Art: Empty boxes full of things

By T.J. McNAMARA art critic

"A Pickhaxe and a Spade, a Spade for such a Guest is meete," sings the gravedigger in Shakespeare's Hamlet.

In a strange modern reversal of the situation, Paul Johnson, in his installation called Inventory at Lopdell House in Titirangi, makes a space not for a "pickhaxe" as a guest but certainly for a spade. And like the gravedigger's song, it smacks of mortality.

Paradoxically, this feeling of the mortality of things that have passed is done in an environment of the utmost precision. The sculptures that make up this installation are boxes made from corrugated cardboard, geometrical, sharp-edged and exact.

Within each box are grids of cardboard, all equally geometric and precise. The grids have recesses cut in them that suggest places where objects may once have lain. The things are defined by their absence.

One of the spaces clearly defines a spade which must have been laid in one of the long boxes.

There are eight boxes in all and apart from the spade shape it is hard to decipher what the others might have held. The two biggest boxes contain rectangular divisions and only on close scrutiny can it be seen that one is a system of curved arches and the other a group of pointed arches.

The whole show speaks of loss, things used and forgotten, the importance of a site and the dialogue between absence and presence. Most viewers will also feel there is a comment on modern packaging.

The exhibition is carried through with consistent thoroughness. It does not have wide aims but it hits a narrow target with a precision that will give viewers considerable rewards if they allow themselves to surrender to the suggestions it offers.

It is accompanied by an eloquent catalogue that claims rather too much for the show when it suggests that it evokes genuine horror. Stimulating thought and visual interest is enough.

The other show at Lopdell House, in the large gallery, is similarly full of work that makes its effect by suggestion rather than statement. This is a splendid show of photography by Hamish Macdonald called Saudade.

Photographs are usually by their nature absolutely specific. These images work through their soft-grained quality, with an ambiguity which leaves a great deal open to the imagination of the viewer.

The title is derived from a Portuguese word that translates as "soulful" and suggests evocative things from the past that stir emotions and memories.

Certainly these images are richly atmospheric and convey a number of emotional moods mostly connected with the sea and the loom of clouds and islands. In some ways the images appear old-fashioned, similar to the sepia art photography of the 1890s.

Yet the big pictures in this show including the sepia sea and landscapes are inkjet prints made with the most up-to-date technology. One of the most powerful of these images is called simply Blue.

From any distance it looks like an inundation, a flooded landscape with trees emerging from the waters. On closer scrutiny the trees can be seen as the young shoots of mangrove. The inkjet process conveys the pale delicate colour of the picture by a system of dots that brings it something of the richness of pointillist painting.

The process also adds sparkle to water that curves into foam in Awash, in what might be a huge ocean swell or a small wave breaking. It is certainly full of impressive movement.

Alongside the inkjet prints are a series of more conventional photographic prints which often continue the visual themes of the big pictures. The meadowsweet contrasted with a powerpole on a distant hill in Slovenly is seen again in the big print of Slovenly 3, with its emphasis on untidy hedge and unkempt field.

Among these middle-sized prints there is one astonishing image titled The Sun Directly Overhead.

This image contains ideas of good and evil and a presiding deity of nature. In the immediate foreground are rich ears of wheat. Across a space are the harsh silhouettes of thistles. Between them is a stone which has the shape of a crouching beast. The surface of the stone is dappled with the sun filtered through the branches of an overarching tree. It is remarkable both as a whole and in detail.

The addition of a lively show of the work of the Waitakere Pacifica Living Art Group of weavers is the third good reason for taking the journey to Titirangi. Included is a fine mat in the Cook Islands style that is in the form of concentric circles. That almost in itself makes the trip worthwhile.