(Milford Galleries Dunedin)
When one thinks of hard-edged geometric abstract painting, subtlety is not normally the first thought that comes to mind, yet in the work of Leanne Morrison — currently on display at Dunedin's Milford Gallery — it is the perfect term to describe her art.
On the face of it, Morrison's works are strong, bold arrangements of stark coloured strips, in which the interplay of shape and form is the primary aesthetic. A closer inspection reveals that there is far more to the artist's canvases than this might suggest.
Morrison's paintings are not solid, uniform colour, but gently shift in tone across the surface — a surface which is textured into a stippled, asphalt-like surface. What appears at first to be a single tone slowly reveals itself to be a delicate array of shades. Beyond this, there is a deliberate attempt in Morrison's art to get behind the process, to show how the work is (as in the exhibition's title) constructed. Areas of canvas are left deliberately bare, and paint is applied to suggest the shape of the wooden stretchers that hold the canvas in place. The result is to produce works that are more than simply painted surfaces, but pieces which imply the three-dimensional nature of the complete artworks and emphasise the thoughts which went into their construction.
"Helen Back and Andy McCready"
(The Artist’s Room)
There is a Japanese concept, Wabi-sabi, which stresses that if an object has been broken and repaired, it is somehow more beautiful and valuable.
If that is true, it makes sense that a person who has been broken and has had the strength to repair themselves is equally beautiful. So it is with the broken individuals who are found in Helen Back’s tragicomic sculptures. These characters are clearly not "right" by society’s strict standards, but are soldiering through their lives, and are all the more curiously attractive because of it.
Back’s work, currently on display at The Artist’s Room, shares exhibition space with a series of intriguing mixed media works on board by Andy McCready. McCready’s images, which she describes as "lowbrow", seem to take their cue from advertising displays from the mid to late 20th century, albeit with occasional references to current and local culture. Coloured in pastel tones, the subjects are beamed in from the ’50s and ’60s "in crowd", as diluted through commercial magazine imagery, and are displayed with their signature fashion accessories on shaped surfaces. There is a gentle dark humour in the works, and an enjoyable emphasis on the evocative, fleeting, and quickly passe patterns and styles of the era.
"Figuratively Speaking", Marian Fountain and John Drawbridge
(Gallery Fe29)
Fe29’s current exhibition is a lovely pairing of small sculptural works by Marian Fountain and drypoint and mezzotint prints by John Drawbridge.
Drawbridge’s monochromatic prints seem simple, yet there is so much depth in them. There is a haunting quality to the half-glimpsed scenes which emerge from the inky blackness of the artist’s heavily chiaroscuro images, and there is an astonishing mastery of the medium, composition and subject matter. Pieces such as Woman and Window and Interior have an overpowering sense of narrative, compelling the viewer to ponder over what events have taken place or are about to occur.
Marion Fountain’s astonishing bronzes reveal and revel in the magic of the feminine. By turn ecstatically spiritual and earthily sensual, the pieces are a celebration of the female form. Works range from totemic wall reliefs to small medallion discs, but it is the warmly sensuous nude forms such as the Gulf Women, drawing equally from actual female figures and a lineage of fetish symbols tracing back to the earliest human art, that catch the eye. The trio of Liberte, Egalite and (understandably) Humanite, with their double-edged forms which could be billowing fabric or club-like weapon are star pieces, as is the remarkable yonic Alice.
James Dignan
