Art seen: 31 July

"Movement of Squares", by Paul Maseyk
"Movement of Squares", by Paul Maseyk
''One Pot Wonder'', Paul Maseyk (Dunedin Public Art Gallery)

In ''One Pot Wonder'', the Dunedin Public Art Gallery is presenting a series of highly impressive forms by master ceramicist Paul Maseyk.

These pots - perhaps totems is a more accurate word - form a series of large-scale sculptural works which are as audacious in their surface designs as in the scale and scope of the forms themselves.

Maseyk draws influences from everywhere; his pots owe a debt to classical Greece, his surface designs to artists ranging from Jasper Johns to Bridget Riley, and from Lichtenstein's cartoon-as-art to ''subtle'' erotica.

There is a grandeur in many of these pieces (largely created by their size and their forms' classical origins), but that grandeur is deliberately punctured by self-deprecation.

A sense of humour is very much in evidence in many of the pieces, especially those which use images from anatomical texts.

Politics is also present, most notably in a work pointedly commenting on the imbalance between agriculture and the environment in the light of New Zealand-China trade deals.

Most intriguing of the pieces are the more monochromatic works which are overwhelmed by the detail in their surface art, and those geometric forms (such as Check-mate!) where the surface's curves and patterned grids create optical tricks which are as sensuous as they are sensory.


"Untitled", by Kate Williamson
"Untitled", by Kate Williamson
''Kate Williamson'' (Dunedin International Airport)

Dunedin Airport's main terminal is an unlikely and difficult venue for art, its gallery qualities understandably playing second fiddle to its more functional activities. Yet there is space for art, which current airport artist Kate Williamson has filled well.

Williamson has presented a series of seven large-format works, all of which depict her particular brand of dream landscape.

Her images, which take advantage of a semi-gestural, semi-abstract approach, become large colour-stained realms in which lone figures wander as if inhabiting their own otherwise deserted lands.

The effect is of solitude, both in terms of the loneliness and distance of the figures, but also in terms of their self-reliance and oneness with their surroundings.

Perhaps Williamson's most impressive ability with these works is her skill in depicting landscapes with surprising depth.

These wide-angle vistas stretch back to some distant horizon, and the characters within inhabit a strongly three-dimensional space.

Interestingly, alongside these large works are two much smaller images by the artist, each of which is of a far more real-world-based subject.

Both of these are impressive, though the positioning of the lone seated figure in the painting of an otherwise effective sweep of coastline is perhaps an unnecessary cliche.


"Presbyterian Church", Invercargill, by Ron Esplin
"Presbyterian Church", Invercargill, by Ron Esplin
''A Portrait of Southland'', Ron Esplin (Green Island Gallery)

Ron Esplin is continuing the tour which earlier brought us the exhibition ''A Portrait of Otago'' with a new series of watercolour paintings depicting our southern neighbour.

In a series of 21 works, the artist has presented us with a homage to the towns and country of Southland, with works approximately evenly divided between the urban and the rural.

In all of them his skills as a watercolour artist are evident, though it is the different ways with which he has coped with these two subjects which is perhaps of most interest.

Esplin's town and city images, exemplified by his painting of an Invercargill Presbyterian church and of Gore's old Creamoata Mill, have a strong, draughtsman-like quality.

Lines are strongly depicted, with hue being used only to provide depth and shading to the images.

By way of contrast, his rural images have a freer, more impressionistic feel. Early Light Near Clinton, for example, reduces the land to a series of bold flattened forms, and this approach is carried to an even greater extent with the artist's evocative images of Mitre Peak and Fiordland.

In the latter of these works, the land becomes an enigmatic but impressive series of stratified hill forms, giving a sense of the land as much as a true representation of it.

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