KEY POINTS:
One thing that distinguishes this past year is that finally there is a substantial history of New Zealand art on television. The series, The Big Picture, is written and presented by Hamish Keith, who long ago wrote some of the first serious accounts of art in this country.
He brings to TV and his book an energy of expression that recalls the work of that other fine stylist, Robert Hughes. The writing and the subject show maturity.
We are no longer frontier art.
Up to 10 worthwhile exhibitions open every week in dealer galleries in the central city. In the outlying suburbs - from Titirangi to Devonport, Pakuranga to Waiheke - there is a vigorous art scene and the quality of work is high.
Auckland has developed an art "industry" and auction houses deal not only in work from the past but also by living artists. Where once exhibitions and auctions had no more than a cyclostyled list, they now have professionally presented, colourful catalogues and hagiographical writing on the merits of individual artists. And the glossy art magazines are becoming bigger and better written. This will provide a mine to be delved into by future historians fascinated with the remarkable growth of art in Auckland.
Academic studies of major artists flourished, too. Professor Peter Simpson, an expert on the interaction between poets and painters, has published a study of the work done by Colin McCahon when he lived in Titirangi. The exuberant Bob Harvey, mayor of Waitakere City, celebrated his re-election with the publication of a comprehensive work about that free spirit of the Westie world, painter Dean Buchanan. The big success out in West Auckland has been the residency at the McCahon House, which Judy Millar and James Robinson have found congenial for producing art on a large scale.
Auckland Art Gallery, caught in the ebb and flow of its extension project, has not featured as largely as usual in the artistic life of the city. Yet the Triennial between March and June attracted some powerful work. Among other things, it convincingly demonstrated that video art works best when it concentrates on ritual rather than narrative.
W. H. Auden said: "Art changes nothing." Art does not alter political events. But what it can show is the human response and effect of politics. In her video, Who Can Erase the Traces, Regina Jose Galindo walked around Guatemala, ritually dipping her feet in blood. In another, she was reduced to abject misery under the force of a high-pressure hose. These were powerful images of suffering under dictatorship. The Australian artist, Julie Rrap, also showed a ritual of transference by using figures on a bed.
The later thematic show Mystical Truths, repeating the feel of the Triennial with local and international artists, sparked minimal interest, having little that was mystical and only intermittent truth.
The gallery collections provided wonderful material for the Passion and Politics exhibition in the main gallery. Notable were several superb paintings by Sir John Millais, who is the subject of a huge retrospective at Tate Britain in London. Then, at the end of the year, the New Gallery was the venue for a portrait and figurative show, distinguished by the attention given to McCahon's religious work and the exhibition of the Ponsonby Madonna, colossal as mountains, by Tony Fomison and recently gifted to the city.
Artspace had a quiet year, although Meg Cranston's work consisting of the hot air from reading Jane Austen that filled the gallery from floor to ceiling was quite an event.
But the most spectacular event of all was the immensely successful Art Fair that filled the big boat sheds at the Viaduct in May. All the big-name galleries in New Zealand were there, as well as some from Australia. Its three days were crowded with commerce and talk with Matthew Collings, the British critic, as a fluent, opinionated leader of the band.
The work he most admired was a pile of flattened cardboard boxes by Eve Armstrong. This followed a trend by the more adventurous dealer galleries, such as the Michael Lett Gallery and Starkwhite, that are part of the gentrification of Karangahape Rd.
Among the shows of more conventional art, we have seen exhibitions that were excellent of their kind, from Judy Millar's sweeping abstractions to Martin Ball's huge portraits and the very beautiful and evocative still-lifes by Glenda Randerson, whose quiet paintings of enamel jugs were redolent of a past generation. Painting of this sort required traditional skills of the highest order and Raymond Ching was another artist whose paintings of women and birds were a virtuoso display of skill, as well as the workings of a subtle mind.
Wide differences in approach were often evident in the same week.
Peter Madden's exquisite, poised and intricate collages co-existed with James Robinson's wildly expressionist paintings of the sort that won him the lucrative Wallace Award. Geoff Thornley's deeply considered abstract constructions were shown at the same time as Reuben Paterson's extravagant, cascading paintings using glitter.
In sculpture, a similar variety has given life to the scene. From overseas came the witty, lean work of Barry Flanagan with his bronzes of humanised hares. This was in contrast to the solemn dignity that Chris Charteris from Coromandel conferred on stone and whalebone.
Newcomers to watch were Liyen Chong, whose crafted collection of autobiographical objects graced the Gus Fisher Gallery, and B. Broughan (the name is gender neutral), whose botanical drawings with surreal bite were at the fringe Satellite Gallery.
