Art seen: January 29

Of the Sun, by Erica van Zon
Of the Sun, by Erica van Zon
''Dogwood Days", Erica van Zon (Dunedin Public Art Gallery)

Erica van Zon has presented an impressively large, intriguing and baffling display of small scale works in her exhibition ''Dogwood Days'' at the DPAG.

Using mundane icons of domesticity as her leaping off point, the artist has created a wide range of obsessive and often humorous pieces through which we can re evaluate and re observe the humdrum.

We are faced with an artistic ''jamais vu'', a state in which we look at the everyday and see it as a previously unnoticed object.

We are asked to examine what catalogue essayist Thomasin Sleigh calls the ''thingness'' of the objects. The trinkets, rugs, food and other objects which have been crafted and recreated become fetishes or icons, obsessively recreated by van Zon in a variety of media.

The dissonance with which we see these items raised to art objects is accentuated by the differing approaches the artist has taken to her subjects; some are created as exact replicas, others are deliberately only crude impressions.

In viewing the works, we become aware of them as if they were parts of some surreal jigsaw. They seem as if ready to create a narrative, yet if there is one it has been abstracted so far that the viewer becomes lost in possibilities.


Untitled (detail), by Peter Trevelyan
Untitled (detail), by Peter Trevelyan
''The Crystal Line'', Peter Trevelyan (Dunedin Public Art Gallery)

Peter Trevelyan has created a fine series of geometric forms from an unlikely and fragile material to create ''The Crystal Line'', also at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

Using leads from retractable pencils, Trevelyan has built up large three dimensional fretwork tracery which stand clear from the gallery walls.

The works are very appealing, especially when well lighted as they are in this display. The geometry of the forms creates moire like patterns as you pass around them, and the soft shadows which they cast on the walls of the gallery space give an added three dimensionality, creating an impressive effect.

Just as impressive is the awareness of how delicate the construction process must have been. The creation of structures two metres or more in length from something as brittle as these graphite filaments is astonishing; that it could have been done in such as way as to produce hypnotically repetitive architectural forms such as these is astonishing also.

The works provide a cognitive dissonance in the mind of viewers - the knowledge of the fragility of the art is counterbalanced by their girder like appearance, the combination bringing to mind the structure of crystal lattices, or the modular trusses of some miniature, earthbound space station.


The Night Heron, by Beth Garey
The Night Heron, by Beth Garey
''Look Both Ways'', Guy and Beth Garey (Bellamys Gallery)

A joint exhibition by father and daughter Guy and Beth Garey is showing at Bellamys Gallery. The two artists use wildly disparate media, but the display comes together in a fine symbiosis of impressive work.

Guy Garey is a smith, working from Chestnut Tree Forge. While he is perhaps best known for large scale pieces, here he displays a wide array of smaller works, forged using traditional methods.

Much of the work is primarily designed for use, yet this does not mean it has no aesthetic grace, and many of the pieces are very attractive when viewed purely for their decorative work alone.

As such, the artist's description of the pieces as ''sketches in iron'' is apt. Pieces such as the elegant square tube candlesticks and an impressive table/sideboard show fine skill and a mastery of Garey's craft.

Beth Garey shows precocious talent in her etched, embossed, and papercut works. Still at high school, the artist has nonetheless produced works which are of fine professional standard.

Her drypoint etchings in particular are eye catching, and cover a variety of subjects from still life and delicate animal studies to townscapes. Her The Night Heron, another etching, is also a very fine piece and is one of the stars of the show.


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