The galleries: Paradise is a world of contradictions

Oxymoron, now there's a word. A textbook term - about self-contradictory ideas - that is sometimes useful. Take this week, when some of the most interesting art displays a reverent irreverence - a solemn exterior and a radical, even witty, meaning.

This contradiction is expressed vividly in Heather Straka's work about the ambiguities of paradise, showing at the Anna Bibby Gallery in Newmarket until December 21.

Vivid applies to the striking images of her painting but not to her colour, which is generally subdued tones of grey, nor to the composition, which is usually simply centralised.

What are particularly memorable are the resonances, ambiguities and fertile contradictions expressed in images with the considerable power conferred by sound drawing and polished painting.

The most obvious instances are three paintings of Maori dignitaries with prominent moko. These copies from portraits by Lindauer emerge from tones of grey as immensely dignified ghosts of the past. They are given iconic qualities by having a shining Sacred Heart.

So far so good, as these are the saints of our iconography. But contradictory touches of irreverence also make the images very singular.

This oddity is reinforced by titles such as Bling, or The Forbidden Fruit, a title which adorns a figure with an apple on his head, making him a target like William Tell's son.

The contradictions are even more obvious in works such as Double-Happiness, where an obviously Japanese woman is adorned with moko.

Most subtle of all these impressive paintings is a series of beautifully painted landscapes in curious formats of leaf and fan shapes.

The landscapes are special examples of the extraordinary intensity of expression that Straka can achieve. This exhibition is her finest, with its qualities best expressed by an oxymoron - it has an eloquent oddity.

The contradictions extend to another exhibition at Anna Bibby by Megan Hansen-Knarhoi. It is called Crotchtit and employs grandma's traditional craft of crotchet to make charming patterns on the wall and hanging chandeliers of shapes.

The contrast is that the crotchet surrounds explicit details of what grandma would have called "privy parts".

One of Straka's images is of the Female Unicorn of New Zealand, an animal with the neck of a giraffe, the head of a horse and the proud horn of a unicorn. The body is adorned with a pattern that is specifically Maori and is similar to the patterns on the much more familiar, strange creatures of Bill Hammond.

He has created a world of green inhabited by strange creatures, solemn and melancholy. The feeling is reverent but slightly satirical.

The creatures are usually birds but sometimes their congregations are intruded on by horse-headed strangers. The works have a compelling atmosphere created by their colour and the wet drip of paint.

Hammond's show, at Ivan Anthony in Karangahape Rd until January 5, preserves the green background but dims to a pale and airy space, where in the past it was damp to the point of being sinister.

The paintings - all titled Ancestral - have other new features. Some of the birds have acquired whiplash tails.

In Hammond's world are profile heads which would be as monumental as an Egyptian statue but their faces have a slightly foolish expression.

What is common to his work of the past few years is the way heads, faces and wings are adorned with patterns of intricate delicacy.

In Ancestral O the patterns vary from entwined branches reminiscent of tattoo to leafy trees that are a long way removed from the simplicities of needle-oriented design.

Equally fine work adorns the three-headed running bird in Ancestral N but here, as elsewhere in this small show, there are unresolved difficulties with the slight shift in imagery.

Snake-like forms within the outline of heads end abruptly at the edge of the skull in a way that suggests they are not completely absorbed into the overall feeling.

This exhibition shows a falling-off in intensity from his usual power.

Then there is the art that finds beauty in belabouring art and artists. The edgy exhibition A Shadow of ONEself by Andrew Topp, downstairs at the Studio of Contemporary Art until December 16, is such a show.

It is based on the celebrated Devil's Dictionary by the American writer Ambrose Bierce, where almost every definition is an oxymoron. Texts from the dictionary are combined with angular, haunted, but aggressive little figures.

The targets are manifold, the constant presence is McCahon, and the overall feeling is acid and peculiar.