T.J. McNamara: Dark imagery contrasts with heroic factor

Two venues are showing exhibitions in more traditional styles than current trends in contemporary art. Pah Homestead in Hillsborough is hosting a touring exhibition from Taichung City in Taiwan as part of their Da Dun exchange programme. It includes paintings, sculpture, calligraphy and seal-making.

The most striking element is the paintings, all large, mostly with elaborate frames, although some are done on scrolls. Without exception they are confident, made with considerable skills in draughtsmanship, detail and composition. The frames and ambitious size recall displays of 19th-century art. The effect is reinforced by the anecdotal, illustrative nature of the subjects.

One work, Rebirth by Hua Chen, is the rescue of a young girl by firemen using a ladder. Courbet in France and Millais in England painted similar works of heroic firemen 150 years ago. What distinguishes this work, which is painted on a scroll, is the suggestion that this is a benevolent administration working for the helpless. It is one of several other paintings with dark political imagery. Most of the others are full of a feelgood factor, presented very lyrically. There is also some Chinese calligraphy and cabinets of beautifully engraved seals.

A spectacular misty Mountain Top by Hsieh Cheng-Hsun uses powdered gold and a bright moon to provide a romantic view of rugged alps. A brilliantly executed still life by Koe Jen-Jay of a denim jacket is made surreal by the presence on the floor of a mask with eyes shielded by photographic film and an opening through the jacket and the wall behind to show a bright landscape. The title is To Memorise the Struggle for a Better Future.

The use of watercolour is particularly dextrous, notably in the blue and touches of red in A Blue Fishing Port by Tsai Wei-Hsiang. Another feat of virtuosity is The Flying Soul, an interior of a baroque church, the type found in the former Portuguese enclave of Macau, tapering upward and filled with contrasts of light and dark and a cloudy mysticism.

There is much to take pleasure in throughout this exchange exhibition but it is far from challenging in terms of subject and concept.

The second exhibition, in the Long Gallery at the Pah, is this year's Adam Portraiture Award, showing 41 New Zealand paintings selected from 330 entries, judged by Dr Nicola Kalinsky from the Barber Institute in Birmingham.

The judge obviously has a strong liking for simple honesty and little taste for attempts at high drama. The deservedly winning portrait, Tim, by Henry Christian-Slane, is small with no detailed background. The face is modelled to give a strong sense of structure and a distinct personality emerges.

Much larger portraits posed dramatically against landscape, or of subjects like Jon Trimmer the ballet dancer, are strong but obviously carried less weight with the judge. The huge portrait of Ralph Hotere by Martin Ball also did not appeal; nor did Viky Garden's intense self-portrait.

As a gallery of New Zealand faces evoked by an established award, it is well worth a visit.

The exhibitions at Two Rooms in Newton are less conventional although they also have links with important traditions. Denis O'Connor has always worked with stone as a sculptor and his fascination with material extends to this show that is part of a series titled The Tangler.

Here, the stone is burnished English and Welsh slate and the thin rectangles are fastened with copper nails on to a panel. There are more than a dozen of these and they are mostly autobiographical.

The Tangler is the artist himself, represented by a figure who wears as a mask the head of a horse.

The work may be a meditation on life, such as The Nine of Knights - why are you always so big and I always so small? This tableau shows the artist figure saluting and a hand reaching across two parts of the work with a figure nestled in its palm. Elsewhere the artist figure is hung on a balehook to dry. The balehook is the emblem of the working man.

One of the largest works is about language, with the English vowels in archaic letter forms above the artist who is mounted on a large broom. It makes an effective image of the dominance of language and the sweeping away of misunderstanding.

One little work has a hearth-brush mounted on a rich shelf of onyx. Precariously balanced on the far end of the handle is the artist ready to gamble on chance and circumstance. It is wry, inimitable O'Connor.

Upstairs at Two Rooms is the work of Lauren Winstone. Her ceramics take the basic vessel, which is fundamental to pottery, deconstructs the elements - a base, a rim, a handle - and makes small sculptures of these basics, part glazed and part raw. She shows considerable skill manipulating clay in inventive ways.