Art seen

The Artist's Room: "(Un)common Ground", works by Olav Nielsen, Peter Cleverley, Sam Bennett, and Claire Beynon. 

[1] Chorus, by Olav Nielsen.
Four disparate artists present their latest works at The Artist's Room Gallery, and while their paintings and prints sing very different songs, they have in common an overriding sense of the artist's person, alongside an introspective tendency.

Nielsen is an accomplished Dunedin-based printmaker, whose colour prints are mesmerising.

His work is frequently allegorical, pairing his Danish past with his present reality in the form of dreamlike scenarios. Unusually, he has coupled his working plates with the final prints, revealing not only his adroit craftsmanship, but printmaking as an intricate process.

Beynon is a celebrated poet and artist, who, in this exhibition, reduced landscapes to their essence. She implies human-land relationships without stipulating specifics, and her tricky titles urge a double take.

Cleverley is a lecturer in painting and drawing at the Dunedin School of Art. He presents seven works in both watercolour and oils, which examine the human condition by means of signs, text, partial-landscapes and his mystical Gondwana Dog. Bennett is a Dunedin-born artist, now in Australia.

In the name of female portraiture, he presents thickly applied paint which is stretched, and heavily worked upon the canvas. Most grippingly, he exploits colour unreservedly while treating line like a present torn open with enthusiasm.

Milford Galleries: "Traverse; Surveying Significant NZ Glass", works by various artists.

[2] Flare 2, by Galia Amsel.
This exhibition boasts 56 magnificent works from New Zealand's most prominent glass artists. In an arresting display of geometry, history, colour and texture, the display somehow seems to transport the beholder far from the street which houses the gallery, into a seemingly untouched realm of immaculate imaginings.

As an artistic medium, glass is unusual in that it can refract, reflect and transmit light and further, because its manipulation often (but not always) requires extreme heat and caustic substances.

This means that while glass artistry is a highly specialised profession, it is one that fascinates a wide audience due to its sophisticated technical processes and their extraordinary outcomes.

The works in "Traverse" range from the abstract to the representational, Christine Cathie exemplifying the former with her Ovoids and amorphic forms and Luke Jacomb exemplifying the latter, by representing Maori heritage in the form of stylised canoe paddles.

Similarly, the techniques employed range from cast-glass to hand-blown, with all variations in between.

The exhibition's remarkable beauty cannot be overstated, nor can the desire to see every piece from every angle, be underestimated. Gravity is questioned, light is harnessed, and observing the sculptures is merely the beginning of the lasting responses which follow.

Monumental Gallery: "Extended Moment", solargraphy by Chris Reid. 

[3] Deborah Bay, View N, 4 Months, by Chris Reid.
"Solargraphy" is a photographic method for recording the paths of the sun. It is essentially pinhole photography, with the exposure time extended over the course of months, even years.

The unusual practice can be accomplished using inexpensive and manual equipment, yet the results evoke images sent to Earth from one of Nasa's hi-tech satellites.

This homespun aspect is partly what draws local artist Chris Reid to the method. He uses landmarks around Dunedin as his subject, without pandering to mawkish traditions. His works are unframed, and unpredictable.

Some appear imaginatively altered, others entirely abstract, and yet they reveal nothing but that which has been faithfully observed by the mechanical eye.

To illustrate the bizarre nature of this imagery, we might look at Deborah Bay, an image exposed over four months.

We observe a warped, but recognisable hill, a road and a watery inlet beneath an atmosphere which is at once night, noon, dawn and dusk.

Across the sky are iridescent stripes marking where the sun has trailed over the course of time. It is instinctive to mull over the parameters of human perception at the sight of these works, and it is enthralling to consider that they point towards non-human impressions of familiar places.

 - Franchy Strachan