Seeing the sound of paintings

By T.J. McNAMARA

This is a week for exhibitions by the country's senior artists - and, if paintings made sounds, the work would range from a hush to a seagull squeak.

The hush would surround the abstract work of Geoff Thornley at the Vavasour/Godkin Gallery.

Thornley has refined his use of oil paint to the point where his surfaces would earn the word exquisite if they were not so big.

The format is simple - a tall rectangle with a narrow border of plain colour. At the edge of the border there is a slight bleeding of pigment that hints at the layers of glaze that create the main surfaces.

Thornley uses a fine line to solve the perennial problem of working the transition from surface of the painting to the thick edge of the work. The principal surface is a skin, a veil, a mist, a cloud but always an elegant, meditated surface of subtle colour.

The effects are beyond anything that could be photographed. They are possible only in oil technique of the utmost refinement.

At times they are tensioned by a faint grid with the verticals more prominent than the horizontals, in a way that reinforces the tall shape. Paintings such as

11 and

27 are delicately veined and appear like close contemplation of the skin of a beloved. The pale green of

2 is a vision of the transparency of the sea modulated through verticals. Each painting is a profoundly visual experience.

Thornley exhibitions are rare. This is a splendid one. Its style and quality are international. It could take an honoured place in any capital of the world.

Peter Robinson's work is to appear in an art capital. The style of work he will show at his exhibition at the Venice Biennale is to be seen, watered down a little, at the Anna Bibby Gallery.

This work makes the chattering noise of modern communications. In the past Robinson has shown hastily improvised, grossly overstated work about national identity with a lot of writing as part of the image. Now his work has a polished order that reflects a growing maturity of expression and, in this show, writing has been abandoned in favour of binary code.

The work is on high quality photographic paper. On its polished surface, he arranges the 0s and 1s of computer notation. This reflects his interest in physics as well as politics. Since he uses black, red and white on a large scale, the patterns made by the numbers are formal and impressive. The black and red may be a reference to traditional Maori pigments.

The nature of the patterns may also be a reference to Maori tukutuku patterns. The title of the exhibition, Everyone is the Other, suggests that every one is interconnected.

This is a reference game one could play for ever and indeed the works, which have the solemn air of a carving or an icon, invite one to wonder what they might spell out if one could read the code, and there is a tendency to squint as you hunt for an image.

Each of these works stands in isolation. At the Biennale it seems they will cover the wall and become a complete installation with models of Stealth bombers and molecular structure to lead the mind down even more avenues. This should create an increase in intensity which is the quality these isolated works most lack.

Another artist with a considerable body of work behind him is Dean Buchanan, who has an exhibition at the Warwick Henderson Gallery in Parnell.

Buchanan is a copious artist whose style and colour schemes are unmistakable and seldom vary.

If the works made a noise it would be the wind in trees and an occasional energetic burp on the part of the artist.

The work is tightly patterned and at its most effective when the patterns emerge from the twisting of vines around nikau stems and the filtering of light through the bush.

The paintings seem rather mass-produced when seen in bulk. But variations on the theme - in which still-life, particularly a bellarmine jug and Russian dolls, is integrated in the overall effect - are lively, decisive and effective decoration.

The squawk of seagulls is evoked by the accurate depiction of the character of the birds by Russell Jackson at the Studio of Contemporary Art in Newmarket. Gannet Rock - Waiheke Island is just such a work as this painter's reputation has been founded on for many years.

This show also reveals that he has command of the depiction of light on clouds in such works as Tasman Sea Sunset. Nothing surprising in this show but a firm confidence within set limits.