Ramble through dark into light

By T.J. McNAMARA

Naturalists ramble but writers shouldn't - direct and to the point is what they are supposed to be. Yet a ramble is perhaps the appropriate way to deal with even a part of the art riches this week.

The New Gallery is a good place to begin. The exhibition Darkness and Light has landscapes by Australian and New Zealand artists mounted in conjunction with the McClelland Gallery in Victoria.

The show is full of large-scale images with plenty of authority. Dark Landscape by Peter Booth is a powerful sweep of coast painted with a richness and surge that recalls the forceful images of Anselm Kiefer, the great modern German and with just a hint of his symbolic force.

This is only one of the fine paintings by Australian artists. Carolyn Fels impressively places hills and trees against the light in a way that gives a sense of the spaciousness of the land and the spirit that permeates it. Andrew Browne has a large painting which effectively captures the experience of driving on straight roads through a flat landscape marked only by the skinny shapes of eucalypts.

Philip Hunter has dark brown landscapes called Night Wimmera with crossed trails, markings and tracks painted with tremendous flourish.

New Zealand artists match the scope of these works but reveal an opposite sensibility to the dramatic Australian approach, notably in Shane Cotton's ribbons of landscape with their isolated emotional moments of truth.

John Lyall's photographs show the dappled light of the New Zealand bush made strangely menacing by the alien presence of a leopard skin.

Most evocative is a series of 12 photographs by Laurence Aberhart called Taranaki. They show, in the distance, the magic mountain against a luminous sky. Collectively these photographs are a splendid work of art.

Before you leave this thoughtfully curated exhibition, where every work deserves its place and careful contemplation, make sure you don't ignore a group of four battered cans on a table. The labels say Watties Fruit Salad or Dole Pizza Cut Pineapple but inside the cans are small, archetypal landscapes by Brendon Wilkinson with past and present ironically juxtaposed.

This by no means exhausts the treasures at the New Gallery. You can ramble into a large room on the north side occupied by an installation by Xu Bing, a Chinese artist living in the West. The first impression may be intimidating because it has the appearance of a school room. This is a school of calligraphy with 14 desks equipped with a manual, ink, a stone and a brush on a stand. You are welcome to try your hand at calligraphy - a video gives clear instruction. Few will take the opportunity - life is short, school is intimidating.

The work illustrates the appeal of another culture and the difficulty of coming to terms with it. The room is fascinating but strange. Instruction is all very well. Sympathy is easy. Understanding takes longer.

If you ramble further you meet two people, a photographer and the photographed. This is an extensive exhibition of photographs taken by Peter Peryer of his wife, Erika, over several years. They are all black and white and some are so small that you have to peer closely, forcing intimacy.

Each one captures a different mood. Their exceptional power is that the mood is not set up but discovered within the subject. The photographer is the humble servant of this complex and powerful personality.

One of the first and smallest photographs, taken in 1976, is a powerfully erotic lover's photograph, though it shows no more than the lift of a garment. In 1977 a profile against a closed door suggests the private places of the mind. In 1978, a shot deliberately out of focus, with knives in the background, hints at tension and danger. Also in 1978 a head in a scarf is photographed in raking light, full of strength and freedom, and the same year sees a wild gesture allied to a print dress and a sense of anger. Winter 1979 shows a personality withdrawn into a dark coat held together with a cold hand.

The journey round this woman with her striking features is a rich experience, both particular and universal.

There are still a few days left to take the ramble up Shortland St to the university's Gus Fisher Gallery to see The Colonial View, rich watercolours from the Fletcher Trust Collection. These provide a fascinating walk through 19th-century New Zealand and the detail is intriguing even when the artist's skills are limited.

Look for the delightful picture of a Wairarapa homestead by Christopher Aubrey which has a sweeping drive, an invalid in a bath-chair, a fine trotting horse and a bounding greyhound. In Charles Igglesden's Captain Sharpe's Residence there is even a monkey in a little coat, surely brought from India. The historical detail in Gustavus von Tempsky's picture of his Forest Rangers is historically important.

There are also paintings of a high artistic order by such figures as Alfred Sharpe, J.B.C. Hoyte and Horatio Robley and it is really good to see so important a private collection put on public display.