The galleries: Stars of the screen

By T.J. McNAMARA

The traditional folding screen is a special challenge for a painter. It is an objet d'art that must stand on the floor, and involves working two or three separate parts together to make a zigzag unity.

Standing on the floor is important. It means you look at a screen differently from the way you look at a painting hung at eye level. Generally you are quite close to a screen looking down and conventional perspective does not apply. The styles of contemporary art often suit the screen format very well.

Screens have a long history. They have always been part of artists' studios, if only for somewhere for the model to get undressed. In Auckland, exhibitions of screens have been staged every couple of years and have produced some stunning work. Screens by Colin McCahon and Ralph Hotere are among their finest paintings.

Right up among them is the screen which is one of two paintings by W.D. Hammond at the Ivan Anthony Gallery until September 6.

It is easy for a motif to become a mannerism. It might be thought that Bill Hammond had exhausted the power of his strange, moody birds.

For many they symbolise all the indigenous life in New Zealand, including the Maori, in the process of change. Others respond to them because of their exquisite decoration and because they give the feeling of how humans congregate and react to each other in various ways. Their mood is dream-like, a surreal vision of the world at large.

Whatever interpretation is put on his birds, the screen at Ivan Anthony titled Park Drive is a touchingly beautiful painting and shows Hammond's predominant motif still has potency.

The screen is made up of two curved parts. On each there are creatures isolated on islands. One panel of the screen is under the moon and the other under the sun. The creatures are bird-headed and elegantly patterned with tattoos. In the left panel the figure has hands clasped in a gesture like part of a ritual dance. In the right panel two figures are negotiating an agreement, intensely, passionately. These figures have a subordinate head that suggests their thinking and personalities are complex, even schizophrenic. Small congregations of other bird-creatures expand the sense of a populated world.

The screen is a rich gold colour and the paint is worked in mysterious, inventive ways using runs and resist techniques. Overall there are dripping, weeping patterns which are very atmospheric, but the mood is melancholy.

Trees on the screen are stylised in a Japanese manner which links to the painter's time in Japan as well as a long Japanese tradition of screens and ceramics.

The price of this work, and the other interesting, more open and conventional painting which makes up the show, is astronomical. It reflects two things: the quality of the work and the recognition given to Hammond's earlier work by high prices when it has been resold at auction.

Co-incidentally, the attractive new space, which constitutes a separate gallery at the Studio of Contemporary Art in Newmarket, is having, as an inaugural exhibition, a show of screens called Screen Invitation.

Those invited to contribute are 15 well-known painters and the variety is such that it gives a good idea of what energy there is in New Zealand painting.

The variety also suggests a special kind of maturity because, whatever the style, most of these painters are assured, confidently hitting the mark they aim at.

At one end of the range there is David McCracken's thick, heavy metal screen. Its thickness is pierced by circular openings and its panels are linked by the best hinges in the show appropriate to its apparent weight. At the other end of the scale are mists of colour by Han Nae Kim. Delicate butterflies float in the colour.

Mark Cross presents three double-sided panels each with a luminous sky portraying a mood of the Pacific. The lower part of each screen is filled by the restless sea.

There is one exuberantly funny screen called Cheers Everybody by Piera McArthur which features a bouncing, acrobatic nude in each panel, all energised by brilliant red which extends even to their fingernails.

There is a vivid abstract screen where Cristina Popovici's energetic layers of paint are concentrated by the format in a way that makes her conventional paintings look loose. Jeff Thomson's well-known corrugated iron is decorated with lyrical floral patterns both painted and silk-screened.

The most ingenious use of the screen format is by David Barker. His three panels use Velcro and are designed in such a way that any of the six detachable panels will match edge to edge with any other so there are dozens of possibilities. His aim is to invoke the seascape, colour and art of Venice using his own characteristic palette of brown, red and blue. It is all there, the Rialto, the bronze horses of St Marks, angels, a Virgin and Child, and Three Graces by Tintoretto, not in actual situations but fused as in a dream. The effect is intensified by fascinating detail such as a red banner on the Rialto bridge reflected in the waters of the Grand Canal.

The show makes a grand opening for the new gallery.