Ways of reading meaning

By TJ MCNAMARA

Since McCahon, writing on painting has become almost obligatory in New Zealand. Two important shows this week are full of writing.

In the work of Andrew McLeod at the Ivan Anthony Gallery in Karangahape Rd, the writing takes various forms. On the big painting in the foyer, A Coward's Reward, the writing is often in pencil and blurred and painted over. You have to puzzle at it and squint to see it. The painting is blue imagery on a cream ground. The imagery is crude but complex. There is a figure, a balloon, and a flower that looks like a womb. It is patterned like wallpaper but there is never a hint of a repeat among its oddities.

The puzzle is to hunt through the images and writing to find meaning and connections.

Writing on a painting can be just decorative or it can be a prayer or a statement. Here the pencilled notes are less than decorative but also wilfully obscure. They add an unusual element of introspective mystery to an undeniably fascinating work.

The shapes link with other works which are more prints than paintings. The flower that looks like a womb is matched with an x-ray of a pregnant woman. Instead of a foetus is a spaceman watching television.

The rest of the show is a dry, precise comment on the art scene. Using computer imaging and inkjet printing, McLeod makes drawings of galleries. They are half architectural plan and half print. Through these diagrammatic works meanders text in eye-straining, small print. It says such things as "Art is all confusion and humiliation". The drawings, for all their precision of line, are confusing in concept, but it would be a pity if the artist saw the exhibition of these drawings as humiliating because they have precision, rich blacks, interesting design and are thought-provoking.

McLeod is an outstanding talent in the current dry, intellectual manner. His best work is not in this exhibition but over the road at Artspace, in a show curated by Anna Miles, Killeen: Social Observation in Recent Art.

Here, writing is everywhere. McLeod's work is an intricate plan in black and white of a suburb, showing the walls of each building. This splendid and visually fascinating image is surrounded by symbols for trees and a hint of sunset. Little stylised figures lie flat on beds and in bathrooms, and through the streets meanders a figure trailing a line of text about what it means to be an artist.

On the floor of the show is an immense and colourful pile of things collected by Peter Robinson. Most of them are kitsch, some are gently pornographic. They include old movie posters in German and a vast model junk - carrying junk, no doubt. The pile is called The End of the 20th Century and there are labels everywhere on it, including "Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here".

Robinson's ironic approach to the contemporary world is also found in Strategic Plan. It has a Maori face in the middle of Italian tourist attractions, and just as Hogarth did in the 18th century, it mocks those who adopt foreign vocabulary to get on in art. Surprisingly, it was done before Robinson ran away to Europe.

Then there is Richard Killeen, represented by one of his earliest paintings, showing a suburban couple, Your Daddy's Rich and Your Momma's Goodlooking, and a recent, very funny work about the cloning of Peter McLeavy.

Despite some irritating attitudes and the necessity of reading so much, this is a vigorous exhibition. John Reynolds' work quotes extensively from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land but the show contradicts itself by showing the Auckland art scene is far from being a wasteland - it's a place where art is lively and well.

The work of Jan Kaywood at the Morgan St Gallery also hovers between illustration and painting, but now and then hits the mark with surprising inventiveness. The stimulus is fashion, shoes and stockings. Notably, the single best work - If the Shoe Fits - has writing on it.