TJ McNamara: Gold carrots and white elephants

Te Ao Huriruri by Michael Parekowhai at the Michael Lett gallery. Photo / Supplied

This column - the last for the year - brings a rich variety of shows. Len Lye: Art that Moves at the Gus Fisher Gallery is linked to two new books and it is based on the idea that the late Len Lye's treatment of movement was his major contribution to international art.

Recognition came late to Lye and his reputation is still expanding. The notable feature of this exhibition are five major sculptures devised by Lye and bought to fruition by dedicated people at the Govett-Brewster Gallery in New Plymouth. They are fascinating works, well worth the investment of time to watch and respond to them.

It is often said the movement is based on dance but the motion of the five works is not so much human movement but sublimation into sculpture of mechanical movement that stylises some changes that occur in nature.

The big throbbing loop of metal called Universe is well known and hints at orbits in the stars. Firebush, which is new, is fascinating in the way its flexing and spinning rods ripple like fire. When it is still, Zebra is simply a rod with a spiral around it but when it is mechanised it becomes a live whiplash spinning and constantly changing in the light.

In the foyer is a version of Fountain, a work devised in 1959 that has had endless imitators from kitschy gadgets to public sculpture. None of these imitations has the subtlety of movement of Lye's piece.

The spectacularly successful John Reynolds at the Sue Crockford Gallery is a little more subdued than usual. One big painting finds a painterly equivalent for stars and nebulae and its size and authority would make it an impressive decorative piece for a foyer. His now familiar accumulations of small canvases are stacked from floor to ceiling in a staggered version of Brancusi's Endless Column. Three works in blue, copper and silver evoke birdsong, like the music in Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending but without a connecting thread rising through them.

Sheer size is a feature at Michael Lett's gallery with sculptures by Michael Parekowhai working on his usual gigantic scale. Largest of all are two gigantic elephants in fibreglass, each on an elaborate pedestal. One stands on its head against the wall, the other one is butting its head against the opposite wall. They are huge, white and plastic, immensely enlarged ornaments or bookends rather than real, wrinkly elephants.

The title of the work, Te Ao Hurihuri, can be translated as "the way the world turns". Some irony of power rendered shiny and helpless may be intended here. White jumbos as big as this are impressive whatever the interpretation. The show is completed by a group of trees, tightly tied in the nursery plastic bags and all in hand-finished bronze. These too are transplanted culture.

There is a huge contrast between this gigantic plastic work and the small delicate paintings of Saskia Leek at Ivan Anthony Gallery. Her paintings are exercises in pale pastel tonal harmonies with subjects from cats and fruit to landscapes with bridges. There are little mannerisms like spilling the paint on to the frame around the work but these untitled paintings are like quiet lute music.

They are at their best when one or two notes of dense colour tighten the pastel shades or deft use of a reflecting image like a moon above a bridge.

Julian Hooper, also at Ivan Anthony, is the surrealist of the week. He makes images of such things as a fish balancing an apple on its nose. These odd dream sequences are painted with flair and assurance.

Rabbits are protagonists in the charming show by Saskia Baeten-van Gils at Muka Gallery. Her rabbits are energetic but quizzical and quietly humorous. There is more than a hint of human emotion in these animals, and the works are energetic without being sweetly sentimental. Each piece shows a different situation and a reaction delightfully expressed by the animals and a little play on carat/carrot.

One work is a gold carrot on a velvet pillow. Another is the animal peering eagerly from a burrow with a carrot perched in front of it. This is called Temptation and has a wonderfully tense expectancy. Review has a rabbit bending over a shelf to see what's underneath. Appropriation of images is a feature of contemporary art and plays a part in the formidable exhibition by Peter Panyoczki called Nature Morte at the Bath Street Gallery. One of the major images is made up of three panels showing a whole apple, an apple with a bite out of it, and the core of the same apple. It relates to the gaining of wisdom since the text behind the images refers to Adam and Eve.

Much of the work refers to knowledge that is apparent but unreadable. Two panels entirely in Braille are accompanied by material about Galileo, the truth of whose observations was not immediately obvious, certainly not to the Inquisition that condemned him.

Accumulations of images fill the work of Clive Humphreys whose autobiographical paintings are at the Lane Gallery. Each painting is an accumulation of images that suggest a state of mind in a time or a place. They represent how the mind accumulates experiences and insights which range from a father figure with a spade in Digging for Victory to images of struggle within nature in Hell or High Water. The accumulations of experience are vividly coloured and painted with a high degree of accomplishment.

Something especially New Zealand is an exhibition at the Wall Gallery where Daniel Kirsch is showing prints on paper and on metal panels recovered from cars abandoned in the Coromandel bush.

One of the works must surely become iconic. It is a yellow car inexplicably swamped deep in the green of thick bush. The variety of expression this week mirrors what we have seen in Auckland galleries over the whole year.

AT THE GALLERIES

What: Art That Moves by Len Lye
Where and when: The Gus Fisher Gallery, 74 Shortland St, to Feb 6
TJ says: Fascinating sculpture and innovative film by the master of kinetic art.

What: Along These Lines by John Reynolds
Where and when: Sue Crockford Gallery, 2 Queen St, to Dec 23
TJ says: Big and small works range from astronomy to birdsong.

What: The Moment of Cubism by Michael Parekowhai
Where and when: Michael Lett Gallery, 478 Karangahape Rd, to Jan 23
TJ says: Mantelpiece ornaments made huge ironical comment on our culture.

What: Once Inside by Julian Hooper; Yellow is the Putty of the World by Saskia Leek
Where and when: Ivan Anthony, 312 Karangahape Rd, to Dec 23
TJ says: Bold surrealist images and delicate exercises in colour make a lively contrast.

What: 1 Carat Gold by Saskia Baetens-Van Gils
Where and when: Muka Gallery, 68b Ponsonby Rd, to Feb 23
TJ says: Energetic rabbits and gold carrots make lively situations.

What: Nature Morte _ Still Life by Peter Panyoczki
Where and when: Bath Street Gallery, 43 Bath St, to Dec 19
TJ says: Inventive use of craft and computer makes large statements about knowledge and how it presents itself.

What: The Third Half by Clive Humphreys
Where and when: Lane Gallery, 33 Victoria St East, to Dec 23
TJ says: Colourful accumulations of images give insight simultaneously into the past and present.

What: Wabi-Sabi of the Sleeping Beauties
Where and when: Wall Gallery, 55a Mackelvie St, Ponsonby, to Dec 20
TJ says: Prints on paper and on panels of cars abandoned in the Coromandel culminate in one yellow car lost in the bush.

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