Vast works offer remarkable insights

Hapu Contraction, part of an exhibition by James Robinson at the Bath Street Gallery in Parnell. Photo / Supplied

Western art likes things big, whether Michelangelo's figures on the Sistine Ceiling, or Antony Gormley's modern Angel of the North that guides the way to Newcastle. This week, our review includes three exceptionally big paintings. At last weekend's splendid Art Fair at the Viaduct Events Centre, big paintings caught plenty of attention. In his opening speech, Mayor John Banks mentioned a painting by Bill Hammond which was an exceptionally large example of one of his extraordinary landscapes with birds.

The other painting that attracted a lot of attention was a three-times life-size female nude by Liz Maw called Venus from Hell, a portrait of Nicky Watson. Now it is back in Maw's exhibition at Ivan Anthony Gallery.

There is a link between this painting and Michelangelo. The proportions of the head to the body are about 10:1 (normal proportions are about 8:1), roughly the same as the great prophets and sibyls on the famous ceiling. Like Michelangelo, the figure does not express reality but monumental idealisation. The painting itself is iconic. As is customary with Maw, it has a massive frame and stands on a big plinth. The figure stands out from a dark background as polished as a waxwork. For all the extravagant display of a large, global bosom, the face seems slightly melancholy and the figure itself is partly concealed by long hair, just like traditional Mary Magdalenes, so as to seem more deity than natural. The stylisation is emphasised by the apparent lack of nipples.

For all its polish and artificiality it is an extraordinary image: imposing, fascinating in the rhythms of the hair, a modern-day Venus that challenges and demolishes memories of Botticelli's goddess floating to the shore.

The areas of vivid blue are startling. Although they are found in areas of shadow, under the left breast, between the hands and between the legs, they seem to have an obscure symbolic function of sad areas of emphasis. The whole image has that brittle strangeness, tinged with wit, that only Maw can command.

In the exhibition, a tiny, exquisite self-portrait is the surprise. It is notable for its vivid luminosity and the way the painter uses tiny bright dots to express light. The most important of the dots are in her eyes.

The rest of the work is more experimental but just as strange. One painting uses a stylised cathedral as a refuge for heads of ambiguous sexuality. Another is a witty boatload of five Viking women, spiky helmets and all. The vessel has painstakingly painted lace for a sail and a penis for a mast, Grunewald's Christ pinned to the yardarm and bosoms as shields strung along the side. The image incorporates little feats of virtuosity like the convincing paintings of tiny bubbles that dribble from the Viking head of the boat. There is another Viking, compact as a chess piece, that supports a lampshade, tassles and all.

At the John Leech Gallery, there is just one striking countenance: eight portraits of the painter Ralph Hotere by Martin Ball, another virtuoso draughtsman. The end wall is dominated by a big version of Hotere's face, many times life-size. It gives a remarkable insight into the subject's character with all its strength and dignity. The features are painted with great care. Ball seems to have caught every whisker in the grey moustache and every hair in the beetling eyebrows which were characteristic of Hotere.

In the gigantic portrait, as in the seven smaller ones, the face fills the frame. The show as a whole is an exercise in expression. In each close-up there is a slightly different tilt of the head, but most tellingly, it is the direction of the glance that sets the mood of each portrayal. The eyes look directly, they look sideways quizzically, they question, they penetrate, yet this is no idealisation.

Beneath those eyes are the heavy bags of wrinkled age. The general effect is stern but there is an attractive, slightly quizzical expression in the mouth as well as the lift of eyebrows in Carey's Bay VI. Many years ago, Ball established his reputation with tiny pencil drawings of bikers and rockers. There is a reminiscence of this in an excellent profile portrait done in pencil on paper. In this work, as elsewhere, substantial size conveys authority.

Across town, the Bath Street Gallery is home to an exhibition of wildly expressionist painting by James Robinson. The principle quality of Robinson's work is attack. He makes a charge at the canvas with every means available, splashing, dripping, piling the paint on thick, using the lids of paint cans, a button, or a soldering iron to give shape to some of the forms. The effect is of wild, anarchic passion. In a group of six paintings, each one is a cracked, lunar landscape which the eye can explore and find incident after incident. Sometimes one incident rises out of the landscape like the dark opening in Bad Mother, or the big splashes of paint with their long trails that are a feature of She's Making Ghosts. Every work makes a virtue of rush and spontaneity.

The most impressive of all is a big painting called Hapu Contraction. It comprises five hangings, unframed and with irregular edges, with many of Robinson's customary big seams stitched with nails. Bits and pieces of the hangings are yoked violently together. What makes this the most important part of the show is that Robinson has arrived at a scrubbed, irregular but very effective washed-out palate. This colour and the associated painting Nothing's Gunna Happen are outstanding works in a show that could easily fall to pieces because of the sheer vehemence of the approach.

At the galleries

What: Venus from Hell, Escape into Night and the Future of Her, by Liz Maw
Where and when: Ivan Anthony Gallery, 312 Karangahape Rd, to May 20
TJ says: Liz Maw continues her inimitable, ultra-precise painting on a grand scale with Venus, a tiny self-portrait and several strange visions of intermediate size.

What: Carey's Bay 2000, by Martin Ball
Where and when: John Leech Gallery, cnr Kitchener and Wellesley St, to May 22
TJ says: Eight portraits that examine the craggy landscape that is the face of Ralph Hotere and make variations on this theme with great skill.

What: Hapu Contraction, by James Robinson
Where and when: Bath Street Gallery, 43 Bath St, to May 26
TJ says: Award-winning painter James Robinson continues his wild way with his thick paintings, assemblages and collages which leave his hectic surfaces with much to explore.