Art seen: Ambiguous characters and exceptional framing

James Dignan takes a look at the latest exhibitions around Dunedin.

"In motion", Elizabeth Rees (Milford Galleries)

Elizabeth Rees has returned to the Milford with a fine series of paintings depicting runners in motion.

Rees' works are presented as ambiguous freeze-frames from some non-existent movie, a perception enhanced by the occasional use of framing reminiscent of the edges of film.

The anonymous figures move across the canvas, their actions expressed through short directional brushwork, blurring background and figure as though the viewpoint has panned during the painting process.

The enigmatic characters are shown silhouetted against luminous crepuscular light, adding an air of mystery about their actions.

Presented around the walls of the gallery, the images become a classical Greek frieze or the stills from one of Muybridge's early experiments in cinematography.

There is a distinct sense of continuation from Rees' previous works, both in subject matter and in the gentle, pastel coloration prevalent in many of the canvases.

In some pieces, however, the artist has experimented with bold departures from her previous stylings.

Most notable of these is Fun run, in which the nameless athletes appear in bright brick-like tones against a dark background.

The resulting image, almost a photographic negative of the other works, makes the figures seem to leap dynamically from the canvas into the gallery space.

" ... And of no obvious use", Ruth Myers (Temple Gallery)

To call Ruth Myers' latest exhibition challenging is somewhat of an understatement.

On initial viewing, it is difficult to know what to make of the moulded photographs and wax and clay cast-offs that dot the gallery.

To compound matters, the work is far removed from the artist's better-known small, solid sculptural works.

With some information things become clearer.

The exhibition, completed as part of Myers' masters course, is created as a tribute to loss, a threnody to the death of the artist's mother.

This loss has left a chasm in Myers' life, and this gap has been explored sculpturally through negative space.

The clay and wax cast-offs are, more accurately, casts moulded from body parts and ephemera in a vain attempt to create a solid, three-dimensional memory trace.

The photographs chronicle and reflect the process, charting the casting and simultaneously mimicking the process through their own three-dimensional warping.

Whether the artist has been successful in creating an effective "finished product' is a moot point, but it is of limited importance.

The concept of attempting the impossible, of freezing time and cementing memory in permanence is the main aim here, and in that the process and acknowledgement of the artist's limitations is in itself a success.

"The grad show", (Blue Oyster Gallery)

This year's Blue Oyster Grad Show presents work by six recent fine arts graduates from Otago Polytechnic.

Three artists have chosen to examine ordinary materials in extraordinary forms.

Debbie Adamson's work is a clever tribute to, and comment on, farm life, using gumboots cut and sculpted into coils of rubber barbed wire.

One ubiquitous rural symbol is thus turned into another.

Gwen Hudson also deals with agricultural science by turning a prosaic material, felt, into giant genetically-modified plant structures.

John Paxie's Hanging ellipses impressively presents fired clay in hanging loops which look as if they are still soft and stretching.

The hardened nature of the work confounds the expectations gained from the material's shape.

Both Alex MacKinnon and Lars Preisser have created audio-visual pieces.

MacKinnon's work is a literal and metaphorical sonic wall, with a tangle of sound equipment creating an undulating drone which emits from a barrage of mounted speakers.

Preisser presents a self-referential woven cloth, incorporating into its weft audio cables.

These carry a recording of the weaving process, a sound also represented in the waves incorporated in the cloth's pattern.

The sixth artist, Jesse Simon, effectively uses overlaid digital photographs to create composite views of well-known buildings and places, encouraging us to form new views of these landmarks.