Dave Johnston, Landscapes, Green Island Gallery
Dave Johnston adds a touch of the sublime to the South Island in six new landscape paintings on show at the Green Island Gallery.
Certain pieces, such as Mt Cook, are more refined in paintwork, while others, such as Lake Tekapo, are less so.
In works of the latter style, Johnston has blended land and sky through similar treatment of each, creating a moody atmosphere true to the nature of a lakeshore.
Mt Cook is more crisp and bright.
Johnston uses the versatility of oil paint to create a spectrum of moods and painterly effects, nice to see within the traditional medium of landscape painting.
The misty valleys of Haast River and Twin Falls recall something of European landscape painting from the 18th century.
Waterfalls and classic compositions denote the sublime, and perhaps it is Johnston's English background that brings this perspective to New Zealand.
Throughout his travels in the South Island, Johnston has managed to record the diverse scenery in meticulous detail, while also giving his works an impressionistic sense of being in the moment.
His works, as they focus on the extreme differences in mood between different settings, display why the New Zealand landscape has always been, and continues to be, a rich source of inspiration to artists.
Martin Thompson, Four New Works, Brett McDowell Gallery
THE relationship between chaos and order works both ways in the work of Martin Thompson, who, three years since his last Dunedin show, has four new works up for inspection at the Brett McDowell Gallery.
His meticulously mathematical drawings impose rigid order, yet the finished product wreaks the most wonderful sort of havoc on the eyes.
These works invite both distant contemplation and close-up examination.
As the eyes move from tiny square to tiny square across the filled-in grid, the viewer catches glimpses of repairs made in the fabric.
These visible scalpel cuts and pencil lines add texture, time and tactility to drawings that seem, at least at first, mechanical.
Each work is untitled, downplaying the desire to find external references.
In the past, Thompson's work has been likened to quilt patterns, games and satellite photography.
The new works, though still reminiscent of cross-stitch or pixels, can be easily viewed and appreciated in and of themselves.
All are orange and white, but the work that greets visitors to the gallery is a fluorescent shade of orange and excruciatingly detailed.
This work is whimsical, as smaller patterns clash and interrelate to create the whole.
It highlights the meaning behind something Thompson has said of his work - the beauty lies in the discipline.
Emma Chalmers, on the edge of the alphabet, None Gallery
None Gallery houses the shapes and shadows of Emma Chalmers' paintings in a new exhibition of works on paper, titled "on the edge of the alphabet".
Chalmers has studied in Otago as well as in Italy.
Emphasis on the flatness of the picture plane has clearly influenced her work.
She uses geometrical patterning and sharp angles to emphasise the two-dimensionality of her medium.
Paradoxically, however, the use of gouache adds depth and softness.
In The Strange Ranger, square patterning is used effectively to create a range of skewed perspectives upside-down, side-on and up-above.
Two identical figures face each other and are simultaneously joined and separated.
This image examines the fragments that collectively form, or deform, human concepts of identity and memory.
The Drover embodies the theme of on the edge, as it shows a tiny cowboy atop a structure that could be a tower made of cards.
He holds a pistol and seems to shoot at his own feet as he dances, while floating shapes around him add movement also.
One pauses at this work, wondering when the tower will topple over.
Chalmers' paintings are original and carefully detailed.
Her grasp of the medium makes for curious and wonderful works that stimulate both vision and thought.
