The galleries: Getting down to the bone

Andy Warhol's skulls are not as scary as you might expect.

It is astonishing how the human head is always recognisable in a variety of forms, from the almost abstract shapes of a sculptor like Brancusi to the detail of a portrait bust. The same is true of the bone under the skin. The skull is universally recognisable in a multitude of shapes.

The exhibition called Gulgoleth, at the Gow Langsford Gallery until February 12, is devoted to the theme of the skull.

The big-name wall has four works by the late Andy Warhol, all called Skulls. These are screen prints and the skull motif is established quickly with black line and some shading. What Warhol has done effectively is to establish a context for the skulls purely by areas of colour.

One print is brown and aged and suggests time. One is green and suggests death in life. The next has very dry, arid colour and suggests bones in the desert. In the fourth, the hollow of the eyes gives a darker, gloomier quality.

The prints are decorative and far from scary. They are stylish exercises from Warhol's factory, attractive but with much less power than his horrific prints of the reality of the electric chair or of car accidents. Neither do they reach the flamboyance of his brilliant flower prints.

The huge stylised skull in mirrored plexi-glass by John Armleder is another impressive piece of decoration, if only for its size, though the grid that indicates the teeth gives a little flourish of menace, like something from a Mexican festival of death.

Part of the effectiveness of the piece is that you see yourself reflected in the skull, and there is also the gimmick that the title, Lubaatum, is written as a mirror image in the gallery checklist.

Max Gimblett has been much preoccupied with the skull of late, and he gets a good deal of resonance out of simple skull shapes. Here there is a group of three carved from kauri gum. They are simple, thick and flat with no attempt at modelling.

In his skulls the teeth are pointed and the lower jaw-bone is detached. He is using the fact that kauri gum has been in the earth for eons before being dug up, and this sense of time past really makes the material matter as much as the image.

The variety of Gimblett's thinking is shown by a line of thin copper skulls which lie along the floor. They run like a stream and are appropriately called Libation.

These works have a certain charm, and the only place in the show where the skull is menacing is a dark ink drawing where Gimblett surrounds a cloudy, gloomy skull with black gestures that suggest sacrifice and ritual.

The show is completed by a series of skulls decorated by Mark Popperwell. These are human skulls cast in ceramic. They are all from the same mould so once again we are back in the realm of decoration. You can have a slightly sinister Black Skull, a clinical White Skull, a skull that is mapped with a grid, a red skull and one with dimensions traced on it which is museumised and anthropological.

This themed show could be a sinister start to the year's exhibitions, but in all it turns out to be intriguing and clever rather than the heavy meditation on mortality that might have been expected.

At the John Leech Gallery nearby is an exhibition by Ralph Hotere, which reminds us again of the high accomplishment of his work.

Dealer galleries are there to sell art works, and it must be said that the prices on these are far beyond most people. Nevertheless, the fact is that many works by Hotere are impossible to photograph adequately. You have to see them in their reality because their size, subtlety, presence and textures are lost in reproduction.

The gallery offers us ordinary mortals the opportunity, while the exhibition lasts, until February 12, of appreciating the rare quality of one of New Zealand's finest artists.

The key to the work is the way darkness is rich and fertile. A Black Painting from 1969 is a wonderful thing. From its rich darkness, over a horizon, emerges a ritual cross and a singing, lyrical series of concentric circles painted with the utmost delicacy and accuracy. It brings forth harmony from the dark like the music of the spheres.

In other works, vertical lines against a dark background suggest sadness, delight and progressions of the spirit. The solemnity of most things in the show is exemplified by a work from the Requiem Series, where the liturgical Latin exactly matches the rich visual concept.

There is only one work where the image does not quite match the idea. You can burn lines into stainless steel with a torch, but although the act of branding is new and inventive it is not enough in itself unless the image carries weight.

Quibbles aside, these two potent exhibitions are a good augury for the coming year.