Light shines on realism

A strain of photo-realist painting has always run parallel to experimental abstract and expressionist work, and the American painter Edward Hopper is the grandest of many representatives of this tradition.

At the Studio of Contemporary Art in Newmarket, the realist option in painting is on show with work by Barry Ross Smith until Friday. The exhibition is called A Stone's Throw from Here and the subjects are taken entirely from familiar local scenes. The popularity of such subjects is evidenced by the way almost the whole exhibition soon sold out.

It includes iconic subjects - the weathered shed roofed with corrugated-iron, the strong-jawed man in an oilskin feeding-out to sheep - as well as virtuoso painting - the swirl of foam on shallow water in Wet Feet and the lovely reflection of the sky in a water-trough in Wet and Dry.

But only two of these reach beyond being excellent illustration. One is Night Light, where the atmosphere is as potent as a Hopper and the house shown is an archetypical villa. In the other, Faith, Hope and Shirley, three splendidly sturdy women look out to sea, one holding a child.

It has a sense of future and potential, and features brilliant painting of the rounded forms in shiny swimsuits and a deft accent on colour with a red sand-bucket.

These are the sorts of paintings often described as "just like photographs", but photographs are very different.

Yvonne Todd is one of four artists each showing one work at Ivan Anthony Gallery until Saturday. Her piece is a big, circular photograph of a woman. But what a woman. Though the image has no head, we recognise the reality because of the veins and sinews evident in the hands, which show like talons, a predatory feeling that is emphasised by blood-red nails.

A plunging neckline and a full bosom tell us this person is all woman. Her neck, hands and wrist are adorned with large, bright diamonds. She has everything - sex, possessions and a corporate income signified by the instantly recognisable brand-name bottle that she clutches. It is a delicious, powerful image made potent by the reality that only the light of photography can confer.

Light is the theme of the exhibition of photography and painting called Lux at the Jensen Gallery until the end of next month. Oddly, in one painting the quality lies in the complete absence of light. An intense black painting by Gunter Umberg gains its extraordinary depth by its rich painted surface that could have no parallel in photography.

It is much more effective than the single, totally black panel in the show by Gavin Hipkins at Gow Langsford. On the other hand, the light that floods through windows and across water in the set-up photographs by James Casebere has an immediate actuality. In Four Flooded Arches the shiny surface adds to the effect.

Paradoxes about the difference between painting and photography are further illustrated in a version of a Vermeer painting re-done by Jude Rae. Is this subtle, delicious copy of a well-known image done in pigment on canvas better than the exact photographic reproductions that illustrate many books on art?

This rich show has much food for thought as well as visual pleasure.

Photography can capture an image instantly and carry it off like a trophy to indicate a way of life. Kathryn McCool does this in her exhibition The Prize at the Anna Bibby Gallery until March 12.

The trophy aspect of her work is emphasised by a collection of sports trophies, some broken, which accompany the show in the gallery and in the window. The images are a touch patronising. They show a bare bedroom with a fan, a picture of Christ and a TV, or a bare, bleak kitchen in a trailer home, or a kitschy clock made of shells embedded in plastic, or two houses dominated by powerpoles, and invite us to see them with scorn.

Yet the two houses are subtly different and handsome enough. The room shows real piety, the kitchen is tidy and clean. Only one work is witty and tender. The Consolation shows light through pink curtains falling on a pink bedspread and a lugubrious toy dog.

These trophies of the oddity of a world shown empty of people emphasise how easily photography can record scorn of "the other". Painting is seldom so subtly denigrating.

Necessary Reflections, by Geoff Steven at Oedipus Rex Gallery until Friday, comprises photographs of sea and beach. These are cleverly contrived by having a mirror make rectangular sections of each image brighter. This works best when the segment throws light on patterns of waves or when reflecting things opposite the original scene.

If it just looks like collage there's no real interplay between the two sections. There are no people in these images so they are visually interesting but smack of an intellectual exercise.