Alchemist makes magic with mops at Gus Fisher Gallery

Metamorphosis, when the caterpillar turns into a butterfly, is a magic thing. It is also part of the magic of art, which takes ordinary things and transforms their substance into something rich and strange. The Gus Fisher Gallery in Shortland St is showing two exhibitions that offer this magic in full measure until July 8.

Previously in her distinguished career, Julia Morrison has used alchemy as a metaphor and transformed such extremes as gold and dog manure into the substance of art. As a teacher at the Ilam School of Art she created a rather simpler, more witty demonstration for the benefit of her students and called the result Teaching Aids. We are now lucky enough to see her transformations in Auckland.

What has been transmuted? What simple things from the ordinary world have been made into art? One word: mops. The material in this exhibition is, for the most part, floor mops, although there are some dishmops and bottlebrushes as well. They are made into wonderful flowers, permanent, not transient, blooms.

The main series of works are objects such as sunflowers set on tall stems of pipe. In remarkably inventive ways the cotton head of the mop has been coloured, treated, curled and teased out to make the head of a huge flower.

The variety is impressive. One has an open face and tight curls at its centre. It is an immense flower welcoming the sun. Another is turned right in on itself and hangs as a large, drooping head. Another lifts its head as a tight bud full of potential. Another is an image of energy, a tangle of twisting, intricate growth. All 10 have a potent visual impact even though the colours are restrained to natural russet and brown.

Each piece is accompanied by a neat, formal plaque which puts an extra spin on the nature of the show. As John Hurrell pointed out when these works were at Waikato University, the works comment on the texts rather than the other way round. The comment is ironical. These works have size and force, yet the texts insist that flower painting is suitable for women because it is delicate and appropriate to "feminine" sensibility.

The plaques are elegantly made and lettered in a way typical of this show, where imagination and thought are parallelled by careful craft in the making. This extends to the relief sculptures that complete the installation. They include a cabinet with Appropriate Brushes for Black Monochrome Painting, which plays games with the heads of black-handled artists' brushes and, better still, a cabinet where dishmops are transformed into small flowers.

The exhibition in the foyer deals with new frontiers rather than old attitudes. Hye Rim Lee uses computer imagery to create and present work which comments on the manipulation of modern ideas of beauty in women. It is brilliant, elegant and tough.

The foyer is dominated by a circular projection of a huge head. This is the artist's doll-like creation, Toki, which is Korean for bunny.

There is an oblique debt to Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. The figure has enormous almond eyes equipped with long lashes that close with a crash. The chin is sharp and the mouth is thin. The head turns this way and that and gradually morphs from looking Asiatic to looking more red-lipped and European.

Many things are referenced during this riveting process - the obsession with conventional ideas of beauty, beauty as a commodity that can be purchased, technology and the male-dominated field of cosmetic surgery. The overall impact is stunning.

The other works in the show concentrate on the details of alteration and metamorphosis. In the side gallery there is an installation of small, round screens, mirror size. The room is bright pink like a powder room. Each screen shows a detail, nose or mouth seen as a structural grid or a system of dots as reference points or a grid structure. Gradually these are clothed in flesh.

This process of change and shaping is dealt with even more tellingly in two screens tucked away in an alcove in the foyer. One deals with the breast and the other with the opening to the vagina.

The breast changes from a computer-generated grid structure with almost imperceptible nipples to a full breast where aureole stands proud and the nipple is very full. This image rolls until the structure stands like a tower and then is clothed with flesh as it faces forward again.

This is an astonishing exhibition by a young artist who has not long graduated. It is a hugely inventive use of computer-generated images. It shows original insight that concepts of beauty can be terrifying on the matter of cosmetic surgery. It makes powerful visual comment on fantasy, desire and sensuality. The show is called Lash and through it all it certainly scourges the cliches that reduce women to stereotypes.

More metamorphosis is at the Studio of Contemporary Art. The young artist Andrea Hopkins takes everyday identities and makes them tightly organised symbols of duality and strength by using Maori motif against delicately brushed landscape. In her work a soaring kite becomes a spirit in flight.

Her art has been chosen for an exhibition at the New Zealand High Commission in London. This Auckland exhibition runs until June 3.