Grand inventiveness of winner's palette

By T.J. McNAMARA

A huge array of art is on display this week. To start with there is the Wallace Award exhibition, partly hosted by the New Gallery and overflowing into the Wallace Trust Gallery just above the Town Hall. And that is only the finalists, selected by the judges from more than 500 entries.

The award-winning painting by Peter Gibson-Smith is at the New Gallery and is undoubtedly the outstanding painting in the exhibition.

Gibson-Smith has been working steadily for many years. From his first show, which was a sell-out, his development has been consistently inventive and technically unconventional. His winning painting is shaped like a gigantic artist's palette and is composed of long, rectangular blocks or tablets in a manner consistent with his earlier modular works. But these tablets are varied since each represents the back of a book.

Some of his previous work has also referenced art history and this work is similar because all the books are about art and artists. The work is done in egg tempera - a medium often used in the early Renaissance. There is plenty of variety in the work since the backs of the books show an enormous variety of typeface and colour.

The effect is very dry as a painting, yet the grand nature of the concept and the consistency of its realisation make a remarkable work of art and a worthy winner.

The dealer galleries are almost swamped with art but one outstanding show is the work of Richard McWhannell at the Anna Bibby Gallery.

This artist no longer relies on shock tactics, as he sometimes has, but there is always a strangeness in his work even when the subject is a coastal landscape.

This comes from his colour, which is subdued, his lighting, which is nocturnal and often moonlight casting long, sinister shadows, and the way flat beaches lead into hills with mysterious declivities.

The effects that McWhannell has at his command include a luscious wet quality in the paint in a work such as Early Morning, Light Rain.

The strange mood of one of the landscapes, Winter Moon, is intensified by the presence of a shape that may be a figure or a tree. Such ambiguity is also part of the works that include definite figures. Two grotesque heads called Sky Pilots recall the poet who asked, "Why do philosophers smile when they meet?"

Here the two faces grin and each believes the joke is on the other. Less obvious effects are shown in Poseidon and a Resurrection of Surfers where an idol by the sea with a great head and skinny legs is accompanied by two naked swimmers, one with a halo.

Most curious of all, yet easily the most powerful work in the show, is Stumped, where a figure like Lot's wife is transfigured while a fleeing figure is attacked or, perhaps, guarded by a dog.

This drama takes place in a typically McWhannellesque landscape notable for white clouds. Throughout the show, the use of white as scraps of clouds or as ripples on water is telling and part of the quality of the artist's control over paint.

White is also prominent as the brilliant background of the cattle depicted in the unusual work of Mike Petre at the McPherson Gallery.

The white background has two functions: it forms part of the vigorous patterning of the works with the white-faced Angus steers and it shows how a farmer concentrates on his cattle; the hills and valleys of the landscape of his farm which might delight the outsider are of less importance than his stock.

Another realistic farming touch is that these cattle are drooling long, hanging threads of ruminant mucus. These drips are converted into paint in the pictures and link the compositions. The realities of farming are emphasised in the figures for cattle weights that add a flourish to a series of excellent drawings.

These paintings are a highly idiosyncratic but sharply observed take on our farming scene.

A further version of the moody, poetic landscape genre is shown at the same gallery in the work of Jo Smith. Her landscape is inspired by Waiheke and the experience that every ferry traveller has of looking back towards the distant city pinned by the Sky Tower. Night, shadows and silhouettes add the poetry.

The same genre is seen in the tiny paintings, some oval, of Dean Venrooy but this time the inspiration is Banks Peninsula. This artist's intense little works have cairns by the sea and a bird indicated by no more than a graphic flourish. They have a single, darkly ominous mood.

In the accompanying show by Celeste Sterling there is a variety of mood although the work is abstract. Arcadia is serene in green and gold while Fissure burns with hot colour between areas of dark. The reliance on colour for mood falters in Resonance but the other paintings are compellingly rich.