Art: Master of the balancing act returns

Paul Radford is an artist who has not had an exhibition for at least six years, but in that time he has been constantly involved in design and creation of sets for television programmes such as Hercules and Xena.

Earlier in his career he established himself as one of the most individual and talented artists in New Zealand.

In this welcome return, at the McPherson Gallery, his special balancing act keeps a play of interest and energy flowing around compositions of shapes that are almost abstract but which just keep an ambiguous hint of an origin in natural shapes or in such human activity as graffiti on bridges or walls.

The paintings are done on etched and primed aluminium sheeting so that they are almost part of the wall surface. Instead of a frame they have a lively irregular outline.

Within the outline the forms are painterly in an astringent, modern way. They do not have thick textures or swashbuckling gestures, but they do have an inventive variety of transparent washes, solid areas of bright colour, areas of spattered paint and shapes filled with opaque colour.

The shapes are bounded and intensified by thick black lines that suggest they were worked out on a computer. The black lines not only define the shapes but give them their energy and pull each painting into unity.

The result is seen at its least complex in Flake One, where the form comes forward in three leaps in a way that is like an enlarged brushstroke or a wave. The shape is enhanced by a bubbling of small blue dots on the edge of the work.

Much bigger and more complex are works like Budge, which is notable for some dashing yellow, and Bad Two, which is an elaborate composition with a background of graffiti locked between arrows. In Slump there is an effect of a shape surging forward. Though abstract, it irresistibly suggests the power of a glacier moving between mountains.

Most complex of all is Eye Candy, a work that is almost too sweet in its juxtaposition of wriggling shapes with enclosed dots of colour and areas of spattered paint. These paintings signify a welcome return to fine art by an artist who has gained much from the hard-driven world of set design.

At the Artis Gallery in Parnell, Kennedy Malin has also concentrated on balancing acts. She is a recent graduate - and a confident one, even if the steps are not always sure. The balance she contrives to keep is one of tone. These impressively large works all use patterns made from sprays of native flowers placed across clouded fields of pale colour.

So far so good. The deftly painted sprays of kowhai, pohutukawa and red kaka-beak are pleasant and the backgrounds are sometimes given a sense of atmosphere by the kind of poured and dripped paint that is now part of a New Zealand idiom. More special are the effects gained by spraying paint through lace. Yet these works are trying for something more subtle - an oblique social comment.

The images grow out of the carpet, furnishings and even the decorated breadboard remembered from her childhood home, so the paintings have an element of nostalgia combined with kitschiness that establishes a faint satirical note. The danger is that the irony and nostalgic references are spread so thin that the works can be viewed as pretty patterns and their depth and individuality of style lost. These are difficult elements to keep in balance, and in some of the small paintings she stumbles. The large paintings in the show are much more poised. Pohutukawa Sunset is rich in both colour and reference, and there is real piquancy in After the Breadboard - a Garden Landscape Proposal. Hints of irony give a special spin to A Bright Outlook - Landscape Proposal for Show Home Competition.

At the Oedipus Rex Gallery, Nanette Lela'ulu continues her annual exhibitions of paintings that incorporate striking portraits and a good deal of text. Her subject matter is the complications of mixed racial heritage in Samoa, but the power of her messages are obscured by language that is difficult for most viewers, and ambiguities in the depiction of the faces that combine both aggression and suffering.