T J McNamara: Controls and freedoms

One problem modern artists face is how to keep tight control over the image, yet have emotional, expressive vigour and attack. One form of control is to combine sensitive observing and recording of material with passion in the presentation - which is what Giuseppe Romeo does in his eloquent Blind Faith installation, at Muka Gallery in Ponsonby until the end of March.

He takes photographs, prints them in a starkly contrasting black and white, reinterprets them as lithographs, assembles them in large groups, then provides the expressive energy by painting across them in sacramental red or funereal black.

The black, marmoreal effect of the work is reinforced by painting the floor and the skirting of the gallery black, then allowing the white of the wall to bleed into it.

The works are available as separate images, but the real power lies in the ensembles which together are a picture of an ageing, pious society and a baroque meditation on mortality and memorials.

The images include the ritual trappings of the last sacrament lying on a table next to a TV remote. We see hands and vessels that recall details of a painting of the Last Supper, alongside modern gatherings.

We see marble memorials carved with Latin inscriptions beside faces and still lakes.

All these pictures capture the way religious belief enters into the life and the history of a whole society.

Many of the images are powerful in themselves: a shrouded crucifix in Lent, ominous spikes in a doorway, a tomb sculpture with a helmet but no head, and all the paraphernalia of a long religious history linked to a modern reality.

The collective power of these pictures imposes order on a touching blind faith in a way that reaches our heart and our own sense of mortality.

Fatu Feu'u, whose latest exhibition is at the Warwick Henderson Gallery in Parnell, has found his solution to the opposing pulls of control and expression.

He paints his flowers, chevrons, masks and flying spirits with lively dashes of paint, but pulls it all together by confining his motifs within a grid.

The control is even more apparent in the recent works in this show where, alongside the bright, dashing painting which has now grown very familiar, there are also votive shapes carved from mother-of-pearl at the bottom or the side of paintings, which contrast with the painting with their hardness and sharp edges.

The artist also adopts another form of contrast between control and freedom when, in some works, he paints a realistic landscape above the pattern of symbols. This device has varying success.

In Avarua, the landscape painting is clumsy, but in Respect landscape and sea flow in a fluid way, and lettering on the work forms a coherent part of the image.

There is another work in the show where lettering is important. This work is called Love Sonnet. The words of love are the foreground and in the background is a female figure, strong, erotic and provocative.

These paintings suggest directions Fatu Feu'u might move in, beyond the repetition of his accepted style.

Control and freedom also reinforce the extreme contrast between the two painters whose work is on show at the McPherson Gallery until March 8.

The works by Paul Judd, included in his show called Sailing with Strangers, are small, neat, tight and symbolic, and hover halfway between painting and drawing.

He uses the boat as a symbol for life's voyages and puts people in his little boats to symbolise the nature of relationships.

A typical work is called Mooring.

In it, a man, bobbing about looking for somewhere to settle, is within reach of a mooring, an iron ring in a big block.

Above the mooring is a wall with a window and behind the window is a female presence who hopes that this person will pause at the mooring.

In another work called Berth, a very tidy man, in shirt, tie and hat, and more than a bit absurd, sits in his little boat feeling very safe and going nowhere.

Most subtle of all is Sailing with Strangers, where a couple, partners or newly-weds, look ahead, together but separate.

There are little joints at their shoulders and elbows which are a graphic reminder of William Blake's remark that when a man marries a wife, he finds out whether the woman's arms and legs are just glued on.

This delightful show is one of those unexpected exhibitions: tender, witty, observant, perhaps rather too self-consciously naive, but nevertheless shrewdly amusing.

The other part of the gallery is occupied by work by Rex Armstrong that is appropriately labelled Not Suitable for Children.

This is the provocative expression of dramatic, anguished thoughts that make up a story. Each twist and turn of the paint, mostly monochrome, suggests the role of an anguished, ageing man when the limp time comes.

The sudden eruptions of black, the runs of paint, the swirling convolutions are all emotionally driven, and control is at a minimum so the paintings at first seem wildly incoherent.

But if you care to follow each mark and take every blob as symbolic of a dramatic incident, the paintings will involve you.

The long titles of each painting are in themselves an analysis of the turmoil of spirit that provokes each, but any work that needs such an accompanying flurry of words to have meaning must be suspect.