Slow-motion fireworks

James Dignan reviews the City of Dunedin Awards and new exhibitions by Olav Nielson and James Kerr.

Olav Nielsen (The Artist's Room)

Olav Nielson is, without doubt, one of Dunedin's most impressive young artists.

His aquatints and mezzotints are beautifully crafted and the imagination of the scenes they portray leads the viewer headlong into his amber-tinted dream world.

His latest exhibition is no exception, with a series of sumptuous works.

The artist has largely abandoned the honey-drenched hallways and sinister fish that populated his earlier pieces, now embarking on trips through the looking-glass into a world of glorious blooms bursting - in the artist's own words - like sensual, slow-motion fireworks.

The looking-glass world is represented physically as well as symbolically by the unusual but highly effective means of mounting etched plate and printed page together, the two mirrored halves together creating a very appealing whole.

The joint image is then enclosed within a fine oak frame which itself becomes part of the completed work.

In some cases, the artist has deliberately used plates of different metals, more for the aesthetic effect this creates in the finished piece than for any differences of finish the different metals may provide.

Not only are the finished works excellent images, but they also give some indication of Nielsen's high degree of technical skill with his medium.

"City of Dunedin Awards" (The Art Station)

This year's City of Dunedin Art Award exhibition is in full swing at the Art Society's rooms.

There is, as always, a wide variety of work on display, in many media and styles.

In all, close to 150 artists are represented by one work each, with a wealth of fine work ranging from pop art to meditative seascape, abstraction to photorealism.

Several subjects come to the fore, notably southern landscapes, well-represented by such artists as Pauline Bellamy, Murray Ayson, and Norman Hunter.

Townscapes are also popular, whether the anonymous autumnal road of Enid Dodds and rural township of Henry Lowen-Smith, or studies of easily-recognised city locations by Mike Bowden and John Gallagher.

Other works of note include a surreal room by Alan Ibell, Brian Stewart's op-art abstraction, fine studies of a horse and power lines by Karin Werner and Gill Hammond respectively, Jane Santos's high-country mosaic, and portraits by Joel Bolton and Lorraine Jacobs.

The awards were judged by John Husband, with Martin Maass again named winner, this time for his fine portrait Southern storyteller.

Other awards went to Odette Seagar's charcoal sketch of the Railway Station, Philip Markham's fine Central Otago panorama, and works by Robert Ireland, and Marie Reid.

All were worthy winners.

"Spectrum", James Kerr (Moray Gallery)

The word "Spectrum" carries connotations of a wide, bright range of colours, and it is an apt title for James Kerr's exhibition at the Moray.

In these works, Kerr presents landscapes defined as much by colour as by their subject.

There is a vivacity to the pieces that is present both in the palette and in the seemingly spontaneous and bold application of the paint to the canvas.

The works are wildly impressionistic, drawing their inspiration from the light and air and seemingly from early-20th-century European art.

Of local artists, John Z. Robinson's use of colour - most especially on his townscapes - is perhaps the most obvious comparison.

Most of the pieces are predominantly representational, notably the fine Small town thing but in some the subject matter is hidden by the artist's forceful, painterly style.

In some smaller works, form has been reduced to simple blocks.

In these pieces, an influence of German Blaue Reiter art has started to creep into the work.

It will be interesting to see whether this influence comes to also dominate some of the artist's larger images.

I look forward to seeing more of this artist's work.