Art Seen: March 02

In this week's Art Seen, James Dignan looks at exhibitions from Neil Emmerson, Penny Howard, and the Mint Gallery.

(after the party), by Neil Emmerson.

‘‘(after the party)’’, Neil Emmerson (Robert Piggott Gallery)

Gays have often been the subject of repressive legislation under which many activities have been labelled illegal. As with many such restrictive laws, ''undesirable'' activity doesn't stop, it is simply driven under cover.

In Japan, a tradition grew up of ''tea dances'', held in private homes, which enabled gay men to meet each other out of the public gaze. As might be expected, the law and the response to it led to an enforced ''double life'' for many, acting straight in their daily lives but inhabiting an understanding demimonde at the tea dances.

Neil Emmerson explores this world with an attractive series of woodblock prints. The works, turned from video stills into highly stylised impressions, are deliberately designed to be as double edged in meaning as the double-edged lives of the gay community.

On one level, the pieces are aesthetically pleasing, drawing their influence from traditional Japanese art and '60s graphic design, while on the ''secret'' deeper level they become the fleeting shadows of the unidentified, living in a modern ukiyo world.

This double meaning is reinforced by an accompanying series of works showing a park with a central memorial. While the works are attractive pieces, the hidden meaning of the location (a well-known gay pickup spot in Newcastle), adds an extra layer for those in the know.

Tui, by Penny Howard.

‘‘Atahu Communion’’, Penny Howard (The Artist’s Room)

The exhibition ''Atahu Communion'' by Penny Howard, lives up to its title. ''Atahu'' roughly translates as bewitching charm, and in the display we are beguiled by the beauty of New Zealand's birdlife. We are also reawoken to the interconnectedness of all life, the symbiosis which we form with the entirety of nature.

The works have a deep symbolism which cuts across Maori custom and introduced Western culture, focusing at several points upon religion, specifically the paraphernalia of the Catholic Mass.

The birds become symbols of creation and the free natural spirit of all that was here before colonial settlement, the whole bound together by the symbolic red thread which winds through and across all the pictures.

The birds are lovingly depicted, with several finely drawn graphite works and a series of attractive painted pieces, each using carved wooden tableware as its canvas and frame.

Particularly fine works include a graphite image of a huia perched on the butt of an exquisitely carved gun, and a startling painting of a white tui which seems to burst from its round carved frame.

The works are accompanied by a series of poems by Doug Poole, which draw on traditional Maori writing to form new pieces enhancing and complementing the paintings.

Study 29 VI 14, by Ben Webb.

‘‘2017.2’’ (Mint Gallery)

The current exhibition at Mint Gallery is an eclectic mix of unsettling works. This feeling is generated in different ways by the pieces, which range from abstract to hyperreal, yet it remains a frisson through the entire exhibition.

Sandra Bianciardi's three small oils have a strong foundation in classical art, tempered by a mood reminiscent at times of Picasso. The composition of her groups and individual characters suggests but does not make explicit a strong narrative.

Philip Madill's dystopian cybernetic figure, an escapee from Edward Kienholz's Beanery, is - paradoxically - almost lovingly rendered. Nearby, Ben Webb's photographic work, with its landscape-like close-cropped portrait, is distressed in its technical construction and distressing in its subject.

The dark humour of Scott Flanagan's mushroom cloud, its title taken from David Lange's famous Oxford Debate speech on nuclear weapons, completes the figurative works on display. Alongside it sits a small obsessive mixed media work by Flanagan's frequent collaborator Anet Neutze, and several pieces of painted, scrawled, drawn, and otherwise manipulated work by James Robinson.

One of these, Knowing not the known, is one of the highlights of the exhibition. Another star piece is the bright black and fire red Promethean by Brendan John Philip, a work in which the black becomes a menacing, all-enveloping presence.