TJ McNamara: A legacy of weird and wonderful folk art

Kim Meek's Takebahi. Photo / Greg Bowker

Several very large paintings were a feature of the Auckland Art Fair. Such big decorative paintings come across as "foyer art" rather than being suitable for gallery or domestic situations. Another painting in this genre has just been installed in an actual foyer - the entrance to the Old South British Building in Shortland St.

The work by Andre Hemer, called Screensaver, was commissioned by art agent Paul Baragwanath in conjunction with the Antoinette Godkin Gallery. Regarded as a "project", it will be on the site for at least six months.

The painting is brilliantly coloured and spectacularly energetic. It fits the site exactly since it curves around a corner and gets an extra lift by being reflected in the extensive glass mirror at the end of the corridor.

Foyer art is expected to be decoration and have a bit of swagger, and the work carries out these functions very successfully. The background is clouded masses of bright, harmonious colour shading into each other.

Looping across this are thrusting geometric patterns, strongly three-dimensional against the mists of colour. Although loosely based on an old-fashioned screensaver it has a special life of its own. It is seen in perspective and therefore carries the visitor along with it.

Like Hemer's gallery works, it is colourful and full of good humour.

There is a genre of folk art where an amateur artist haunts scrap yards and assembles what he finds into creations which might, at a stretch, be called sculpture. These constructions can be intriguing if imagination is allied to deft craftsmanship.

In West Auckland Peter Sauerbier, a Dutchman long resident in New Zealand who died in 2006, became a legend for his creation of such fanciful objects. He had a quick eye for how pieces of scrap could be adapted with great skill.

He left his entire collection to the Corban Estate Art Centre. A third of his legacy fills all three rooms of the gallery until early September.

One of the ways he worked was to make bits and pieces into picturesquely improbable guns that would never fire. They are here with the figure of a crazy general in unlikely armour adorned with innumerable decorations. There are also some splendid masks.

Even more effective are works in the next room called Weird and Wonderful, particularly the section titled the Avian Atelier. The birds are extraordinary. They are mostly made of brass objects and Sauerbier injects such life into them you almost expect them to make a metallic honk.

Supporting the brass found objects are details using everything from a boar tusk to a lavatory chain. These birds are genuinely weird.

Sauerbier did wonders with brass and cast iron, light brackets and assorted bric-a-brac. His Beethoven in the Family Car uses a violin, piano keys and a bust to splendid effect.

The only time his eccentric eye faltered was when he fashioned a bird/plane from a chrome bumper bar and other bits of chrome. The modern flash did not suit his style.

Te Tuhi's foyer hosts a work that is part of their extensive exhibition/lecture series called Resonating Spaces. This is an "experimental forum on the urban environment" and is more sociology than art.

A drawing wall in the foyer space is where invited artists can do a graphic work. The collective, Afterwork (Jason Lindsay and Matt Ellwood), have chosen to dismantle and reconstruct the wall to fit their own concept of "drawing". They have made shelving instead of a drawing.

Those attending the opening were invited to stack beer bottles on the shelves. It does little for the space although the green of the bottles of expensive beer is attractive.

The rest of the show features nine artists who have explored cities facing periods of major transformation.

A lot of the work is academic, involving sitting in front of video screens and listening on earphones which requires patience and commitment.

Some images are memorable, notably yet another take on the decline of Detroit by Gregory Holm and Matthew Radune. Their collaboration produces remarkably beautiful photographs. They took an abandoned two-storey wooden house and for 30 days through winter the house was drenched in water for 24 hours each day.

The result is thick ice enveloping the house and hanging in great icicles. The photographs show it was a sombre but astounding spectacle.

Other work is simply documentary like the huge photograph by Dieneke Jansen that documents a site that was Papakura Military Camp. Hong Kong architect Rufina Wu and German photographer Stefan Canham combine to reveal the life of those who inhabit shanties on the roof tops of substantial buildings in Hong Kong. Peter Wareing has bound together bits of footage of the life of people whose living conditions in New York are far from the romantic image of that great city.

The film throws up the occasional telling image like the abraded fingertips of a tiler and plasterer. The whole project is worthy but appeals to lovers of intellectual debate rather than those looking for visual excitement.

A smaller much less pretentious show is Grand Tour by Kim Meek at the Anna Miles Gallery. His work is unashamedly ornamental and born from his experience in working in Asia. Fascinated by the shapes of Chinese/Japanese ceramics, he has a sound command of computer print technology.

His prints feature an elegant row of ceramic shapes in the foreground and a dark background laced by a fine grid. The shapes, collaged with modern motifs taken from textiles and printed material, are integrated into a digital print.

Each assemblage has a rhythm of shapes going through it and a harmony of colour despite the variety of decorative patterns.

The shallow space suggests display cabinets though the piquant contrast of lively figurines that pop up among the vases offsets this a little.

Meek is hunting for the soul of Asian ceramics and how they have transmitted their values to the west. On the way he has created some charming and stylish prints.

At the galleries

What: Screensaver by Andre Hemer

Where: Old South British Building, 3 Shortland St, to January

TJ says: An old foyer invigorated by an energetic modern painting. Well worth making a little detour to see.

What: Resonating Spaces: an environmental forum

Where: Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, 13 Reeves Rd, Pakuranga, to September 4

TJ says: Nine local and international artists exploring cities facing periods of major change. Strenuously intellectual but dotted with some powerful images.

What: Re-made: The Assembled World of Peter Sauerbier

Where and when: Corban Estate Art Centre, 426 Great North Rd, Henderson, to September 4

TJ says: A comprehensive display of the ingenious and imaginative objects made by a craftsman/artist with a great eye for the possibilities of scrap brass.

What: Grand Tour by Kim Meek

Where and when: Anna Miles Gallery, 4J/47 High St, to August 20

TJ says: Digital prints that make east/west links by elegantly using the shapes of ceramics.

Check out your local galleries here.