Arts & Minds

London's luxe-retail bastion Harrods has turned part of its premises into the "largest art gallery in the world" for six weeks.

In keeping with the usual finesse displayed by Harrods owner, Mohammed Al Fayed, the exhibition has some big names and big price tags - and a painting by Rolf Harris.

A lithograph by American pop artist Keith Haring rings up a whopping £29,950 ($82,400), and there are also works by Warhol, Renoir and Picasso, among lesser fare by a Mr Govinder, a former commercial artist who paints cats, and Mackenzie Thorpe, who paints footballers. Incredibly, a £12,000 oil by Pissarro is cheaper than the Rolf Harris landscape, by £3000. But then the Guardian reports the fine print says, "H Claude Pissarro, also known professionally as Isaac Pomie, grandson of Camille Pissarro" - who is in fact the real deal.

The Chills: Central Otago painter Grahame Sydney is off to the bottom of the world to paint slightly less hospitable landscapes as part of the Antarctica New Zealand Invitational Arts Fellow Programme. Sydney says he has long been fascinated by the land and the explorers who struggled with its unforgiving environment. He sees the visit as "a chance to investigate what this final continent might offer me, besides being a challenging theatre for the heroic dramas I've loved for so many years." Sydney flies to the Antarctic in November, the start of the continent's brief "summer".

Recommended: Pump, Gary Freemantle, Window Work, New Gallery, Wellesley St: Against a blaze of colour Gary Freemantle sets up a modern altar - an iconic petrol pump with a television monitor that suggests power, religion, petrol and entertainment are connected. The pump, with nozzle in tin holster, makes a strong sculptural impact but whether it carries the whole weight of suggestion that wars once fought over religion are now fought over oil is debatable. Until Christmas.

Recent small paintings, Jeffrey Harris: Milford Galleries, 26 Kitchener St: Last time Jeffrey Harris showed crucifixion paintings they were very atmospheric. These are precise, with defined figures. The crucified figure, Christ, or the artist, or modern man, has a strange convention for the rib-cage but otherwise these paintings with the Cross against a darkling plain achieve this artist's usual intensity. One work in particular showing St John the Baptist accompanied not by a lamb but a black sheep is a remarkable flight of imagination. Until September 22.

Bluebeard's Castle, Nigel Buxton: Whitespace Gallery, Morgan St, Newmarket: Nigel Buxton's paintings are not only inspired by music, they use music as motif. Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle is an opera made up of seven tone poems, each conveying the revelation behind seven doors. The music is quoted in these paintings and its style is conveyed by colour. There are also two paintings based on Berg's Wozzeck where the drowning at the end of the opera is more effectively conveyed than anything in the series inspired by Bartok. Until September 19.

T.J. McNamara