Art seen: Chaotic, erratic and quirky animals

Chanelle Carrick takes a look at the latest exhibitions around Dunedin.

"Drawings", Kirsten Ferguson (Inge Doesburg Gallery)

Kirsten Ferguson's latest drawings at the Inge Doesburg Gallery are quirky depictions of individuals from the animal kingdom.

Working in a highly gestural style, Ferguson presents an array of creatures, from a lion to a rodent-like figure, which evoke characters from children's stories.

The fact that the works are untitled, and that each animal is seen against the plain whiteness of the paper with no setting or context, encourages the viewer to create their own imaginative narratives for these characters.

In Ferguson's drawing of a lion, the animal's form is created out of fluid marks intertwined with each other, suggesting a sort of automatism to her working process.

Along with recognisable fauna, however, there are also depictions of hybrid creatures whose exact form is difficult to decipher.

In one work the body of a woman sitting in a chair is identifiable, while the figure's head appears bird-like, obscured by an erratic series of marks.

These forms bring to mind games where a picture is constructed by several people on one sheet of paper, each section hidden so the result is a jumble of mismatched heads, bodies, and legs.

Despite their childlike appearance however, Ferguson's creatures emanate a sense of unease, emphasised by their almost chaotic rendering.

"The Colour of Candour", Joanna Margaret Paul (Brett McDowell Gallery)

The current exhibition at the Brett McDowell Gallery showcases a fascinating collection of drawings and watercolours by the late New Zealand artist Joanna Margaret Paul.

These works clearly demonstrate Paul's delicate, and often sparing, use of colour and line.

In Untitled (Tiritiri Matangi Lighthouse), for example, much of the page is left blank, with only several small and decisive marks defining the structure of the lighthouse itself and blocks of bright blue indicating the sea.

In this and other works, it is clear that Paul relied on space as much as line in constructing forms.

Also clear in this exhibition is an interest in the everyday.

Flowers, water jugs, and dishes drying in the rack were all subjects for Paul, giving the impression that she was continuously recording the world around her.

That the images of dishes are both titled Self Portrait/Still Life is perhaps suggestive of her own personal reflections on daily life.

Paul manages to give the banal life, often directly adding poetic verses such as in the drawing But life is sound, innocent of deception, which invites the viewer into deeper contemplation.

By breaking forms down to their essential colours and lines, Paul further encourages the viewer to find their own thoughts in these drawings.

"Delusional Architecture", Eddie Clemens (Hocken Gallery)

On display at the Hocken Gallery is mixed-media work by Eddie Clemens, the most recent Frances Hodgkins Fellow.

With overtones of science-fiction (the title of the show, "Delusional Architecture", is a direct reference to the Terminator movies of the '90s) and household consumerism, Clemens' work is a mixture of structures made out of items as diverse as fluorescent lights, audio cable, wine bottles and brooms.

The title work consists of six large frames of cable weaved together to represent mesh fencing.

Each of these frames is punctuated by a gash or opening fringed with little orange lights.

Suggestive of escape, this work is both comforting and threatening, the pulsing lights mesmerising the viewer while the gaps in the wire indicate the presence of violence.

In each of his Fibre Optic Brooms Clemens has replaced the bristles of conventional brooms with colour-changing LED lights.

Light is also a major feature of the series "New World", which replaces the two-dimensional handles of shopping trolleys in large photographs with three-dimensional fluorescent tubing.

Jutting out from the wall, the handles seem to invite touch, yet their glaring brightness also reveals their dark, underground car park setting, giving the work a sinister overtone.