TJ McNamara: City lights given intriguing twist

Nothing worthwhile in art is easy and a group of exhibitions this week make that point. They show knowledge and serious thinking allied to a great deal of hard work.

At Artis Gallery, The Undrawn by Paul Hartigan is a big exhibition that brings together all his accumulated knowledge, skill and invention.

The show is a collection of small sculptures made with neon tubing. Each piece twists and folds in on itself to lead the eye a remarkable dance. At the centre of each sculpture a coil of light gives it both stability and energy.

The gallery has been dimmed for this show and the colour from the tubes glows with extraordinary intensity.

Over his long career Hartigan has been associated with neon, and his work is represented in many of this country's art institutions and public spaces. Often, like the display signs it is ultimately derived from, it has been shown on a surface as two-dimensional. These intriguing works move through three dimensions.

The tubes that make up the work date back to the 1930s and have been carefully collected by the artist. They are splendidly displayed like a treasure. Each one is enclosed in a transparent case so they appear not just as art but artefacts. The cases are sometimes clear but the best are dark, which emphasises the glow. They are placed on a polished black surface.

The colours are remarkable and often several colours appear in the same work. The most complex work is Brainchild, a delicate combination of several pale greens, and blue and violet and pink combined in a phosphor glass tubing. Zen is an intense green in luminophor glass. Masterminder glows with blue and red in soda lime glass. But the best of all is a plain ruby red called Souvenir From Hell.

There is a little coda to this show: a photographic print that shows the inventor of this technology, Georges Claude, in a laboratory with an assistant in wing collar and tie appropriate to the period who bears a startling resemblance to Paul Hartigan. It is a marvellous jeu d'esprit, as is every other work in this rich collection.

Totally different in style and intent, but equally involving intense labour, is the collection of paintings by Lucy Eglington at Satellite Gallery.

Almost all of these striking works portray a nude female figure exposed and vulnerable but combined with exactly painted birds and moths that represent dreams, feelings and ideas. Sometimes these birds become fixed and bear a label, as if the things they represent have become controlled and classified.

The whole ensemble in these works is a combination of startling frankness combined with a rich romantic fancy.

A typical work is called Possible Pasts. This is a life-size, full-frontal nude, very accurately observed in detail, such as the way that putting the weight on the right leg tilts the hips. It's also frank and honest with red hands and knees suggesting plenty of hard work. But the centre of the figure is crowded with butterflies, which suggest grace and pleasure.

The most prominent bird is the big swan that confronts Leda as she stands in a lake. This traditional subject is presented as a triptych, a central panel with two wings. The paintings on the wings include a solemn owl as spectator. The landscape in which some of the figures stand is dark and sombre but the sheer weight and portent of these figures make this a solid debut.

Peter Wichman at Orexart has developed his style over a number of exhibitions. This show is called Familial and presents groups intensely interacting in a variety of ways that range from aggression to submission. The figures are smaller than usual but the large number of paintings suggests hard work and a copious imagination.

His technique is all his own. He uses a black underpainting and over it paints an arid landscape and figures done in a way that leaves them with black shading and sometimes a black outline.

As in the past, acrobats figure and, when they juggle, it is with weapons as symbols of aggression.

One of the most forceful is Beach, where the figures are arranged in a tight S curve. They adopt the usual attitude of bathers but their faces are grotesque. Thrusting in from the side is a figure face down in agony or death. The intensity of this painting is particularly strong, whereas in other works the atmosphere is dispersed by the scattering of the figures.

This is a symbolist world where each figure expresses the idea of exclusion, being set apart or pointed at or humbled. There is an odd combination of the utmost brutality with the utmost vulnerability. The resultant works are like nothing else on the art scene. A painting by Wichman is instantly recognisable.

Much less complex in atmosphere are six joyous paintings by Matthew Dowman, at the Antoinette Godkin Gallery, although their technique is equally inventive, intense and painstakingly intricate. Although they must have taken a great deal of making in their use of stencils and spray paint, as well as conventional methods, they come across as light-hearted - a view of an abstract patterning that is like a crowd of wild flowers.

This crowd of colour is subtly shot through with black shading that gives a sense of structure and sometimes, as in Dazzle, has the effect of a network of hidden pathways. Although all the paintings are similar - except for Midnight, which is black and white and less successful - they achieve individuality by variations in the combinations of colours and by gentle movement. Purple Haze has deeper colour and is more misty than Cause Celebre, that has falls of colour that hint of trailing vines.

It is work done with assurance matched with extraordinary complexity of technique to achieve a very attractive decorative outcome.

AT THE GALLERIES

What: The Undrawn, by Paul Hartigan
Where and when: Artis Gallery, 280 Parnell Rd, to Nov 1
TJ says: Long experience with neon glass tubing makes these lyrical sculptural pieces in light a series of fascinating dances in three dimensions.

What: Paintings, by Lucy Eglington
Where and when: Satellite Gallery, cnr St Benedicts St-Newton Rd, to today, Oct 17
TJ says: Paintings of women that are both raw and romantic with their nudity matched by precisely detailed birds and butterflies as captive spirits

What: Familial, by Peter Wichman
Where and when: Orexart, Upper Khartoum Place, to Oct 24
TJ says: Combination of figures locked in brutality and neurosis in a bleak but consistent world that Wichman leads through a wide variety of incident

What: Decorate, by Matthew Dowman
Where and when: Antoinette Godkin Gallery, 28 Lorne St, to Oct 31
TJ says: Extraordinarily intricate technique produces vivid, joyous paintings.

For gallery listings, see www.nzherald.co.nz/go/artlistings