Art seen: Portraits of a city

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

"Lasting Impressions", Richard Hansen (The Artist's Room)

Richard Hansen likes Dunedin.

This much is clear from the loving portrayals of the city in his latest exhibition at the Artist's Room.

The artist is well-known for two specific types of subject - delicate still lifes, often set against open, clear vistas, and townscapes, often focusing on the interplay of shadow and streetscape.

The latter works are to the fore in this collection.

In a series of 12 large oils on canvas, Hansen has depicted scenes from the city, using a light touch to produce affectionate, warm works.

The painting style is gently impressionistic, the brushwork loose but focused.

In several of the pieces there is something almost watercolour-like about the finished result - the gentle colours and high-key images have a refreshing feel, like the air on a spring morning.

The images are at their best when wide panoramas are employed, placing the viewer at the centre of the action, as is the case with the Octagon scene, Summer Shade.

Other standout works include Stuart Street Shadows, with its view from Anzac Square, and the tranquil moored boat seen in Docked.

"Cross Purposes" (Quadrant Gallery)

The cross is one of the most pervasive symbols in human culture.

As such, it makes a potent subject of an exhibition of jewellery, such as that at Quadrant.

Five artists have interpreted the cross in numerous ways, from the Christian to the astronomical.

Chris Idour has used the Southern Cross as a central theme for a set of delicate pieces in fine gold and diamond.

These items have a shimmering, iridescent quality which is most appealing.

David McIndoe has taken natural quartz veins in hard, dull stone to create simple yet elegant pieces featuring natural cross patterns.

Chaim Cleaver's pieces stray slightly from the cross theme, with a series of intricately twisting sterling silver brooches and other fine pieces including ruby "blood-droplet" earrings.

Ingrid Kaddatz's work has the most narrative content of the exhibition - each of her pieces depicts a common phrase, and the stories they tell are told with skill, potency, and no small amount of humour.

Stephen Myhre has travelled farthest from the concept of jewellery, with a series of large worked pebbles.

The smooth burnished cross forms on the stones hark back to traditional Maori anchor-stones, while simultaneously referencing European flags and colonial Christianity, making the worked and unworked areas of stone into an attractive and effective political statement.

"Au" (Temple Gallery)

Though ostensibly a group show, the latest exhibition at the Temple Gallery is basically given over to works by Mary McFarlane and Ralph Hotere.

Most of the works are McFarlane's, with Hotere's work consisting of one large metal panel and two smaller paper works.

English songwriter Robyn Hitchcock once sang that he had a full moon in his soul.

So, too, does McFarlane, whose work celebrates and commemorates the rare astronomical combination which has produced two blue moons in recent months.

The distressed mirrored surfaces each represent the full moon's circle of imperfectly reflected light enclosed within the slick black of the night sky.

The works take two forms - circular mirrors mounted within round frames and circular areas left reflective within the surfaces of black lacquered mirrors, their reflective inky darkness surrounding the treated yellowed metal which seems to shiver and shift with the light.

The star of the show is the giant Hotere work, a Cross of Lorraine from his "Around Midnight" series.

This previously unexhibited work, stunning in its own right, enlarges on McFarlane's pieces.

Its lacquered black and metal perfectly complements the moon forms.

It becomes a stable reference, a sextant reading to calculate and fix the astronomical spheres in their paths.