KEY POINTS:
The big concept or the sweeping gesture has become a prominent part of art but there is still room for fine detail in sculpture and painting. Two Karangahape Rd galleries host a couple of shows where detail really matters.
At the Ivan Anthony Gallery until July 21 is
a new departure by Brendon Wilkinson, who until now has expressed his view of the threats and dangers of the world by making architectural models with tiny toy figures inside them.
In this show, Unlimited Ltd, he has combined conventional painting with a couple of three-dimensional works. Little Death is a piece with nature red in tooth and claw as a scorpion and a humming bird.
Bodies Obtained is in his toy vein, where a plastic couple are twisted into something like Rodin's Kiss on a desert island beside a blasted stump. The effect is spoiled by an improvised, absolutely unworthy plinth that is part of the ensemble.
The fine detail of Wilkinson's surreal models appears in his new paintings as intricate vegetation, particularly crawling vines. In The Test, a car is stalled in the midst of a tangle of vines. A male tries to light a fire while two young women look on. The raised hands of one of them are rotting away to the bone. There is a good deal of emphasis on breasts and buttocks, but the figure drawing is barely adequate.
The real interest and feeling of the painting lies in the tangle of vines and flowers that conceal a hidden rabbit, a hedgehog and ants' nest and a variety of creepy-crawly insects. The test is perhaps whether the man can save the women from the natural forces that make them shiver. He looks likely to fail.
A much more lively figure is linked to natural forces in another big painting, Half asleep she climbed forth from beneath the canopy. Once again a tangle of vines cloak, and bizarrely, penetrate the woman's nose. This painting is more powerful than others in the show because, as well as the woman covered in vines, a scaly tail generates abstract lines of force. The suggestion of powers that work against innocence is strong. Wilkinson's new direction is potentially very fruitful.
Detail is everything in the work of Peter Madden along the street at Michael Lett. In an unprecedented move, the gallery will be occupied by the artist for several months and the work will be continually added to. The second stage will run until August 8.
The first stage is called Past, Future and Present and, as an introduction, the gallery's front windows are covered with gold leaf. Inside is a skull decorated with gold, and shreds and specks of leaf litter the floor.
This makes the little room a macabre temple with a relic of something once honoured. Bright flies in gold adorn the walls; the project is called The Lord of the Flies. Like the novel by Golding, they suggest the power of regression to worship of unknown gods.
The flies extend rather more wittily to the gallery, where each one of nearly 80 tiny flies scattered on the wall is decorated with a fascinatingly minute pattern or picture, such as chequers, flags, roundels or transformed to an aeroplane.
To work on this tiny scale is remarkable. Even more so are the assemblages on the floor. Some are elaborate structures filled with objects. One is as simple as a stepladder crowded with masses of colourful birds.
Most of the details are cut from brightly coloured, printed sources. These have been retrieved by cutting out with extraordinary exactitude. Even tiny details like a figure doing acrobatics on a bicycle are sharply achieved.
The nature of the work slips easily into clever trivia. Some of the pieces unsuitably displayed on the floor are inconsequential, notably those hooked up to vinyl records. Yet the ones linked to a structure - whether a dense black frame as in the magnificent and mysterious Voodoo, or a strong form as in Black Axe - are fully achieved works, although even here there should be a better way of supporting the work than with Blu Tack.
Madden has rapidly established a presence in the art scene with his precise but crowded style and this elaborate show reinforces his position.
The details in the work of James Robinson, whose work at the Bath Street Gallery continues until Saturday, are savagely emotional. The arid landscape of his canvas is a textured surface of pale acrylic that is subsequently slashed, burned, stitched with nails and collaged with found objects to make a cratered surface where each detail suggests a violent emotion or incident.
The painter's experience is embodied but viewers must allow it to interplay with their own life. The details of the surface, especially where dark holes are backed with black velvet, are powerful in their technical adaptations.