Pictures made in many ways

By T.J. McNAMARA

After the experiments of the past century it is now recognised that there are many ways of making art.

One extraordinary example of the variety of this making process is the way Ani O'Neill makes her art out of crocheted doilies. These vividly coloured circular creations are a Polynesian adaptation of a European technique. In her exhibition at the Sue Crockford Gallery, the circles come in many colours and several sizes.

The show is dominated by one big work called Rainbow Country that was first exhibited at the Biennale of New Caledonia a year ago.

It is made up of more than 200 pieces arranged according to colour, from blue at the bottom to hectic red and orange at the top, and making up a big egg shape.

The circles all have a nucleus in contrasting colour and as they dance about on the wall they evoke all kinds of ideas from domestic usages, through Polynesian craft to bacterial colonies, swirling planets, molecular structures, the notes of a symphony and life in the sea.

The art lies in making these commonplace objects stimulate these ideas.

At the heart of it is the spinning circularity. Among other things it is a little reminder that it was probably a woman who invented the wheel and first made pottery.

It is a work that has multiple levels of meaning without sacrificing charm or becoming solemn.

The enigmatic sculpture of Christine Hellyar at the Milford Galleries is made of canvas aprons which are a cross between a domestic apron and a carpenter's apron.

One feels that every part of each apron is loaded with meaning. In some the neck loop stands up proud. In others it hangs down slack. All the aprons have a big central pocket and there are narrow subsidiary pockets. The tapes that would usually tie the apron around the waist all have a name and the artist's signature on them.

The names are all members of crew on Cook's voyages to the Pacific. As well as the central pocket the seamen have one narrow pocket, the captains have two and some gentlemen and Sir Joseph Banks have a narrow, phallic pocket dead centre, to indicate authority of some kind.

The main pocket in each apron is stuffed with dried specimens as a tribute to the compulsive collecting impulse of Cook's men.

Some of the collections are nests that fold in on themselves and are held in a net, others contain material that sprays out. In the apron of Anderson, a gunner, there is a series of dried collections of fibre jetting upwards. Two artists with the expeditions, Forster and Webber, have a tall stick in their narrow pocket with a spray at the end of it like a brush. Forster's naturalist father has specimens like fungi, made of leather.

Through all the collections, in all the aprons, there is a red thread running through. In the gunners' aprons it is like a fuse.

Masses of meaning can be read into these collectors' aprons.

Canvas made the sails that powered Cook's ships. Canvas is what artists often paint on. Canvas and fibre go together. The collecting impulse is common to all humans and so on.

As always with Hellyar's exhibitions, some aspects defy easy explication and the exhibition as a whole has more force than the sum of its individual parts.

Another way of making art is to paint in a conventional way but also to add gold pigments and to collage bits of gauze, torn material and string on to the surface.

This is the style used by Anita Berman in her exhibition at the Chiaroscuro Gallery. The exhibition is called Venice Quartet because the paintings are inspired by that lovely city and many of the paintings are divided into four parts and these range from abstract to quite realistic. Typically, Venice Quartet I has one quarter with gauze collaged on to it, another with strips of material, another raked into texture and the last is atmospherically abstract.

The effect is very colourful. The colour may be too intense, too modern for the fading glory of Venice but it works in its own right.

The torn pieces of material often represent windows but they read as surface rather than space. The string does service as balcony railings. Yet the overall effect is undeniably rich and the painting at its best has a jewelled brilliance. Several of the paintings in quieter colours such as Windows on the Piazza do come close to the actual colour of Venetian walls. The charm of the show is a function of the colour rather than the use of collage.

One exhibition that does use paint conventionally on canvas is the work of Piera McArthur at the Studio of Contemporary Art but the work is done with such energetic flourishes that the effect is completely unconventional.

The oddity is emphasised by a considerable element of caricature. Many of the paintings are of dancers and they leap across the canvas in fine style, in one case accompanied by a self-portrait of the painter complete with bright red toe-nails.

Great splashes of red are everywhere. They even represent the notes of a tuba in a band in a park. The band is playing The Rustle of Spring but the painting is not inviting the spring but more daring it to come. Its exuberance is typical of this bright show.