Dynamic variations of simple patterns

By T.J. McNAMARA

In the 20th century art and design were often close. Abstract art fed almost directly into architecture and design. The influence of Mondrian is apparent everywhere in buildings and furniture.

Simon Ingram, whose work is at the Vavasour/Godkin Gallery until May 10, is an abstract painter who works with just two colours: yellow and red. Ingram manages to tweak his art away from simple pattern and design by variations where we expect repeats, and by playing games with apparent space on the flat canvas.

The rectangles of red which pattern the yellow background are sometimes on the surface and at other times roll away into space. In addition, they often overlap; where they do, we get a darker shade of red.

These paintings have considerable carrying power. The yellow background is bright and the red shapes have soft edges. These bright, modern colours as well as the slightly out-of-focus quality indicate this abstract art is made by mechanical process guided by computer. However, the variations are unpredictable, dynamic and dictated by feeling - obviously human in conception.

Hung like a painting and tucked away in a corner is a laptop computer which shows a painting machine making a white painting on a white background. The mindless motion indicates mechanical process is dependent on human decision.

The paintings come in two sizes, large on linen and small on aluminium plate. The larger ones work much better because the abstract happenings cannot be comprehended at one glance.

The hectic interchange of bright colour in this exhibition shows there is still some life left in abstract art.

One answer to the link between abstract art and design was conceptual art - work that by its nature could not be applied to everyday objects.

Two other exhibitions have at their heart intellectual ideas that would be difficult to carry over into design.

At the Ivan Anthony Gallery until May 17 is a show by Roger Mortimer that is so directly autobiographical and confessional its interest is as much literary as visual. It is called Lettertogina.

There are everyday concerns in these letters but to increase the distance from everyday visual design the painter uses a style from centuries long passed. He rules up his space and writes his letters to Gina in a careful Gothic script without any space between the words. He occasionally adds notations in cursive script and bits of deft drawing such as might be done by a doodling monk with talent. The main areas of painting are long, looping panels of stylised foliage. Each work is washed in pale, faded pastel colour.

Because of the lengthy, concentrated effort the viewer must make to decipher even one of these works they are the antithesis of that sort of modern painting that makes an immediate impact like a poster.

Mortimer has always used lettering in his work and his strange eccentricities have a devoted following. What has to be worked out is how much gain there is over setting out the material in a conventional way. There is a visual gain but if you make the effort to mine the ore of the written component you get copper or tin but hardly a vein of real gold.

Equally strange are the works by Heather Straka at the Anna Bibby Gallery until May 3. Her work has always had an element of realism in it. She has painted with great accuracy the cracked surface of sanitary ware and the worn backs of theatre seats. In this show many of the works are enlarged playing cards although with an unreproducible enamelled surface and trademark fine cracks.

The show, called The Game, has visually allusive, symbolic, enigmatic images usually placed dead centre in the paintings. Symbol is everything. An exception to the centrality is Six-Hearts which has six painted bullet holes in it. As well as holes that are not holes there are slots that are not slots.

Insert has an old-fashioned scroll with a foot and a slot, all within a couple of circles with a crown pattern.

There is a group of works critical of colonialism so that Ace-Clubs has a standard image of Rangitoto and Ace-Diamonds a colonist's view of Egmont/Taranaki.

This is an almost impenetrable mixture of meanings but Straka has the neat triumph of creating quirky, beautifully made things that are many levels away from design.