KEY POINTS:
There are many ways of making images and Peter Gibson Smith, whose latest show is at the Bath Street Gallery until March 16, has explored a number of them. His work has always been called "painting" but it has been made with a variety of techniques from wax
encaustic through to creating pictures by printing with stamps, to constructions of wood, realistic still-lifes and, recently, computer-generated images. Always his work, in whatever medium, has been imbued with a sense of history.
With each change, he has gone through a period of experiment before finding a convincing expression of his ideas. His work with computers and a painting machine has culminated and found persuasive invention in this exhibition, The New World.
These paintings combine creation myth with figures from art history and the reality of modern New Zealand. The overall texture and the grids that often form the background as well as some images within the work are computer-generated.
The result is at its most obvious and most appealing in a work like Pohutukawa. Here the Three Graces, figures from antiquity constantly re-worked by artists since the Renaissance, are posed against the unmistakable growth patterns of pohutukawa with the whole image pulled together by an even colouring. The shading, on close inspection, is done by tight, mechanical grids of lines cut into the surface. The figures, which have always been the personification of grace and beauty, are in this way integrated into the local scene.
Other paintings in the show try for wider, more complex effects, notably The New World. Here two naked crouching figures frame a dark centre. A pensive man and a questing woman are distinctly modern though they suggest primal beginnings like Adam and Eve. A big tree trunk reaches across the work and the dark centre is filled with computer constructions of various kinds.
Other paintings include a bare, stripped boy and a girl whose offbeat, skinny characteristics are taken from the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch, and there are two modern variants on Manet's famous nude, Olympia.
The works are full of intellectual interest. Engraving lines into the supporting panel increases the monumental effect but all of the images are dry in colour and without the richness that could attend on their layers of myth. The painting called Rocks suggests the limitations of the colour in dull surfaces above the rocks within the work.
Nevertheless, the whole show is a tribute to Gibson Smith's seeking after new ways of expression as he tries to establish a valid mode of painting suitable for this century.
The style of the work of Alan Pearson, whose painting is at the City Art Rooms in Lorne St, has never varied throughout his enduring career. Right at the entrance to the Auckland Art Gallery's Likeness & Character exhibition of portraits at the New Gallery is one of Pearson's finest works: his 1978 portrait of the poet and biographer, Denys Trussell. It is done in a vigorous Expressionist style of dashing brushstrokes and so is this new exhibition.
Such a style uses spontaneity and dash, and the principal emotion seems to be anger, as if the artist was always spoiling for a fight. The show is of paintings done between 1988 and 1994 and is called Within, Within: Heads. These are not portrait heads but generalised types.
The tone is set by one big wild painting with an Australian palette of brown colours that shows a slaughter. It has the title The Dunedin Mana-Eaters, Christchurch. This gives the crucified, flayed body set among pools and memorial crosses a local significance. The sense of victimisation is very strong.
The ferocity is continued in a series of four paintings on paper called Christ College Boys. The grotesque masks of their faces suggest they are monstrous, aggressive, frightened and animal. A similar painting, wild and declamatory, is called Feminist Art Curator. Everything is painted with big, decisive strokes which sometimes cross the painting like bars.
A series of pencil drawings called 6 Males lacks the wild attack of the paintings but comes closer to characterising individuals. It suggests the range of the artist's expression in a show that mostly strikes one raucous note but that note unmistakably announces Alan Pearson.
There are much more mild portraits at the Satellite Gallery in St Benedict St where Leyland Barr has an exhibition until March 9. These are of the artist's friends and, although they are rather pale and unassertive, they are all an excellent likeness. The major part of the show is a dramatic contrast to these local likenesses. They are large colourful, exactly drawn, striking paintings of African tribesmen in full ceremonial paint and regalia.
These are in a way second-hand works since most derive from photographs, but they convey the intensity of the artist's preoccupation with Africa. Their size, vivid colour, exact detail and skilled technique makes each one an exceptionally striking illustration and, collectively, they have real impact.
There are contrasts too in the first solo show by Rebekah Burt at the Anna Miles Gallery until March 29. She distils visual incidents from the street into neat, quiet, playful geometric abstractions. But this is the era of post-modern art so there must be a twist and therein lies the contrast. Some works are conventionally framed in tight, white frames. Others are done on large cardboard boxes. Some are silk, carefully stretched in an immaculate surface, while others are roughly stapled. The point made is that the art is still the same however you hang it.
