''Facing the Mountain'', Simon Edwards (Milford Galleries)
Simon Edwards' latest exhibition at Milford Galleries presents a series of large-scale mountain landscapes, painted in oil on aluminium sheet.
As with the peaks they depict, the works are breathtaking.
The craggy slopes have been captured majestically, realistically emerging and disappearing into the brittle, misty air.
Using a limited palette of white, Prussian blue and viridian, the mountains appear solid and mysterious above the liquid intensity of the bush slopes.
White takes centre stage, the whole atmosphere of the works being suffused with its ethereal presence.
The paintings have been made with a deft combination of brush and knife, the latter providing solid white snowdrifts among the distant peaks, and producing a three-dimensional element to the pieces.
The aluminium base and repeated thin translucent washes of paint and glaze give the works a delicate satiny lustre, from which this rough knifework emerges as a stark contrast.
The artist has also used a similar combination of techniques to great advantage in the reflections on mountain streams shown in several of the works.
The paintings show a mastery of stroke; Edwards has overlaid a minimum of gestural line on an intensely worked base, yet still beautifully conveys the scenery which he depicts, and simultaneously does such landscapes true justice.
''From Whaling to Watching'', Janet de Wagt (Gallery De Novo)
Our nation's history is inextricably linked with that noblest of aquatic creatures, the whale.
Our first European migrants came here to hunt the whale; more recently whale-watching has become a major industry and conservation of these giant mammals has been an ecological priority.
Between and around these extremes, whales inhabit the country's myths as much as they do the ocean surrounding us.
Janet de Wagt's latest exhibition explores our interwoven coexistence with the whale.
The works form several series: extended panoramic vistas of sites connected with Otago whaling; circular images, many relating to cetacean behaviour; finally, a series of cutout forms of three types of whale depict the creatures' lives and our interaction with them.
These latter pieces, in the form of the blunt-headed sperm whale, the long-flippered humpback, and the arched-mouthed right whale, are particularly fine.
These outlined paintings depict scenes ranging from Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior through to scrimshaw carving.
Most impressive of all are those works where the artist has directly depicted the whales, as in a charming and endearing piece showing a mother and calf, where the deftly shaded charcoal grey of the animals' bodies is broken only by the ghostly yellow barnacled callosities on the creatures' heads.
''Needle Doodles'', Desi Liversage (Mint Gallery)
Desi Liversage's ''Needle Doodles'' are a series of threaded sketches upon colourful found fabrics.
The geometric, web-like structures are an abstraction of random thoughts, embodied in fabric form by a slow, obsessive process.
The cloths themselves are often scraps of clothing from friends and family.
While the initial impression is of bright, playful craft pieces, there is a darker underlying theme in many of the items.
In some ways, Liversage is homing in on similar territory to the brutal neo-dadaist constructs of James Robinson.
Both artists wilfully manipulate their canvases and symbolically cover these bases with harsh, rhythmic patterns.
In both cases, too, the darkest element is often the text, which is intrinsic to the work.
Liversage's text offers cynical adages such as ''Home is where the hate is''.
This combination of the implied domesticity of needlecraft samplers with bitter messages is telling; the artist herself states that the pieces were created ''during the course of a difficult six months''.
Many, too, were made to a background of music by Patti Smith, a singer known for straddling the dichotomy of domestic life and raw punk power.
Liversage states the works were a form of contemplative meditation.
Perhaps, too, they formed an effective catharsis for any deeply bruised emotions.
