The galleries: K Road exhibits colourful and complex

By T J McNAMARA


Karangahape Rd is where it is at this week. A message written on one picture sums it up. The artist has had a struggle and says he "might as well just do some mild-mannered minimalism and take the rest of the day off". Actually, that's the cleaned-up version.

What this emphasises is that abstract geometrical minimalism long ago became the accepted style of academic painting and now sells well. It also feeds nicely into design, but no longer satisfies the driving urge of the avant garde.

On K Rd the thing that you won't find is minimalist abstraction, and all the artists are striving hard to avoid the self-satisfaction that would let them take the afternoon off.

Nor are they doing painting. They are doing video, sculpture, computer prints, knitting and, in one case, even making a ziggurat of dyed toilet rolls. The message quoted is from a work in Theatre of the Indigent, an exhibition by Andrew McLeod at Ivan Anthony Gallery until December 20. His works are mostly computer prints.

The fine ribbons of text woven into McLeod's images suggest he is the indigent one, the needy, the poor, the rejected. This smacks a little of romantic self-posturing.

The artist has achieved a considerable reputation with his complex images done and printed like architects' plans with an immense amount of fine detail: houses, people and symbol trees, all woven into communities, albeit groups that do not communicate much.

These images were fascinating, but the present exhibition represents a big leap forward for this artist who has already made it to the point where his earlier works are in the collection at Te Papa.

The gain in this show is in colour and variety of effect. The complexity remains but here it is not just complexity of detail but a complexity of effects. The mass of detail is still visually compelling, forcing the viewer to explore every part of the work at length, but there is an increased symbolic function.

Minimal abstraction it is not. The big works crawl with life in the manner of Brueghel or Hieronymous Bosch or, more recently, Stanley Spencer.

Alphabet House is typical. It holds up as a pattern from a distance, but the best way to approach it is to come close and seek out the figures accompanied by ghostly shadows, the camouflaged soldiers that crouch behind walls, the pigs, the rubbish bin, the tiny nudes, the impossible stone anvils, the bunker, the kakapo, all set among gentle green hills topped with copses of attractive trees.

Lots of detail to ponder, some tender and enticing but more of it menacing, strange and haunting.

There is a big work in blue, painted rather than printed, which is a symbolic, patterned wallpaper and is a direction for potential development rather than present accomplishment.

On the other hand, First Love links with the architectural manner but is much more open than Alphabet House. Its rooms make a little theatre of life.

There is a heap of bodies, a little artist overwhelmed by two dealers and a critic, Adam and Eve, a body sprawled on a floor, weapons on the wall, graffiti, aggressive texts and rats and cats, seeking, twitching, presiding.

Then there is the abyssal depths of an Abyss for Every Caress, a superb work where figures of lovers like coral reefs are explored in every dainty cavity by divers moving among them. The sense of immersion in things deeply emotive yet touchingly physical is overwhelming. It is a singularly lovely work without any loss of tension.

Further along K Rd, at the Michael Lett Gallery until December 6, there is no minimal abstraction, either. Instead we see big artificial rocks, and on the artificial rocks are artificial animals which look real, and so do the rocks. No flat canvas decoration here, but an intriguing exploration of the artistic paradox between the art that looks real and what is truly artificial. No painting; the animals are knitted and crocheted. The exhibition is by a young Australian artist, Louise Weaver.

A typical work is called From Deep in the Black Mountains of Dakota. This is a raccoon perched on an immense rock. It is neatly knitted and has a big tail but it has pearly embroidery on it and a yellow collar knitted into it to emphasise that this is a creation, an object, a work of art, not an imitation.

The most potent of these animals lacks the rock but simply pads across the floor. It is a lively fox, tense with energy but green as no fox ever was. There is a lightning flash on its flank, artificial as a logo to show that it is very, very quick. The paradoxical support of art by skilled craft as well as reference in depth make this a very lively exhibition.

Equally lively but in a much more mixed way is Curiosity Kills the Gap, which runs at Artspace until December 20. The gap in question is the gap between cultures. There are plenty of politics on display and almost no painting, but rather videos, banners and, of course, that stack of toilet rolls which in fact illustrates a mathematical proposition first elucidated by a black American scholar and used here by the ever-curious Daniel Malone, one of more than 20 artists and collectives represented. They are all artists who want to work with cultural difference in a positive way.

Among the exhibition's many marvellous things are Francis Upritchard's sports clubs with fetish heads. There is even an excellent portrait of Bob Dylan but, typically, it is stood on the floor, not hung on the wall. You might even find a minimal work - a wall sculpture by Michael Parekowhai, but with characteristic irony the simple, bright, fashionable Western shapes are on top of a base of serious, solid brown.