TJ McNamara: Rockets, rivers and revelations

When all art was representational, the spectrum of style ranged from the infra-red of historical story-telling to the ultra-violet of still-life.

Nowadays the spectrum is different. The red end is socially commenting figurative art and the blue end is abstract with no narrative at all.

In the red corner this week is Wellesley Binding at the Milford Galleries, until October 21.

His show is called Defending the Oasis and half of his paintings are green and oval like an oasis, but not an oasis of quiet.

They have volcanoes that spout red, great curling waves of potent force and cigar-shaped rockets. These paintings are about forces in action.

Among the most notable is The Silver River Problem, which is dominated by a diagonal flow of silver like the flow of currency around the world.

On one side of the river is a hydro-works which symbolises all mechanical power. On the other side rockets are flying high. The whole structure is menaced by waves of force that attack from the left.

An equally fierce work is Here I Pretend to Cross the Abyss which has at its centre a dark, crotch-like valley and nearby a dark Tolkienesque forest and distant mountains.

The voyage of the seeker after truth is marked by a dotted line.

The familiarity of these romantic obstacles robs the work of a good deal of its impact.

These works look to suggest big issues, but they do not have the power of the other half of the show, which is filled with little things.

These are busy relief sculptures filled with plastic soldiers, dinosaurs, snakes, aeroplanes and even Donald Duck and a dismembered Mickey Mouse.

In these panels, what Yeats called "the ceremony of innocence" is drowned in swirls of thick texture and blackness. Bits of circuitry and plastic toys are absorbed into these apocalyptic works.

The artist would be the first to admit these works change nothing. They are not going to make us pro-war or anti-war but they are fascinating to explore as symbols of human motivation.

And they are prophetic. Bat Problem, which was done in 1997, has bats spreading their wings over a tiny world. Below them, the black wings of Stealth Bombers shelter little running groups of soldiers. It is a reminder of the artist as seer.

In the same way, Air Supremacy, with its glowing colour, finds space among the soldiers for a serpent which suggests evil, and dinosaurs to indicate outdated thinking.

Most impressive of all is the sheep-like rush of Brand Loyalty.

All this conveys the artist's interest in the expression of human emotions through human figures.

He keeps things close to the world of people: their actions, their fears and the technology they use and are subject to. His vision is a grim one, mixing a bit of Rauschenberg and more than a touch of the English sculptors, Jake and Dinos Chapman.

This work, like his painting and drawing in the past, is not comfortable but it can, at times and despite the small size, have a gripping, mordant wit.

At the blue end, abstract painting is not lacking in humanity. After all, it is made by an individual to evoke a human response which is intellectual and emotional and not just instinctive.

The paintings of Jacquie Ure, at the Judith Anderson Gallery until October 18, are purely abstract: they tell no story. They offer a visual revelation.

Each painting has a surface colour which is cracked or drawn aside to reveal a tumultuous and convoluted vision of how intricate a paint surface can be.

What we see through the gaps are forms that chase each other in rubbed and dry-brushed, mysteriously complex areas of paint.

The whole is pulled together by harmonies of colour, often using pale-blue and lilac shades.

The pleasure of these paintings is the visual sensation of seeing past the surface to what is underlying, or becoming aware of clouds of movement and colour that well up through the surface.

There may be no story, but good abstract painting always has a hint of metaphor. Here, the hint is that surface is not the final experience, but that rich layers may underlie it. The exhibition is an impressive start for a newcomer on the art scene.

Photographs always give the appearance of recording the surface truth, but in Gavin Hipkins' remarkable work The Colony, which represented New Zealand at this year's Sao Paulo Bienal, the surface appearance is only half the story. The work is at the Gus Fisher Gallery at Auckland University, until October 18.

The hundred photographs that make up the work are of simple hemispheres.

Sometimes they look like candy. Sometimes they look like bacterial colonies on a petri dish. Some people, it seems, have seen them as breasts. They must be singularly unacquainted with bosoms.

The work deals colourfully with the multiplicity and spread of simple things.

It is a brilliant work, consistent and suggestive. It works on many levels and fulfils the promise shown in the rich photographic mosaics in the smaller gallery.

This shows Hipkins' recent nomination in the Walters Prize was well-deserved.