Vanishing Point: Representing the Invisible at Starkwhite Gallery

In contemporary art, what artists leave out is sometimes thought to be as important as what they put in. This week's artists can be divided into leavers-out and putters-in.

The grand leavers-out are at the gallery devoted to the extreme, Starkwhite in Karangahape Rd, converted from the old Pink Pussy Cat, where the speciality was taking off rather than taking out.

The exhibition, Vanishing Point: Representing the Invisible, until October 1, has been curated by Jim and Mary Barr. It is hard to imagine a more extreme group of works.

One piece by Ryan Moore has been reduced to a pin - a solitary white pin on an expanse of white wall. Everything left out except the point of departure.

Another work relies on the invisible power of the imagination and suggestion. Dane Mitchell has railed off a shadowy area under the stairs and laid a curse on the space. A little notice says so. The notice makes anyone feel a little odd if they intrepidly step into the cursed space.

Is this little frisson a valid art response? It certainly has a little more charge than the wooden light-switch covered in twink by Glen Hayward. And so it goes on. Peter Robinson makes letters from transparent perspex and strings them from a jumble on the floor to reach high in the air as the scrambled invisible texts transmitted everywhere all the time.

Only the television has the power to focus the attention, and Axel Stockburger and the artist known as N. I. C. J. O. B. know the hypnotic power of an image of a face confronting the viewer.

What they leave out is time and place and even reason to confront us with individuals - modern portraits existing only through unseen electrical impulses.

Stockburger's work does not show anything of violence and mindless vandalism but implies it with every word his portrait heads utter. In his work, the invisible does take on power.

Mostly the show is witty and ironic, but any emotive charge is almost as imperceptible as its subject.

Not so high-flying, also reliant on withdrawal, but much more humanistic is the touching little exhibition called femme - bridal suite by Viky Garden at the Edmiston Duke Gallery until September 23.

The works are small, carefully drawn monoprints of garments and handkerchiefs discarded by the women who once owned them. Their crumpled confusion takes a bit of deciphering.

The neat little drawings of bras incorporate the mystery of triple hooks at the back. The underpants feature the intimacy of gussets.

The images printed on handkerchiefs suggest narrative, with little kisses stitched in red and crosses marked in lipstick. A relationship is suggested. These unpretentious images carry a considerable weight of suggestion.

The accompanying show by Sue Hill is a "putting in" exhibition. Called Susan, it makes clear the perils surrounding a girl, outlined in blood red, by including rabbits killed by her cat and the brand names of the toxic chemicals used in the household around her.

All this is done with the best of intentions but brings the painting closer to posters than art. The energetic, angular drawings are the best part of this show.

Leading the putters-in is John McLean whose Mind's Eye is at the McPherson Gallery until Saturday. He has everything: sex, symbolism, myth, a landscape setting, tension over relationships, figures, fish, birds and free spirits. There is vivid colour and lots of telling detail - a bit of Chagall, a touch of Max Beckmann and a smattering of Smither.

In Fisherman's Wife Awaits Hunter's Return drama is suggested by a knife in the woman's hand and a gory slash in the fish. The hunter is a mounted ghost in a tree.
These people can be touching, as in Fisherman's Longing for Hunter's Wife, or blatant, as in Epiphany for the Farmer's Wife, with a bull in a cart. It is an awkward but appealing created world.

In a series of sculptures at Anna Bibby Gallery in Newmarket, Judy Darragh does not so much put things in as let them spill out. As always, she defies conventions of good taste, making her work out of colourful and cheap materials, such as costume jewellery.

Her colourful compounds spill off tables and bubble out of troughs as if they had a life of their own.

Two of the works have a special impact and a sense of delight. One is a trough with empty wine bottles and a cascade as colourful as innumerable butterflies spilled across the floor.

The other is a chest where an energetic yellow substance crawls out. Darragh's unique sensibility is given an intriguing expression.