A particular life, a universal view

By T.J. McNAMARA

All art is born from the artist's experience and knowledge but some exhibitions draw more directly from the artist's life than others. With art as autobiography the trick is to make the images not only reflect the artist's life but also strike a chord with the viewers.

This week two Auckland shows are autobiographical. In one the images are solemn and intent; in the other the details are strident and sometimes obscene.

Viky Garden's work at the Judith Anderson Gallery (until February 23) is not a narrative but a series of autobiographical feelings. In her paintings she uses a tall, female figure who is obviously the artist herself but also stands as an emblem or metaphor.

From painting to painting the figure passes through a range of attitudes and emotions. It is questioning, commanding, asserting, accepting, saddened and, in one grim picture, made grey with despair.

The attitudes of the figure are reinforced by a repertoire of images, particularly a series of tall structures that turn a blank face to the world except where they are pierced by a dark window. The mood is reinforced by wind-driven clouds in the background and by islands cut off by the innocence of the sea.

Frequently in the background there is a tall stone plinth which inescapably locates the scene in Auckland and gives an upright, Apollonian, penetrating contrast to the foreground where the figures stand in the light.

There is no exact meaning for the other objects that accompany the women. They obviously have an allegorical purpose in this theatre of life but it is a virtue of the painting that every viewer will be able to link them with their own feelings and meanings.

In The Tub, the plinth stands on a distant hill. Nearer the foreground there is a chair, which works as a symbol of domesticity. Since the beginning of her career, Garden has been able to paint a chair and endow it with a significance beyond the commonplace. In this painting, too, significance is added by a big, empty tub and further intensity is given the work by the huge cat the woman holds. Its springy tail and muscularity convey instinctive action and energy.

We are tempted to ask, will the cat be confined in the tub, washed in the tub, drowned in the tub? Nevertheless, this is not a narrative work but a work that conveys a sense of assertion and precarious control.

Another strong work is a tall nude Venus. The pose is the attitude of the Venus Pudica - the Venus of Modesty, with the hands over the breasts and groin as in the reconstructed figures of antiquity. But this is modern woman and we are confronted with a triumphant, if bony, reality while paper dolls wind between her legs.

In contrast there is Mercy, where the woman kneels, her face made grey with grief, her bust thin, her feet clad in clumsy, peasant shoes and, above her, driven clouds. September 11 comes to mind and subsequent war.

This is not the single most powerful work in the show. It is a calmer, more tender work called Shelter, where there are three trees which, like the crosses on Calvary, cast long shadows. The woman in this painting has a complex expression of acceptance and holds a tiny, leafless sapling which might be bare but hints at possibilities of growth.

With every exhibition Garden's idiosyncratic, demanding work grows in complexity. These deeply meditated paintings are at once splendidly executed and have a haunting, humanist depth.

By contrast the work of Richard Lewer at the Oedipus Rex Gallery (to February 23) shows a lot of remembering and much loud shouting. It is the work of instant response and sharp memory rather than meditation.

In the main gallery is an installation made entirely of slogans energetically graffitied on big lumps of peg-board. The slogans shout about life and art and sexual relationships.

Many voices come through: the voice of the mother, "Have you got your jersey on? How many times do I have to tell you?"; the little voice of someone kneeling in the confessional, "It's been six years since my last confession." There is the voice of the raw mockery of the playground, "Ya mother dresses ya funny", as well as many comments on art and women.

These voices from the past, lettered in lurid colour or stark black and white, are linked to a series of images in the smaller gallery that show the artist's family. They are appallingly frank and stern: the mother, a nice enough woman, but painted in lurid red, the father stiff in suit, shirt and tie but also seen consuming fish and chips on the coffee table, the sister and brother and the collective family portrait.

That much of this is linked to the artist's childhood is emphasised by the most interesting image of all, a class photograph taken in 1980 at Glenview Primary School.

The sign in front of the class is like the slogans on the wall. The back of the classroom has posters on the wall which are the ancestors of the things in this raucous installation.

Raucous it is and with elements of truth but it is an ephemeral baring of the soul, great fun but really a literary exercise. The art is in the small gallery where the peg-board contributes to the universal feeling of surviving the shot and shell of life.