TJ McNamara: Telling detail puts climate danger in focus

Lake Hume, Australia, by Michael Hall. Photo / Steven McNicholl

One of the great benefits of the Auckland Photography Festival is that it brings distant things close and close things even closer. One of the shows devoted to faraway places is the exhibition at Whitespace by Michael Hall called Climate.

The large prints are the result of an excellent eye and patient technique where long exposure means sharp detail. At the opening Hall spoke eloquently of the results he had observed of climate change yet only one of the images seems directly concerned with pollution. It is of a coal-fired power station in Victoria, Australia. The others speak more obliquely of danger. A ship aground off Newcastle is viewed across a road that has a "no-stopping" sign. The danger is implicit in the immovable ship, its cargo and its fuel.

Hall's travels have taken him as far as the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, shown as almost unbelievably dry and arid, as well as to Iceland where he has managed to capture the quality of the light as well as the icy-cold cloudiness of the water.

The detail is sometimes amazing. In the thousands of shots of the Hoover Dam how many have caught the patterns of the dark grids on the intake towers? For all this, the most moving photograph is a man alone in the desert with smoke in the background. This shot was taken in California. The man is a convict enlisted to fight scrub fires. He is a Navajo Indian displaced and utterly exhausted in the midst of devastation that is more punishing than prison.

The work of Edith Amituanai at Anna Miles Gallery comes as close as Kelston and Waitakere. Her work in photographing the life of Polynesian people has received wide recognition and in these works she shows young Polynesians caught in the transition between home and school. The images are not dramatic but these young people are caught in suburban places with fences everywhere to keep people in and keep people out. Through the gates there are often long vistas of roads, verges and power poles that lead to some undetermined goal.

Typical of the work is Isaac Before School where a little boy stands in the drive looking back towards the house, its garden bright with a camellia bush. Equally bright are his new shoes. Beyond him, the road leads from home. Older children, Liston and Massey, tread their way to their different schools so resolutely they hardly notice each other.

The exhibition is unpretentious yet very touching because the fences, iron rails, road and road signs, as well as the long shadows of the morning sun, make us acutely aware of the position of these young people.

Another exercise in awareness that the festival provides for us is a remarkable exhibition at Artstation. The show is called Dominion Road: The Shifting Urbanscape.

It is the work of four Chinese photographers and concentrates on that part of Dominion Rd just past the intersection with Balmoral Rd where there is a concentration of Chinese shops and restaurants.

It is not entirely devoted to things Chinese. The most striking work is a long scroll unwound along a table where King Tong Ho shows 12 shops, cafes and pubs, mostly photographed on the inside looking out. So we get a contrast between the Brazier Bookshop, the epitome of an old-fashioned second hand bookstore, with the Mykiwi Chinese Bookshop with its bright new titles.

The contrast between old and new is also apparent in Hewitt's Fiddle Shop, where racks of the baroque forms of violins contrast with a big statue of Elvis rock'n'rolling.

The other three photographers are less documentary. Linda Ai shows heavily pregnant women against the background of Dominion Rd by night. The overall impression is of quiet and future possibilities.

Ivan Liang makes kaleidoscopic patterns by manipulating his prints into dazzling images which repeat scenes of the shopfronts and Shunmei Deng reflects the traditional Chinese painting style by presenting his prints as long scrolls. Whether the subject is a KFC restaurant, a petrol station or a Chinese cafe, great emphasis is placed on the abstract quality of the image. His most successful image is the one looking directly up the brick wall of the church where powerlines contrast with the bricks and look like a direct line to God.

A singularly lovely show combines things from New Zealand, China, Korea, Japan, Australia and Plantarama. The New Zealand contributions are native tree bonsai expertly cultivated by John Lyall, an artist with a long career and many different forms of expression.

In his show at Jane Sanders Gallery he has made eight entrancing prints from photographs of the bonsai trees growing in their pots derived from different countries.

The photographs have initially been taken with the simplest of cameras.

Then the pictures have been transformed by a computer programme that appears to make the image and its background as if painted with thick, heavy brush strokes. The process captures the tracery of the trees, yet conveys the hard ceramic quality of the containers. The containers are matched with Taiwanese porcelain bird whistles.

The colours of the background are pale and delicate. It is hard to single out any image but one of the most delightful is Slant Puriri with Pelican.

The exhibition is shared with Paul Cullen, who plants a Swedish garden, the Pirongia Redoubt and some rough tarmac with curious interventions. A stool in the fortifications in the redoubt looks as odd as a drainpipe in a forest.

One show of painting shares with photography the vocabulary of "close up" and "enlargement". The exhibition of familiar flower paintings of Pamela Wolfe at Artis Gallery is called Fertile Grounds. Large, vividly coloured lilies, peonies, tulips, hydrangeas and roses are displayed well over life size against intense dark backgrounds.

The history of the rose as a symbol is long. Here other flowers are pushed toward being lavish symbols of fertility, particularly where they open to show stigma and stamens. The effect is emphasised by titles such as Inseminator and Receptor.

The composition arches across the darkness.

Perhaps the sensuous might have been intensified by contrasting the lushness of the flowers with thorns or predators emerging from the darkness.

At the galleries

What: Climate by Michael Hall

Where and when: Whitespace, 12 Crummer Rd, Ponsonby, to June 18

TJ says: Excellent photographs taken from Australia to Iceland directly or obliquely relating to climate change.

What: Home/School by Edith Amituanai

Where and when: Anna Miles Gallery, 4J, 47 High St, to June 28

TJ says: Unpretentious photographs of Polynesian students old and young make the transition between home and school.

What: Dominion Road: The Shifting Urbanscape.

Where and when: Artstation, 1 Ponsonby Rd, Newton, to June 18

TJ says: Four local Chinese photographers document cultural activities on Dominion Rd each in a highly individual way.

What: Forest and Bird by John Lyall; with drawings by Claudia Pond Eyley; Attempts by Paul Cullen

Where and when: Jane Sanders Art Agent, Level 1, Blacketts Building, cnr Queen-Shortland Sts, to June 25

TJ says: Lyall is an expert in bonsai and from the trees and their containers he makes singularly attractive images by enhancing photographs to take on some of the qualities of painting. Cullen thrusts unexpected objects into unusual situations to make intellectual puzzles.

What: Fertile Grounds by Pamela Wolfe

Where and when: Artis Gallery, 280 Parnell Rd, to June 25

TJ says: Wolfe arches her portrayals of huge and vivid flowers across a dark space and delicately emphasises their sensual qualities.John Lyall's Octopus Style Coprosma with Pelican.

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