T. J. McNamara: Artists set out to make a little bit of history

Opinion

This week at the galleries is divided between more photography from the festival and group shows of art. Together they exemplify the way some former aims of art, such as the creation of national myth and social commentary, have been shifted away from painting to film and photography.

The splendid exhibition called Picturing History at the New Gallery shows two versions of our founding myths. Given prominence is the famous dramatic painting of the arrival of the Maori by Charles Goldie and Louis Steele. As a pastiche of Gericault's great shipwreck painting, The Raft of the Medusa, it is full of Romantic images of hunger and despair. Probably the best-known picture in the country, its drama has conditioned the way we think the voyage happened. It creates a legend that shades into myth as it explains or gives image to a great natural phenomenon - the migration of peoples.

Kenneth Watkins' big painting, The Legend of the Voyage to New Zealand, is in the next room. Here is a more serene version of the arrival of the Great Fleet with a warrior throwing his brilliant red-feathered headdress away because he thinks there are plenty of vivid red birds in the new island. He has mistaken the scarlet of the pohutukawa for birds. It is a much less dramatic version of the myth but suggests more skilled navigation.

Few of our painters work in this way today though some of the very best do such as Shane Cotton, who also features prominently in this exhibition about our heritage. Mostly the creation of our myth is left to films such as The Piano or Whale Rider and photography has taken over social comment.

The central library is showing the work of Harold Schmidt who had an extensive photography business in Queen St in the late 19th and on into the next century. His art photography, The Warrior, The Dancer, Wrestlers, Hearts of Oak (a sailor pulling on a rope), are utterly conventional. Painting did that sort of generalised subject much bigger and better. Of more enduring quality and insight as social commentary are the handsome family and wedding photographs as well as wide shots of early Auckland.

Modern social commentary, albeit enigmatic and paradoxical, is part of the purpose of the exhibition called Everything You Think is Wrong by Jennifer Mason at Oedipus Rex. This is not studio photography but social situations posed with more or less success.

The prints without people are merely amusing such as The Goose and the Golden Poo but most push for deeper content. Calamine Lotion shows an older woman dutifully anointing the legs of a young one. Spilt lotion makes a white splash on the bare floor and on an adjoining table sit three sparse meals - burnt chops with carrots. The interior is bare and bleak and beyond the prominent door, through which a third person might come to claim some rights

indicated by the meal, is darkness. This image and Rich, showing an older man with a wedding ring and a girl without a ring watching TV together, are dense and full of tension.

Others such as The Storm and Interview set up a situation which makes only a slight comment and, at times, have that sense of condescension that bedevils liberal photographers when dealing with the less fortunate.

Just a hint of this is found in the work of Allan McDonald at Anna Miles Gallery. He is a fine and dedicated photographer whose work has often dealt with displacement and decay. An impressive previous show was of half-dismantled state houses waiting to be shifted to new locations. In the present series he has taken direct frontal shots of shop facades from Otahuhu to Petone.

He has chosen run-down, derelict shops often with crude signage and damaged facades. In some ways this is a brilliant thematic show but the social implications have a sour vein. It creates no lasting legend but extends the experience of comfortable levels of society about things they seldom see.

In the same gallery Edith Amituanai, who has achieved a great reputation with her photographs of Pacific Island people in their home situations, has shifted her attention to a migrant Burmese family. Her photographs of the group, which say a good deal about their cross-cultural situation and aspirations, are direct, honest and non-judgmental.

The big exhibition of abstract art by local and international artists at Jensen Gallery provides a telling contrast. This is a puritanical art which concentrates only on visual experience independent of any social message. It creates no myths.

Among the American artists is Fred Sandback who makes lithographs with three lines distilling the essence of how space is perceived. In Sunset Alex Katz reduces water, land, sky and reflection to plain shapes of the utmost simplicity. There is no detail, just a wide generalisation of the memory of sunset over water. A work by the famous abstractionist Ellsworth Kelly is a simple geometric arrowhead in green. This work is visually strong seen right down the length of this large gallery but has little emotional impact.

The work of Jude Rae is instantly appealing. The still-life paintings she is showing here are watercolours with a rich transparency that offers a quite different experience from her oils. Nevertheless, the subjects are the same - cups, vessels and red fire-extinguishers. The work is vivid and energetic, transforming the commonplace.

The work of Holly Shepheard at Seed Gallery is completely abstract and conveys the utmost spontaneity. It is simply swirls of colour on a white background. The colour is trapped between layers of resin and the work is unframed so it appears as thick shiny tablets. The effect is of a natural burst of fluid colour captured and held in all its intricacy.

These deft little works are supplemented by a neat set of prints which also have the movement of liquid but they are adorned with bright dabs of colour. It makes a confident and intriguing first exhibition.

At the galleries

What: Picturing History: Goldie to Cotton
Where and when: New Gallery, to Feb
TJ says: A grand exhibition of some of Auckland Art Gallery's most iconic paintings and photographs. Everyone should visit.

What: Herman Schmidt: Portrait Photographer, 1872-1959
Where and when: Level 2, Auckland Central Library, to August 30
TJ says: A commercial photographer in Auckland was excellent when taking group shots of a family of 10 children ; utterly conventional when trying for "arty" effects.

What: Everything You Think is Wrong, by Jennifer Mason
Where and when: Oedipus Rex Gallery, Khartoum Place, to June 27
TJ says: A mixed bag of posed and altered photographs that at their best make a tense if oblique comment on relationships.

What: Edith Amituanai & Allan McDonald
Where and when: Anna Miles Gallery, 4J Canterbury Arcade, to July 4
TJ says: Two really sharp photographers - one focused on people in their environment and the other on change and decay in lower socio-economic areas.

What: C6H10O5
Where and when: Jensen Gallery, 11 McColl St, Newmarket, to June 27
TJ says: Sometimes very beautiful, clear, pure abstract art by local and international artists and one set of vibrant still-life.

What: Holly Shepheard
Where and when: Seed Gallery, 23A Crowhurst St, Newmarket, to June 21
TJ says: Fluid colour caught in abstract patterns bound into the surface of tablet forms. A promising first exhibition.