T. J. McNamara: Shock tactics of murder and mayhem

Self-portrait by Matt Molloy. Photo / Richard Robinson

In the struggle to appear new, artists often use shock tactics. There are various kinds of shock but the raw, old-fashioned, melodramatic kind can be seen in the new work of Matt Molloy, at the City Art Rooms.

One room is filled with an installation - a rubbish heap called Slaughterama.

Lately, concept artists have been finding formal beauty in stacks of discarded material. No such reasoning applies here. There is a hand-truck and piles of polystyrene and discarded plastic sheeting it has helped bring to the site. It has also brought pieces of a dismembered body.

The pieces are shockingly realistic: bleeding hands, a severed leg, a headless torso and something unthinkably horrid in a bucket. Eyes, complete with their optic nerves, have been torn out and lie in pools of blood.

This is a deeply unsettling view of society, comparable to the time between the two world wars when expressionist artists were making paintings of the results of sex murders. They had the excuse of a deeply disturbed interwar society. Here the aim appears simply to shock.

The rest of the work reinforces the mood that all is not right with the world.

A self-portrait shows the artist's head cast in epoxy resin, mounted on the body of a dog. It is a grisly little piece matched by another sculpture, Fly Baby, of a bust fallen from the sky, not splendidly like Icarus, but sordidly. The head has the tubular tongue of a housefly and an incomplete, messy torso emerging from a block on a trolley.

The show is completed by a photo montage that is half Hitler and half butterflies. Irony, disgust and dismay abound. This show, through shock, tries to make a statement about the continual presence of evil in the world and, in some measure, succeeds.

The shocks are less raw in the work of Peter Miller at Whitespace, although part of the work is a startling wall of life-size nude women. These are something of a surprise because Miller has, in the past, developed still-life subject matter where his drawing and smooth, careful painting achieved unusual images of considerable depth and significance.

These were paintings of old toys - simple muck-metal trucks and cars with bent axles and flaking paint. At least they were nostalgic and at best they evoked the passage of time and changes wrought by the years.

There are three such works in this exhibition but they are diffidently tucked away in a corner in favour of the big nudes and some large portraits.

The nudes are intended to be just a little bit shocking. In the Age of Innocence has a pierced navel and several have shaved pubes, while Enter the Assassin holds a bloody samurai sword to go with her stagey pose. Overall the effect is illustrative and conventional, curiously at odds with the stated aim to make images of innocence.

Yet the still-life element scores. One woman holds a skull which is splendidly drawn - solid, bony and strange with odd holes bored above the eye-sockets. The landscape behind her is desolate and a prophetic message is intended but it is not intense enough to have emotional power.

There is more force in Hiding from the Evildoers, a nude crouching on black sand in front of the darkness of a cave. Her look and pose suggest vulnerability in the face of unknown forces and here, indeed, some wider significance is evoked.

Ultimately, the shock effect of these immediate, naked heroines is nowhere near as effective as the emotion roused by those old and flaking artefacts from the past.

The shock of the work of Martin Poppelwell at the Anna Bibby Gallery is that of irreverence and the feeling that matters of taste are utterly beside the point.

Poppelwell's show is called pottery + painting and both mediums are the vehicles for a lot of writing. This can range from a little lump of glazed ceramic like a splash with the word "plop" on it to exhortations across a big plate that all is "Gloom, Gloom, Doom, Boom". A particularly entertaining group among the whole inventive and cynical mass is a line of jugs, linked with one big slashing Max Gimblett-like gesture.

The paintings are just as witty but much more complex.

They consist of overlapping rectangles defined by ink and coloured with watercolour which, in a nod to fashion, is allowed to dribble down to the bottom of the painting. Each rectangle contains a shape, a text, pattern or little drawing. Some texts are orders - "Bend Over" - some are black clouds, some are twirling spirals: there may be a deftly painted steamship or a bird. Somehow Poppelwell pulls each work together, mostly by the lively colour but more obscurely by a hint of theme.

Visually they are lively and the texts are sometimes very funny. They manage to be visually and verbally entertaining without ever being comfortable.

What is comfortable is another row of nudes in the pleasant Nkb Gallery in Mt Eden. These paintings by Belinda Wilson advance decorously along the wall like a studio exercise in movement.

They are deftly painted, except perhaps for the fingers, and the same quickness of touch is seen in a series of portrait heads each showing a different emotion.

The most attractive painting is the pensive Theresa, which avoids the mannered cutting off of the top of the head apparent elsewhere.

At the galleries

What: A Lower Animal, by Matt Molloy
Where and when: City Art Rooms, 28 Lorne St, to May 30
TJ says: A grotesque installation of a gruesome axe murder indicates a very sad view of the world that further extends to a self-portrait as a dog.

What: The Age of Innocence, by Peter Miller
Where and when: Whitespace, 12 Crummer Rd, to May 30
TJ says: An exploration of how an aggressive exterior, even when stripped nude, can conceal innocence and concern, but the artist's talent shines in still-life.

What: Pottery + painting by Martin Poppelwell
Where and when: Anna Bibby Gallery, 226 Jervois Rd, to June 7
TJ says: Riotous displays of wit and wisdom written and drawn on ceramic and paintings with vivid colour and inventive visuals.

What: Moving Forward, by Belinda Wilson
Where and when: Nkb Gallery, 455 Mt Eden Rd, to May 26
TJ says: Observations of life, family and flowers with the title work a procession of life-size nudes painted sensitively within established conventions.