Bowling along through life

Peter Stichbury makes a stylish transition from canvas to bowls. Picture / Greg Bowker

In contemporary art there is a great demand for novelty, for originality, for doing something different. And this week art in Auckland delivers in full measure.

Peter Stichbury, who has established himself with his smooth portrayals of stylish young people, the sophisticated but lost children of the urban world, has an exhibition of more of the same at Starkwhite until August 30, called Passport to Magonia.

What is new is the vehicle that carries the paintings. No longer is Stichbury using paint on canvas, he is doing his stylishly drawn and beautifully painted images on old lawn bowls.

They are ranked around the walls of the gallery in all their brown rotundity and from each bowl peers a smiling wide-eyed face.

Is this just a gimmick? The answer is no. The hard symmetry of the bowl accents the stylisations that have always informed Stichbury's style and given it an ironical edge. He never did do exact portraits. His faces were always types or emblems and the format emphasises their artificiality.

It works best when the faces fill the whole circle on the bowl, particularly when they are framed with hair on either side.

Most have a remarkable intensity and a haunting presence, despite toothy smiles and big, dopey eyes.

Painting on lawn bowls might be new but distortion for effect is a technique with a long history. In 1523 the Italian Mannerist painter Parmigianino displayed his virtuosity by painting a self-portrait on a convex surface. And then there was the extraordinary face on a basketball that kept Tom Hanks company when he was alone on an island. Stichbury's paintings fall somewhere between the two and are just as haunting. In a nearby room, old bowls, bags and the painter's equipment make an installation that is intriguing in its own right.

Downstairs at Starkwhite one wall is completely given over to an immense mural. This too is new. It is no traditional fresco on the plaster of the wall, but printed on paper that can be hung in drops and stuck seamlessly on the surface. Designed on a computer by Andy Alexander, a Los Angeles artist, it can be scaled to fit any wall.

Its message is simple - it's about doing less work and reading more - but visually it is complex. There are all sorts of effects: perspectives of a brick fireplace, panels that open to reveal strange mechanisms, precise elements and loose colour effects. It is a combination of Baroque design and robots.

The principal robot is an articulated machine that plucks jewels of wisdom from a store of books built against the wall. The same robot appears in a smaller, framed version also on show, although the message is different.

It is not the technology itself that is amazing but the complexity and scale of the visual excitement produced by inventive use of the technology. We are lucky to see such a confident example of what is possible with new artistic tools.

Around the corner, off Ponsonby Rd at Whitespace Gallery until August 18, is an exhibition by painter Nikki Forman. It is in her long-established manner of making a large painting from an assemblage of small ones. What is new is that she has broken away from her provincial subject matter, which was concentrated on Taranaki, and has gone out into the world - at least as far as the south of France.

There are still some lively examples of the Taranaki things, such as assemblages of images of fence-lines along ridges and little peaks where some religious farmer has erected a cross, along with signs and photographs of the past and general evocations of the farming region.

There are also paintings that are much more audacious - the result of a residence at Vallauris.

Perhaps the spirit of Picasso infused Forman. Where she might in the past have used a little loop of red to link a couple of small rectangles, now it is a glowing red circle that swoops through the whole painting with abundant assurance.

These paintings have fewer levels of suggestion and are not necessarily better than Forman's solid achievement in the past but they certainly have more energy.

At the McPherson Gallery until August 26, David McCracken has examples of the giant sculptures he makes in stainless steel. Tall fin shapes contrast natural edges with decisive cuts which make flat surfaces. The natural edges are torn and look subject to organic processes.

They suggest many things - leaves, clouds, the flukes of whales, or an eroded ridge.

Separate from this rank of sculptures are two quite different works whose balloon-like forms are fascinating because they could not be achieved by moulding, beating or assembling the metal.

They are created by a new technique where the sculptor uses enormous hydraulic pressure to create inflated shapes that, although of steel, are quite light. They look like tormented balloons.

The works are intriguing in their potential and a tribute to technological and imaginative invention.