''Seeder'', Ben Clement (Blue Oyster Gallery)
Ben Clement's ''Seeder'' is an exploration of the film industry, its obsessions, and the online culture of illegal video distribution.
The title comes from this last concept, a seeder being a link in a chain of downloaders.
The exhibition makes use of the materials of the film distribution industry: packing tissue, aluminium, and vinamold, the latter being a flexible rubber compound used for cast making.
On these three different materials, images relating to film distribution and copyright have been drawn and etched, appearing as if they are clues and items of evidence shuffled round on a detective's desk.
''Seeder'' also features a video collation of the company logos and designs which some of the more professional illegal copiers use to introduce ''their'' films.
A form of recursion has here been achieved by the artist - a video of (presumably downloaded) introductory videos to illegally seeded videos.
An amazing amount of work has gone into the downloaders' introductions - they sometimes appear more slick than the films which they would accompany.
The largest work in the exhibition - and a highlight of it - is an installation which pairs the platters from a Christie film projector system (upon which the celluloid reels were placed ready for projection) with a video of the work done in restoring Dunedin's Rialto Theatres.
''One Winter'', Laurence Aberhart (Brett McDowell Gallery)
Brett McDowell Gallery regularly stages excellent shows by master photographer Laurence Aberhart, and this year's display is no exception.
The exhibition acts both as adjunct and counterpoint to the artist's major display, ''Anzac'', at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
''One Winter'', while still containing several images of the artist's trademark cemeteries and memorials, also references the more metaphorical memorials to human presence, with shots of the human marks on the countryside throughout Central Otago and Southland.
Many of the works were created during the artist's residency at Henderson House in Alexandra, and the land's grandeur and strength comes through in many of the images.
The majority of the works expertly use the photographer's usual silver gelatin contact print methods.
Of these, two works which stand out are interior shots of cabins in Central Otago, one cosily filled with personal belongings, the other stark and empty.
The contrast between these two similar buildings is both poignant and memorable.
Three excellent pieces have been produced using what is, for Aberhart, a new technique, using platinum.
The resulting images glow with a deep sepia-black intensity that is somehow simultaneously soft and sharp and possessed of a satisfying and all-embracing warmth.
''New Works'', Zuna Wright and Cally Whitham (The Artist's Room)
It would be hard to find a more disparate pair of artists, in terms of style, than Zuna Wright and Cally Whitham.
Their works, displayed alongside each other at The Artist's Room, form a strange complementary symbiosis.
Zuna Wright's works are perhaps the better known of the two locally.
Working in a small format in gouache, the South African-born Wright uses forceful, bold strokes in her gestural depiction of the land and human marking upon it, and brings much the same force to bear - albeit in more muted colours - to her still lifes.
The works pack a lot into their square frames, creating strong impressionistic representations, often with only a few dynamic lines and washes of colour.
Cally Whitham's works could not be further from this stylistic depiction.
Though she, too, creates a forceful sense of her subjects, she does so by the means of rich, low-key photographs, muted and shaded such that they appear more as paintings than camera work.
The soft, lush side-lighting on her powerful portraits of farm animals brings to mind the depth and stillness of Dutch and Flemish greats such as Rembrandt and at first glance it is difficult to grasp that the works are photographic and not masterfully worked in antique oils.
