Art: Sculpture slithers in the raw

By T.J. McNAMARA

The work of Christchurch sculptor Bing Dawe at the McPherson Gallery is a very New Zealand show made up of carefully sculptured, highly realistic of eels and flounders laid on white boards or hung from wire hooks just as eels are hung to dry.

White boards are sometimes placed in water to make migrating fish visible and here they have this function as well as acting as shelves and in a sculptural way relating the subjects to the wall against which they stand.

This is not a show for those who like their nature soft and sweet. The enlarged-slug quality of the eels is very apparent. This is raw nature ripped from its context, appalling but somehow elegant. The bizarre contrast between the dark upper side of the flatfish, with the eyes, and the white, blind side is also exploited. The effect is confrontational and certainly not charming.

The size of these objects, the careful observation and the unsentimental knowledge of them straight from their element, their obvious end as food, and their limp and slimy presence make these works something very special to this country where most people have encountered them.

As Dawe says, "The eel is our serpent," and he catches the strangeness of this creature that journeys so far, dwells in dark places and features so much in Maori mythology as the origin of all twisting, curving things - the vines that wrap around trees as much as the monster in the creek.

The sense of sculptural intervention is strongest in Curious Distortions/Black Flounder, where a cut and a curve in the board distort the fish and give tension to the work as well as suggesting the process of metamorphosis in the young fish, when its left eye migrates across the snout.

A similar split in the background is part of the most powerful of the eel sculptures where two eels, their throats cut, hang from hooks like sacrifices.



At the Vavasour/Godkin Gallery the show is called BLUEBLUEBLUE, and this colour is the unifying theme.



The recent proliferation of atmospheric paintings of sea and sky reduced to surfaces with a thin line that may be a horizon is continued in the work of David Morrison, notably in Study of Harbour No 65. Just as successful in its own way is the geometric abstraction of Jonathan Organ, with vivid bars of royal blue. The old master Geoff Thornley is represented by two canvases that combine subtlety with structural strength.

The Studio of Contemporary Art is full of the vivid paintings of Daniel Waswas, from Papua New Guinea. The works are mostly red and energetically filled with baroque detail of face-paint, nose ornaments, necklaces and feather head-dresses on heads of heroic size.

These faces, larger than life, with bones thrust through the nose and great, spiky ornaments, are worked into tight patterns enlivened by a layered system of painting that uses runs and washes to lively effect.

The effect is brash and overwhelming, though since most of the faces are young and attractive and done with no characterisation more than emphasising large eyes glistening with white highlights, the effect is spectacular rather than penetrating. There is a clear sense of a formula at work.

Two paintings, called Identify- darker works in mixed media on paper - are exceptions. These have more characterisation and more depth of feeling.