Clarity of memories

By T.J. McNAMARA

Do you remember a cake stand: a base, a stem and a round flat top to support a sponge filled with cream and dusted with icing sugar? Do you remember thick glass sugar-bowls with a short stem and handles both sides?

Do you remember glass eye-baths kept in the bathroom cupboard?

Do you remember the elaborate glass tubes and flasks that adorned science labs but never seemed to be used for actual experiments? And also never used - the tall, showy wine glasses that graced many a china cabinet in the days before anybody here drank wine?

Do you remember glass milk-bottles with a cardboard top and a hole to push a straw through? And jelly moulds and lemon squeezers all made of glass.

And did your grandmother read with a magnifying glass? Did your parents tell you of a time when lemonade was sold in glass bottles sealed with a glass marble?

All this and much, much more are memories triggered by the installation, called Off Site, by Carole Shepheard at te tuhi - the mark in Pakuranga until August 11.

Here she has assembled a huge number of objects in clear glass and green glass and mounted them on scaffolding that reaches to the ceiling.

There is no attempt to beautify the objects. The effect is not of a museum or a gallery but of a warehouse - a warehouse stacked with a multitude of memories.

The domestic pieces are only a beginning. Dusty bottles are placed near the floor. They suggest the passing of time. Bottles that might have contained dangerous substances are high up out of reach.

There is ancient history in the phials that copy Roman glass made for holding perfumes or Nero's tears. Science is evoked - not only by the elaborate equipment of the chemistry lab but also biology with Petri dishes and specimens carefully covered with glass.

This vast work is consistent with Shepheard's whole career. As well as painting and printmaking, Shepheard has made collections as part of her art endeavours. It is also consistent with feminist theory that deprecates the dominance of oil painting as "men's work" and emphasises women's talent for preserving, assembling, treasuring and keeping traditions alive.

Can such a collection - where there is no skill in the making, only in the selection and display - be a work of art? The answer is yes, not only because of the selection of the work and its organisation but because it begins with autobiographical pieces special to the artist and extends from her experience to say something about the ubiquitous nature of glass, which relates to the experience of a wide audience. A work of art should evoke both an emotional and intellectual response and there is certainly a good deal here that is evocative in many ways.

In the smaller gallery adjacent to this immense collection there is an effort made to deepen the intellectual water.

There is a glasshouse frame with glass in it and stacks of window glass nearby. It suggests the choices we make when we clothe buildings in glass. By extension this suggests modern architecture in cities such as Berlin, where the latest buildings are glass from the street to the sky.

But the big gallery is where the exhibition really captures the heart and mind. It might be considered more social archaeology than art but in sum it is wonderful.

Coincidentally, at the McPherson Gallery until Saturday, there is another collection: of old die-cast Dinky toys that have become "collectables". This collection is not of actual objects but of paintings which use the objects as subjects for still-life.

Peter Miller has painted these clumsy toys that date back to the middle of last century with the same meticulous technique he has used in the past to paint still-life of ceramics: cups, bowls and vases.

His approach has both simplicity and directness. He isolates the subjects in fields of rich colour. The toys are caught in a bright light and cast a dark shadow. The colour field relates to the colour of the chipped enamel they are decorated with.

The decay of these toys, their age and state, is exactly captured down to the way the wheels do not track because the wire axles are bent. One bus has no wheels at all.

These old toys are really a variation of the "Vanitas" still-life. Like the skulls and guttering candles of Dutch still-life they indicate the passing of time.

A question still remains. Would a collection of toys themselves have the same effect as the painted version? In this case certainly not, because an element of admirable skill is involved and because here, as elsewhere in life, and in the exhibition at Pakuranga, size matters. Because they are isolated, enlarged and abstracted in these entertaining paintings, the toys are glorified and take on significance they would not have in reality.

The show is smaller and slighter than the Shepheard exhibition but by travelling the opposite road it arrives at much the same destination.