Art seen

<i>Bypass,</i> by Jessica Crothall

Jessica Crothall has taken a tectonic and artistic journey in her exhibition at Mint Gallery. Using the destruction of Christchurch's CBD in the February 2011 earthquake as her map and the influence of Colin McCahon as her compass, she has produced a series of bold abstract works.

The three sets of three paintings use a bold, rhythmic structure simultaneously implying the grid-like topography of the city and tangled girders. Working in harsh strokes of deep, sombre greens, violets and ivory blacks, the overlaying patterns form works of strength and illusory depth. The artist has created forms that reference not only McCahon, but also other New Zealand artists such as Robert Ellis, as well as European abstract expressionists and art informel artists such as Mondrian, Vedova and Vieira de Silva.

A second half to the exhibition lies hidden in drawers in the centre of the gallery. Here sits a series of watercolours that mix the abstract with more figurative work. Notably, and effectively, some of these pieces depict rescue workers in poses directly inspired by medieval and Renaissance religious frescoes. While these works seem to play second fiddle to the abstracts, both in terms of scale and location within the gallery, they are at least as worthy of recognition.

<i>Untitled,</i> by Jon Thom

Angels with dirty faces adorn The Artist's Room, thanks to the impressive charcoal portraiture of Jon Thom.

The close-up works, starkly presented against plain black or white backgrounds, effectively capture moment and expression. Thom has forged a career in fashion modelling, and this has given him the skill to create mood simply from the tilt of a subject's head and the slight curve of her lips. That the faces depicted are, in the main, professional models has no doubt helped to achieve this, but it is predominantly through the artist's skill with his medium that the results are as impressive as they are.

Thom's work is of two distinct forms. Many of the pieces are high-key images with minimal line and shading, presenting light faces against a light background. More impressive, however, are the lower-key works, with the faces in stark relief against black. In these works, Thom has taken the unusual step of starting dark and wiping away charcoal to reveal lit areas, rather than starting from white and building up the darkness. His faces effectively emerge from the gloom, the highlights showing the grainy textures which result from the faint residues of charcoal. The effect is powerful, and the resulting portraits are elegant and attractive.

<i>New World Order (still),</i> by Hayden Fowler

''Among the machines'' is a major exhibition of video art, using as its jumping-off point Samuel Butler's novel Erewhon. The novel, written and set in Victorian New Zealand, trod the borders of social satire and proto-science fiction, philosophising on technology and its implications for society.

In the current exhibition, work by some dozen artists is assembled to comment loosely on the same themes, seen from our age of rapid social and technological change. Many of the works touch only broadly on the subject, yet together they produce an effect that is both disturbing and, through their deliberate pacing, hypnotically soothing.

The disturbing elements of the display include those works where incongruous juxtapositions have been made, leaving unanswered questions for the viewer. Hayden Fowler's animal-related works are fine examples of this. More hypnotic are the slow colour changes of Ann Shelton's view of Butler's Mesopotamia Station, and - a highlight of the show - Daniel Crooks' multiple sandwiched urban alleyways. Jae Hoon Lee manages to combine the disturbing and hypnotic with his ecological images of melting Antarctic ice.

Another highlight of the exhibition displays a hopeful yet startling future, with Bronwyn Holloway-Smith's advertising video for a new Mars colony. The banal infomercial style and exotic vistas play off each other excellently in this impressive piece.