''11th anniversary exhibition'' (The Artist's Room)
The Artist's Room annually celebrates its birthday with what it intends as a low-key show.
Every year, this aim is thwarted by the large number of artists who wish to be involved, a sure sign of the gallery's standing.
This year, the gallery is close to bursting with an astounding amount of art.
Many of the artists are well known locally, and have long-standing associations with the gallery.
There are fine works by Anya Sinclair and Sam Foley, John Toomer is well-represented, and Claire Beynon presents some fine multipanelled skyscapes.
Tony Cribb makes a welcome return after illness, and Anita de Soto, Inge Doesburg, and Donna Demente also have strong work on display.
Helen Back and Matt Gauldie present some impressive sculptural pieces, and Stephen Martyn Welch is again one of the stars of the show with his impressive portraits.
It is the newer names - to this gallery, at least - that are perhaps among the more interesting.
There is some stunning, haunting bronze work by Brett Rangitaawa and Jen Waterson, and some impressively sinister and surrealistic meat-free cafe scenes by Nathan Forbes.
Andi Regan's innovative weaving material - plastic cable ties - has led to some fine work, and Patricia Murdoch's Hodgkins-inspired beach scene and Joshua Olley's sensuous stone forms are also worthy of note.
''Mine mine mind'', Jim Cooper (Brett McDowell Gallery)
''Mine mine mind'' is the title of Jim Cooper's latest exhibition at the Brett McDowell Gallery.
It is a fitting title, as the display mines deep into the artist's mind to drag out its vivid fluffy psychedelia.
Cooper is well known for his three-dimensional figures and his only slightly less three-dimensional wall hangings, all deeply inspired by the fantastic art of the late 1960s counterculture.
The wild colours and designs of the Haight-Ashbury scene, the Carnaby St poster, and the mind-shifting rock album cover combine in Cooper's work, which also has a strong fauvist feel.
The resulting pieces are strong, often humorous works deeply redolent of the conscience-awakening Summer Of Love.
In this exhibition it is the wall hangings that take centre stage.
Previously often used just as backdrops behind Cooper's mammoth stage-set replicas of classic album sleeves (such as Sgt. Pepper's and Their Satanic Majesties Request), here the intricately sewn nature of these fabric works becomes evident.
Long offcuts of every imaginable fabric have been wound into tight spirals and sewn in place to create joyful and playful art.
Vibrant reds and solid blacks jostle with fluorescent yellows and limes (superbly vivid under ultraviolet light) to create their own gleeful artistic acid trips.
''Prints in response to the poems of Richard Reeve'', Manu Berry (Mint Gallery)
It would be fair to consider the art at present showing at Mint as a collaborative exhibition between Manu Berry and Richard Reeve, although it is Berry who is directly responsible for the monoprints and woodcuts that are on display.
Berry has taken his lead and his inspiration from poems by local writer Richard Reeve, interpreting them in his new signature style of three-dimensional prints formed by overlaying cutout pieces across a similarly printed background.
The effect is impressive, and the art so formed has a striking presence.
Berry was so taken with Reeve's poems that initially he was overflowing with ideas.
In the end he wisely decided to concentrate on just a handful of poems, creating large uniform series of pieces for two of them (Windsong and Papanui Inlet) and smaller numbers of images for four more, some of which (the ''Headlands'' works) have recently been on display at Bellamy's Gallery.
The works form a strong unified collection, reflecting by the moods and landscapes of Otago Harbour and Central Otago, which were themselves inspirations for Reeve's poems.
The ''Arcane Poetry'' series, with its focus on the way the coastal structures of Papanui Inlet fade like ghosts into the misty blue-green hills, is particularly memorable.
