Exploring space and absence

Emily Wolfe's painting Lair. Photo / Greg Bowker

Space and absence are two intangible concepts that play an important part in exhibitions this week. Emily Wolfe is showing recent paintings at the Anna Bibby Gallery. The show is small but done in her established style of extremely delicate still lifes in pale colour.

These are atmospheric works tinged with melancholy. The touch of sadness that deepens these works beyond conventional still life comes from a sense of absence that things that were there have now departed.
A work called Paper Chain has the Wolfe trademark of faded wallpaper in the corner of a room. Hung on the walls and turning the corner is a paper chain that has evidently been there a while. This gives the effect of departed gaiety, of celebration that took place some time ago.

Lair is a birdcage complete with bells and mirror, and some sweet colour in the green and blue tray at the bottom. It sits in the light on a stool but casts only a dim shadow. At first glance it is an appealing piece of domesticity, but look closely and there is no food in the cage, no sand in the tray and the bird has only one leg, no beak and is artificial. The real bird and its song are absent.

Birds play a part, too, in Oystercatcher, which depicts a window with a thin tulle curtain with a pattern of birds on it. One corner is pulled aside to offer a hint of a world beyond the empty room.

The pale colours depart in an intriguing work called Queue showing three bright posies of flowers, like ballet dancers en pointe. One has a big ribbon around it and is fresh and triumphant. The second one has lost the ribbon and is rather less showy. The third one is falling. Such is life when you are on display. The brightness extends to other flowers under a glass dome to suggest absent friends. Less effective are paintings of bright porcelain figures, shiny and charming but cold. The theme survives in these works but is nowhere near as touching as the atmospheric interiors.

The group show Estrangement of Judgment at the Jensen Gallery also contains work given force by absence. It includes celebrated American artist James Casebere, who builds fascinating structures of arches, lit from outside with light from unseen windows. His structures have the weight and force of abandoned temples or vaulted reservoirs.

The works are photographs of these buildings. They are solemn evocations of memorable architecture and though there is a complete absence of people they are filled with a sense of history.

A sense of space is essential to the three-dimensional sculpture of Ray Haydon at Sanderson Contemporary Art in Parnell, his most inventive and original show yet. This is particularly true of the work in steel. His pieces in wood are not quite so vital. The intractable metal is used with great skill both as stainless steel and Corten steel, which has a rich rust-coloured surface. The Corten steel is used in the finest piece called Travel where the springy material is looped and twisted into a work full of lively movement and immaculate craftsmanship with no visible hint of the necessary welding. The quality of this piece depends on the rhythmic movement as your eye follows the paths of the work as it loops through the space it occupies. The steel also confers strength.

Such sculpture is often obvious and predictable in its curves but not in Haydon's work. A piece called Evolution displays intricate windings within the work but the highly polished strips of steel taper and expand, adding a springiness and energy.

History is also important in the work of Brendon McGorry at the City Art Rooms in an exhibition called This is the New Sound just like the Old Sound. The central piece, This Annunciation, is a self-portrait of the artist at work on a drawing. Under the colourful ceiling of his studio are the ghosts of artists who have been his inspiration: Van Eyck, Gozzoli, Cellini, El Greco and Jacques-Louis David.

The artist has the past in front of him rather than behind because it is real. The future, which is behind him and as yet unreal, is represented through all the painted works as loose masses of colour. The idea that this may have the beginnings of form and ideas is suggested by the dividing animal cells that float through some of the paintings. Colour also sets the tone. For instance, The Gifts has a prevailing moody blue.

There is a sense of development in the paintings. Daddy has six solemn guardian figures surrounding three children around a gas burner which connects with nutrition and danger. But everything is ambiguous - behind the guardians are fixed and conservative robot structures while change is indicated by the way paint runs in streams down the painting.

The paintings are the richest part of this exhibition. They are accompanied by big screenprints in black and white which are less complex though still ambiguous. Most impressive of these is Leaving Siam, which shows a boy wide-eyed and naive but potentially dangerous with a sword in one hand and a carving knife in the other. Around him in a cloud of allusions are such things as a tiger, a turtle and Asian gods.

In his previous exhibitions McGorry has been bold and direct, sometimes to the point of crudity. In this show he has attained a new and impressive complexity.

* For gallery listings, see www.nzherald.co.nz/go/artlistings

AT THE GALLERIES

* What: Recent Paintings, by Emily Wolfe
* Where and when: Anna Bibby Gallery, 226 Jervois Rd, to August 30

TJ says: Delicately coloured interiors and still life are given depth by a prevailing mood of melancholy and absence.

* What: The Estrangement of Judgment, by James Casebere, Gary Hill, Jude Rae
* Where and when: Jensen Gallery, 11 McColl St, Newmarket, to August 22

TJ says: A sense of mystery as well as a feeling of detachment contribute to remarkable work in video and still life alongside Casebere's extraordinary photographs.

* What: Advance, by Ray Haydon
* Where and when: Sanderson Contemporary Art, 251 Parnell Rd, to August 23

TJ says: Writhing, looping steel makes a rhythmic dance through space in this well-crafted show of abstract, decorative sculpture.

* What: This is the New Sound just like the Old Sound, by Brendan McGorry
* Where and when: City Art Rooms, Level 1, 28 Lorne St, to August 29

TJ says: Intensely personal combinations of expressionist colour and tightly drawn imagery that range through generations from embryo to age.