Art seen

> "Poisons", Martin Sullivan (Temple Gallery)

The Temple Gallery is a fitting venue for Martin Sullivan's "Poisons", as the works create a secular, yet religious space.

The organic forms are nightmare totems of death, yet also a refreshing celebration of life. The pieces date from the artist's formative years in the profession, during the early 1990s. A master of many materials, Sullivan has used strongly carved wood and fired metal, as well as found objects and other materials.

The two central items in the show are intricate bamboo and wire structures holding the skeletons of birds. They appear simultaneously as contrived traps and fetish objects, raising these long-dead creatures to a mythical, symbolic level. The cruciform poses are particularly telling; the creatures died, but we celebrate their resurrection as art, and through art leave our own undying marks.

Other works take the form of disfigured metallic busts and small arcane offerings, and a finely carved wooden human skeletal torso hangs from the ceiling by a hefty chain.

Pride of place, in my opinion, would go to a small, beautifully carved hinged triptych, whose outer casing echoes medieval art of the plague years. Within is a delicate, richly coloured night skyscape - a world of hope locked away from the nightmare of reality.

> "The Wreath Series", Anet Neutze (Glue Gallery)

Dunedin welcomes a new art space with last weekend's opening of Glue in Stafford St. The venue includes a shop, studios, and a small gallery space in its labyrinthine complex, and Friday's opening included a launch of a show in the Glue Gallery by Anet Neutze.

As with Martin Sullivan, Neutze's show reflects on life amid death, in this case exemplified by the wreath of freshly blooming roses often used to symbolise passing. For Neutze, the wreath becomes a ring-shaped motif around which she weaves her work. The paintings consist of large vertical diptychs, mostly featuring the circular pattern of the wreath in silhouette, either black on white or in negative form.

The wreaths are hard-edged and detailed, standing out strongly against muted and softened backgrounds, giving the pieces a striking three-dimensional quality. Works like the simply-titled Wreath, with its lace- or bacteria-like white patterns and faded blooms show the delicacy with which the artist has approached the pieces.

The series culminates in the show's one wreathless image, Absence, its sombre sea of grey petals and half-gathered forms providing a cathartic closure to the grieving process, and an effective conclusion to the show.

> "My Little Empire", Peter Lewis (None Gallery)

Further down Stafford St, None Gallery presented a short exhibition of collages by Peter Lewis. Lewis' art creates a humorous nightmare of a world, its images drawn from low art and popular culture. These are juxtaposed in a surreal manner, to become a universe where the laws of logic do not hold and the non-sequitur reigns supreme.

Lewis' influences range from the Surrealist cut-outs of Ernst through to pulp comic art, and he weaves his landscapes well to produce his outlandish scenes. Solidly painted canvases are overlaid with cut-out pieces from comics and magazines, resulting in a cut-and-paste visual mash-up.

Speech balloons provide clues to the actions in this feverish landscape, but their offhand illogic, often emphasised by the titles of the works, presents only more mysteries as the viewer is drawn deeper in.

The technique is far from new, but it is the skill with which the images are put together that is the making or breaking of the art. Lewis succeeds in creating solid, believable yet outlandish worlds, perhaps most effectively with his monochromatic Gimme Gimme Shark Treatment. In this piece, the starkness of the black and white add to the faintly Edwardian air of its little fantasy empire.