Victory Medal, Helen Pollock (Toitu Otago Settlers Museum)
A poignant installation by Helen Pollock commemorating the dead of World War 1 stands in the Toitu Otago Settlers' Museum.
The sculpture consists of 36 pairs of feet, arrayed on a quartered metal base.
Thirty-five of the pairs are rough clay; the last is bronze.
The silent sculpture speaks loudly on many levels: the feet are distressed, wounded, the single bronze pair representing the one medalled hero who was in many respects little different from those he served alongside.
The array, so reminiscent of the white crosses of a military cemetery, represents the unknown soldiers, their bodies no longer present, either by act of war or by the years which separate us from their service.
The base is a medal, quartered as if by the cross, and rusted, as if by time.
The feet stand in an attitude of the ''standing-to'' ceremonies held - in Binyon's immortal words - at the going down of the sun and in the morning.
Yet these are true ''feet of clay'': all too human, sharing our own frailties, and connected to us by this common thread.
The installation, which is touring the country as part of World War 1 centenary commemorations, is accompanied by an equally memorable series of photographs by Damien Nikora of the sculpture's official unveiling at Fort Takapuna in Auckland.
''Mythos'' (Dunedin Public Art Gallery)
''Mythos'' is an intriguing collection of mainly printed items from the Dunedin Public Art Gallery's permanent collection, all focusing on the traditionally popular theme of classical mythology.
Curated by Aaron Kriesler, the works range from the 16th to 20th centuries, and showcase a number of fine pieces rarely on public display.
Highlights of the exhibition range from a fine pair of 17th-century etched portraits by Stefano della Bella to heavily structured group compositions from the previous century by Giorgio Ghisi and Annibale Carracci.
While these works concentrate predominantly on the use of line for composition, later works such as Francis Engleheart's haunting miniature Hero and Leander place more emphasis on the use of light and shade.
William Roffe's Ino and Bacchus, clearly and finely engraved from a John Foley sculpture, dates from the same year, 1829. Light and shade also dominate over line, for obvious technical as well as stylistic reasons, in William Marshall Craig's 19th-century watercolour, the only painting in the show.
The exhibition is completed by three 20th-century works from Australian artists Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd.
Boyd's Blakeian Narcissus in a storm is one of several high points in an exhibition which offers a fine chance to enjoy these rarely seen pieces from the gallery's collection.
''New Paintings'', Diana Smillie (The Artist's Room)
Mythology is also an important thread in the work of Diana Smillie, though more often than not it is a personalised world of nightmare that her painted characters inhabit, rather than the more arcadian worlds of classical antiquity.
In the artist's current exhibition at The Artist's Room, the darker subconscious elements which have long played a part in Smillie's work have been reduced.
There are still unsettling undercurrents to several of the pieces, but the sheer visceral nastiness which has marked some of her previous images is largely absent.
Though the removal of this force from the works has lessened their immediate dramatic impact, this has by no means reduced the overall power of the paintings.
The interplay of the feral semi-human beasts in their seeming parodies of formal portraiture still has the ability to simultaneously attract and repel the viewer, and the antique portrait appearance of the compositions has been enhanced by the deliberate use of ornate frames.
This gives some of the pieces (most notably Sisters) an almost icon-like quality.
The artist's use of coarse, textured strokes, especially to imply the folds of fabric, is extremely effective, as is the powerful expressiveness of the wild anthropomorphic archetypes which are the subjects of her art.
