Art Seen: September 22

In this week's Art Seen, James Dignan looks at works from Jasmine Middlebrook, an exhibition from The Port Collective, and another exhibition from the Otago Museum.

On Second Thought, by Jasmine Middlebrook.

‘‘Snakes and Ladders’’, Jasmine Middlebrook (Gallery De Novo)

Jasmine Middlebrook's art continues to go from strength to strength. Her astonishing paintings, depicting surreal and hyperreal dreamscapes, are filled with a sumptuous air of the believable, even when the actions and situations depicted in them defy that possibility.

Many of Middlebrook's paintings focus on portraits of one or more individuals (usually, but not always, human). These figures, be they newborn babies or adolescents, are excellently depicted in a way which perfectly captures their essence.

Around these character studies, the world becomes one of imagination, revelling in the wonder and imagination of childhood.

Babies, still attached umbilically, sit comfortably nestled on frogs and snakes, or swim through sapphire undersea worlds as if part of benign fairy-tales.

Glowing patterns of gold shift and shatter in works such as On second thought and its partner-piece, I heard differently. Cats, chameleons, and foxes pose, caught up in their own magic worlds.

Most astonishing of all are some of the large-scale pieces, with a breadth of subconscious image filling works like Wanderland with a wealth of multilayered symbolism.

In this painting, personal coded language, Freudian imagery, and surreal dream logic are woven together into a work which can be studied repeatedly while revealing new secrets every time.

Tug boat, by Dave Sharp.

‘‘The Port Collective’’ (Mint Gallery)

The Port Collective is the name of both an exhibition and of a group of four Port Chalmers artists who have come together to present it.

The work of the artists - Robert Scott, Manu Berry, Philip Maxwell, and Dave Sharp - creates an excellently balanced and enjoyable show at Mint.

Scott and Berry, separately, have created a yin and yang of landscape. Berry's excellent monoprints show a dark, silhouetted land under heavily worked skies - the land feels solid and reassuring under the power of the heavens.

Scott's images, with their almost folk-naive pastoral scenes, are calm yet have a feeling of an unquiet undercurrent.

The rolling power of Berry's skies is echoed in his wrestler/flax forms; Scott's uneasy land finds its outlet in the startling The lost boy, its negative-image protagonist floating supernaturally above the ground.

Across this symbiotic axis sits a second, that of the partnership of ideas formed by Maxwell and Sharp.

Using a shared form, that of a friendly, almost cartoon-like ship, the two artists use the differing media of oil paint and ceramics to create a heavily stylised harbour and its mechanical inhabitants.

The charming boats have an air of sturdiness yet calm, as if they have arrived at their safe harbour after a successful battle with the elements.

Hippocampal Astrolabe, by Emily Brain, in collaboration with David Bilkey.

‘‘Art and Space’’ (HD Skinner Annexe, Otago Museum)

Otago Museum is celebrating the opening of its new planetarium with ''Art and Space'', a collaborative exhibition involving the work of local artists, the Dunedin School of Art, and University of Otago scientists.

The artists, either working individually or in direct collaboration with a scientific researcher, have produced works which in some way reflect scientific discovery.

There is a hoary misconception that art and science are unmixable opposites. If they are opposites it is only in a similar way to the two sides of a coin - different, yet still on the same coin.

Art and science both attempt to capture and present the wonder of the universe in ways that it may be viewed and understood. When the two meet, there are often surprisingly fruitful results.

So it is with this exhibition. In works such as Sarah McKay and Christina Hulbe's mixed media interpretations of cracking Antarctic ice, Emily Brain and David Bilkey's metaphorical linking of cartography and neural activity, and Heremaahina Eketone and Ian Griffin's reflections on astronavigation, the collaborative ventures have produced impressive results.

They have also provided starting points for exploration of the science behind the art; the hefty catalogue which accompanies the exhibition provides much food for thought on how scientific discovery itself is almost an artform in its own right.