Brett McDowell Gallery has pulled off a significant coup in hosting an exhibition by major Anglo-Portuguese artist Paula Rego.
The latter half of Rego's long career has been marked by mannered, classically influenced figurative art inspired by folk tales. Much of this work has blended the styles of painting and printmaking into a seamless whole, often through the use of several different printmaking techniques, all of which she has excellently mastered. The works are narrative, and often disturbing or transgressive in a way that echoes the work of German expressionists such as Max Beckmann.
The Dunedin exhibition is drawn from works spread across the past 25 years, mostly combinations of etching and aquatint. Pieces such as Stitched and Bound show the distinct use of different techniques within the one work in a way that promotes the lucid strength of the subject matter and composition. Other works presented are lithographs, among them the large, stark The Keeper. This sombre piece is thrown into perspective by its placement alongside the evocative Tiger Lily on Marooner's Rock, with its gentle muted tones.
Opportunities to see exhibitions by artists of Rego's international stature come by rarely in Dunedin, and this is a fine chance to see an excellent range of such an artist's work.
Two disparate exhibitions share the walls of the Milford Galleries. Both have a similar starting point, the age of discovery and exploration straddling the decades immediately before and after the start of the 20th century. From this point, however, the two worlds presented veer in wildly different directions.
Jenna Packer's "Anchored" continues the artist's alternative timeline of the era of sail and steam, a study in which she has previously presented us with scenes of anachronistic fleets moored under skies bedecked with airships and giant insects. The works are rendered with a delicate, glazed appearance and antique, sepia-tinged tones.
While continuing with this steampunk-like premise, the artist has moved to more intimate works, for which the title, "Anchored", is most appropriate. While still images of recognisably antipodean coast, the scenes are now grounded in the populated and colonised land. It is against these backgrounds that the action now takes place.
The presence of man-made structures has produced strong perspective lines in the works.
The vessels, though still present, no longer overwhelm the images, but are presented as individual craft with their own stories. These two features have made the works stronger and more evocative, and allowed the artist much-needed space and freedom to further explore the narratives of the scenes.
Where Jenna Packer has used the Victorian and Edwardian era to launch her flights of fantasy, Peter James Smith has turned to the real discoveries of the era, and to the determination of its hardy explorers to conquer the frozen South.
"Windless Bight", inspired in part by the artist's travels to the Antarctic , presents images and thoughts on the Big Ice and its exploration. Scenes are presented as if sketched in the journals of Scott, Shackleton, and their contemporaries.
Other works are presented as images from postcards, the tinted picture postcard being a sought-after collector's item at the turn of the century.
As with Smith's earlier exhibitions, which have dealt with earlier maritime exploration, the paintings are presented as images within a black frame, heavily annotated with thoughts and impressions as if from the explorers themselves.
The mathematics of mapmaking is less evident in this series of works than previously, but this seeming silence is appropriate given the nature of the land being described which - though ironically deafeningly loud - stills the viewer to a silent awe. Nature is at its most raw in the polar regions and mortality is a constant companion, and something of this sense of the silent edge between life and death, success and failure, comes through in these well-rendered works.
![Untitled (c. mid 1990s, [pink 3]), by Martin Thompson, 415mm×590mm. Photo: courtesy of Brett...](https://www.odt.co.nz/sites/default/files/styles/odt_landscape_small_related_stories/public/story/2024/02/untitled_pink_3.jpg?itok=Q0aQrc9o)
