The galleries: Inspiration in splendour of Hanly’s art

A detail from Pat Hanly’s Love Each Other.

Alongside the disturbing splendours of the big exhibition on the theme of children at the Auckland Art Gallery it is good to see that the AK05 Festival includes a captivating show by an important New Zealand artist.

Speakers at the funeral of Pat Hanly last year, and now at the opening of a Celebration of his Life and Work at the Northern Steamship Building in Quay St, laid proper emphasis on the character of the man - his restless energy, his immense sympathetic understanding of people, his capacity for friendship, his absolute honesty and his courage to stand up for the values in which he believed.

But what ultimately defines him is his art. This exhibition, drawn from the Hanly Family Trust and the James Wallace Trust, enables us to understand the nature of that art and find inspiration in its affirmations, exuberance and power.

The works from the family trust are paintings Hanly retained in his house and studio. The works artists keep by them are often not major but have a special meaning. They often begin a new direction or are a particularly intimate achievement.

He left these works largely untouched, even though throughout his life Hanly tried, obsessively, to get works back to his studio to alter - or even destroy when they did not meet his high standards.

The show begins with a strong group of paintings done in London when the young painter was working in clubs as a set designer. They place showgirls high on a stage as a remote but incandescent flame, while anonymous gentlemen, below and beneath, are attracted like moths. These paintings already use the vivid reds which would become characteristic of Hanly's work .

Yet the painter's return to New Zealand is chronicled by a green painting - a strong, blocky work that shows Melville Park, Mt Eden, and New Zealand itself, emerging over the horizon. This painting, although important, has something of the dry, careful calculation of some British work of the time.

These influences are thrown off in the glare of the New Zealand light, although even an excellent example of Hanly's celebrated Figures in Light series has more than a little of Francis Bacon in the handling of faces.

After an endeavour to incorporate the blue skies of Auckland into abstract gestural painting, Hanly turned to humanism, autobiography and making iconic paintings that incorporated deep concern and protest.

He developed an astonishing method of outline that reflected his excellent draughtsmanship and action painting that charged everything with colour and a vibrant energy he called "molecular".

The classic work in this manner is the passionate Love Each Other from 1968. Here, a tender gesture between a couple is allied to colour that has primal force.

The highly charged Telephone Table, done in 1973, is the most simply lovely painting in the exhibition.

The splendour of his action painting can be seen at its most spectacular in Fire at Windmill Road, where the red and crackle of the fire is truly spectacular.

The theme of Love Each Other is carried on in a second painting, with the same title, which is all rhythmical gestures of drips of paint. The same is found in the Pacific Journey panels rescued from the airport and now part of the James Wallace Trust.

When you stir into the mix Hanly's fabulously erotic paintings, his wonderful boats as symbols of change and hope, two self-portraits 24 years apart, and his final works where he painted panels, smashed them and reassembled them to convey spirited improvisation, this exhibition makes a wonderful tribute to the painter and a grand contribution to the festival.

James Wallace, who supported the Hanly exhibition, has also contributed another show which shares its catalogue. At the Wallace Trust Gallery, just above the Town Hall, there is an exhibition until March 11 called Artists on their Way.

This is an extraordinarily mixed show of established and emerging artists that gives a comprehensive picture of the remarkable accomplishment and verve of recent New Zealand art.

Morris & James pottery is well-known in Auckland. Their tiles and terracotta pots adorn gardens everywhere. The Morris of this partnership is Anthony Morris, born in Gisborne and widely travelled.

Now he has devoted his skills with clay to modelling relief sculpture and statuettes. These have been cast in bronze and glass and are on show at the Judith Anderson Gallery until March 12.

The style is very much like Epstein, notably in Elizabeth, where the face and tension of the neck matches the jut of the breasts.

The sense of development is conveyed by a fine series of statuettes on the subject of Parsifal and his journey from innocence to self-knowledge. Parsifal 2, where the hero is throwing off the garments of innocence and advancing naked into the world, is an outstanding piece.

The show arrives without fanfare but is full of interest.