Art seen: April 30

Submerge, by Cristina Popovici
Submerge, by Cristina Popovici
''The Autumn Festival Art Exhibition'' (Lakes District Museum and Gallery, Arrowtown) 

The young subject of Paul Samson's highly textural Exam Time gazes pensively into the distance, her hands folded beneath her chin, her attention clearly not on her open books.

A short distance away, within the confines of her own frame, another young girl pauses and turns, her attention perhaps caught by a faint, mysterious murmuring in David John's Voices in the Wall #2.

The two portraits are among the many skilful entries in this year's Autumn Festival Art Exhibition in Arrowtown. The community exhibition always attracts a wide variety of subjects and mixed media, and standards are consistently high.

Among the landscapes, Jacquie Buick's Walter Peak and Lake Wakatipu is a glorious pop of colour and stylized design. Stark black outlines draw out the lighter tones, vividly highlighting the yellow and green of flowers and sun drenched hills.

Nigel Wilson's abstract Orchard Series is like looking through a haze of rain, the ground seeming to shimmer with puddles beneath the misty sky and autumnal trees.

The changing season is captured equally effectively in Esther Dexter's The Red Bicycle, where the trees merge into the background and the entire sky seems to resonate with a fiery glow.

Lissa Holland's Buckingham St Houses is a gentle, appealing work, reminiscent of early 20th century painters such as Evelyn Page with its seemingly effortless sweeps and dabs of colour.

With over 160 works on display, combining paintings, drawings, photography, ceramics and sculpture, there is sufficient diversity and talent that viewers should easily discover their own favourites.

Walter Peak and Lake Wakatipu, by Jacquie Buick
Walter Peak and Lake Wakatipu, by Jacquie Buick
''The Royal Queenstown Easter Show'' (Milford Galleries Queenstown)

Neil Dawson's Black Halos 9 is the shining star in a very bright sky at Milford Galleries Queenstown's ''Royal Queenstown Easter Show''. Created from powdercoated steel, the wall installation is deceptively fragile in appearance.

The solid frame seems to be all that contains the bouncing energy of the latticed discs within, as if, should it be whisked away, the jagged circles would fly freely about the room.

The work seems to be a dichotomy of strength and frailty, of pretty elegance and sharp angles. The discs could be delicate lace doilies, or they could be working machinery cogs. The cast of shadows against the white wall adds to the fascinating sense of dynamism.

Dick Frizzell's Bedtime is another gem of the collection. The pop art style of the painting results in an image that could have come straight out of a 1950s manual or book illustration.

Paul Dibble's gorgeous cast bronze Huia and Geometry physically dominates the gallery space with its size and presence, while the light shining on Galia Amsel's Halcyon turns the cast glass sculpture into molten caramel.

Emily Valentine's feathered dog bird hybrid Spancock is appealingly quirky, the peacock feathers of its ''fur'' deeply, richly beautiful in colour. Reuben Paterson's The Nebula NGC in Scorpius, crafted completely in glitter, combines vidid floral patterning with a hypnotic, kaleidoscopic background.

When staring into its centre, the work seems to shimmer and shift. Other pieces worth seeing include Brent Wong's slightly surreal Sandstorm and Pat Hanly's stained glass Bride and Groom 2.

Bedtime, by Dick Frizzell
Bedtime, by Dick Frizzell
''I am Colour'', Cristina Popovici (Gallery Thirty Three, Wanaka)

Colour seems to explode from the walls of Wanaka's Gallery Thirty Three with brilliant, dynamic intensity. Abstract painter Cristina Popovici's new exhibition ''I am Colour'' is the exploration of an artist, a celebration of her tools, a literal outburst of colour.

Melbourne based Popovici is an ''action artist'': she transfers energy into the artwork through every deliberate movement, slashing and splashing and intricately layering forms across her huge canvases.

Popovici is fascinated by the dual roles of colour and texture in communicating thought, feeling and motion.

Her paintings are a composite of different materials and textural surfaces. There are areas of frenetic activity, where paint has literally been thrown at its target, that slide into smooth stencilling and glazing.

The works seem to buzz with energy and confident purpose, giving the impression that every haphazard dot and squiggle was fully intentional. And they are beautiful.

There is a temptation with abstract pieces to look for recognisable shapes, but here it is the astonishing variety of textures that hold the eye. From every different angle, the paintings seem to reveal new shapes and techniques.

Popovici refuses to be restricted by any rules about complementary colours; she paints as she feels. Her few ventures into sculpture are equally vivid proof of her hands on approach to self expression.

The rough, intriguing self portrait bust I am Colour Black bears testament to her art practice, with traces of knuckle marks left where she literally punched and pulled the clay into a semblance of her own features.

- Laura Susan

 

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