'Private Utopia: Contemporary art from the British Council collection'' (Dunedin Public Art Gallery)
A major exhibition of art from the British Council Collection, ''Private Utopia'' is currently being hosted by the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
It contains work by a wide variety of contemporary British artists, including such enfants terribles as Tracey Emin and Grayson Perry, alongside other familiar and up-and-coming names.
There is depth and breadth to the display, which covers many media and themes, often linking current art practices with social arts and sciences ranging from comics to anthropology.
The gallery's entire first floor is given over to the display, which is loosely divided by theme.
''Tale and fable'' is one such, exemplified by Mike Nelson's painstaking re-creation of an artist's studio, and a fine, if graphic, iconoclastic ceramic work by Grayson Perry.
Adam Chodzko's photographic series following a group of wild animals released in a large building is also intriguing, as is a haunting video by Elizabeth Price comparing and contrasting the forms of architecture, dance, and flame.
The appropriation of everyday objects for art is a second major theme, prominently represented by Martin Boyce's large kinetic sculpture.
Ed Hall's impressive folk-art inspired banners also make a bright, powerful addition to the collection, as do a series of subtle impressive paintings by Laura Lancaster.
A further theme, ''Myself/Yourself'' reminds us that the age of the selfie extends a long tradition of self-portraiture. Here we encounter Sarah Lucas's disturbing self-photographs and a large wall hanging by Tracey Emin.
The gallery's main corridor features darkly humorous etchings by Jake and Dinos Chapman and bold poster-like prints by Gary Hume.
From here, we reach ''Landscape and mindscape'', with works ranging from David Shrigley's poignant I'm dead and Anna Bariball's play on colour perception through to George Shaw's sinister, crepuscular painted suburbia.
Peter Doig also presents some fine landscape etchings. The exhibition concludes with a startling Roger Hiorns work consisting of thistles turned into magical jewelled forms by immersion in copper sulphate solution.
Dunedin is the only Australasian host of this exhibition's tour, so we are lucky to have it on view.
As is always the case with contemporary art, there are works where either you get it or you don't, and while several pieces left me cold, this was more than compensated for by those works which did resonate on one or more levels.
In many cases, the works gain impact after a second viewing, and this exhibition definitely deserves repeated visits. (Note: Several of the works contain adult themes, so discretion is advisable.)
''Mummoke'', Richard Killeen (Brett McDowell Gallery)
Auckland artist Richard Killeen is presenting an exhibition of new and old work at the Brett McDowell Gallery.
Killeen has long worked with the principles of outline and shape, and in recent years, these qualities have been augmented by a search for a unique coded language. His images play with words and form, using both to create a personal symbolism.
In the older works on display, which hark back several decades, Killeen's use of the juxtaposition of solid coloured forms creates surreal interplays of object, demanding that the viewer attempts to merge these forms into a whole, to create a narrative.
In the artist's more recent works this merging process is predesigned by the artist.
In a continuation and extrapolation from his 2014 exhibition at the same venue, Killeen presents a series of portmanteau figures in which individual words and objects have been fused to create gestalt forms that are more than the sum of their parts.
The resultant images become a series of occult runes, drawing inspiration from sources as widely separate as Egyptian hieroglyphs and stained-glass windows.
As with last year's exhibition, these are rendered digitally by the artist into thought-provoking puzzles, laced with the artist's humour as well as with his own distinct style.
