enormous assurance. Close up, the handling is fascinating.

Every flowering bush has a rhythmic, unerring touch. At a distance, in the best of these works great energy is conferred by the rhythms of growth patterns, notably in the almost startling energy of Waikino. Every painting is filled with bright light and the paths that wind among the bushes play their part by holding the shadows and catching the light. In an exceptionally large canvas called Arnold Circus, the light shines through a curtain of wisteria and illuminates a popping eruption of flowers on tall stems.

Ultimately, the display is much more than the gardens. It is a virtuoso tribute to the possibilities of paint. Would it be churlish to expect some new development of this popular formula?

The more modest space of the Melanie Roger Gallery houses the work of an award-winning artist about to spend time in New York as part of the Wallace Award. Sam Mitchell has gained her status by giving images to psychoanalysis. She paints the Freudian goings on inside the heads of a variety of young women and boys. The faces are stereotyped, notable for bright eyes and luscious lips. The images that buzz around in the minds revealed in the paintings range from fairy tale, through comic books and films, to the edge of pornography.

One wall is dominated by four big works painted on the back of sheets of Perspex in the manner that established the artist's reputation. Even the simplest of them, Discovery Retires, has pretty images of Hansel and Gretel beside daisies, Bambi, roses, Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, then a cinema Dracula and a nude clutching the punctures in her neck.

Elsewhere, the Statue of Liberty is also getting her neck punctured by a more modern vampire. The blue eyes of the young woman are studded with stars, though stuck in her neck is the image of her worried mother thinking of the potential boyfriends who will bed her "innocent" child.

These big paintings have real carrying power.

A new development for this artist is to use watercolour on found old photographs of women and boys. These have less presence. The painted images are as telling as ever, notably in the boy who dreams of muscles in Charles Atlas, and the playful corsets and flagellation in Hey Hey Witch Way, but the artist has not quite solved the problems of matching the image to the form.

Up the hill in Parnell, at Sanderson Contemporary Art, is another show with elements of virtuosity. In Liam Gerrard's New Work, the initial impact is the powerful draughtsmanship in charcoal on paper. His highly realistic technique enables him to convey exactly every hair and whisker on a menacing pride of lions and the sharpness of their fangs.

The same virtuoso technique is applied to Mrs Foley's Baby Boy, or a shrieking warrior or hyenas enjoying a dismembered kill. The charcoal is certainly handled with certainty and its surface treated with skill and an eye for a melodramatic image.

However, the works are limited to the extent that they come across as illustrations without a context; a melodrama without a plot.


At the galleries

What: Caraway Downs by various artists

Where and when: Artspace, 300 Karangahape Rd, to June 18

TJ says: A disappointing show that potentially could have been a lively range of work by young painters.

What: Idlewild by Karl Maughan

Where and when: Gow Langsford Gallery, 26 Lorne St, to June 4

TJ says: Crowded gardens of flowering bushes and the fall of light provide the subject for the usual vivid display of virtuoso brushwork by this popular artist.

What: Glean by Sam Mitchell

Where and when: Melanie Roger Gallery, 226 Jervois Rd, to June 11

TJ says: Images of what goes swirling around in the heads of young and old made transparent on Perspex and photographs.

What: New Work by Liam Gerrard

Where and when: Sanderson Contemporary Art, 251 Parnell Rd, to May 29

TJ says: Drawings in charcoal show nature and humans in extreme situations.

Check out your local galleries here.