Art: Beauty and tension in paradise

By T.J. McNAMARA

In a fertile way, the theme of Bright Paradise is spreading out from its centre at the New Gallery in concentric ripples through the art scene. The concept of a vivid world shot through with jolts of stern reality is a clear way into a number of shows, notably the two satellite exhibitions associated with the Triennial.

The new university gallery at the Kenneth Myers Centre at the top of Shortland St is host to work by Sabine Ott, who is based in St Louis, and expatriate New Zealanders Bill Culbert from England and Patrick Pound from Australia.

Ott's captivating installation occupies one whole room. The walls have been painted in stripes from floor to ceiling in a way that hints at landscape. The colours are strong and decisive but chime in unexpected combinations. The floor is carpeted with astroturf that suggests alternations of sea and land. Within this world are layers of cut-out letters placed on the floor. They spell EROS or ROSE, love and flowers.

There is also a little volcano made of chocolate and a table in a petal shape that is covered with chocolate icing suggesting more volcanoes. There are sound effects and a sweet pattern projected on the floor.

This concern with sweetness which can shape into things volcanic and with layering that conceals hidden desires is continued in a large painting hung on the wall.

There was a time when the abstract stripes on the wall would have been considered a complete work of art but Minimalism is now a style of the past and a work must probe into the realm of signs and symbols and the emotions they convey.

In the second room of the gallery Pound has lined the walls with found objects, book covers, illustrations, a child's writing, anything that conveys the sense of the creation of realms where displacement takes place.

There are so many artefacts to read that a law of diminishing returns applies once the idea is grasped. Tighter control of the material would have made the work stronger.

In the foyer, Culbert plays with the paradoxes of heavenly light and earthly light, light from table lamps and the setting sun and even makes witty use of Sunlight - the dishwashing liquid.

The other satellite station is at Artspace in Karangahape Rd where the main room is occupied by an installation by Paul Morrison from Britain.

Once again the walls are painted, this time with flowers and plants and a long shape that interacts with the white of the walls to suggest a reef or off-shore islands. The flowers, which are immensely large, are not pretty. Once again both beauty and tension in paradise.

The natural process of decay and the vivid colours it produces are the subject of a sequence of photographs of a whale stranding taken by Ian Macdonald. The photographs were made decades ago yet there is striking parallel with the recent much-acclaimed novel Being Dead by Jim Grace.

The show is completed by a series of bizarre paintings by Tony de Latour which imitate 19th-century views of picturesque colonial paradises and then subverts them with tiny images of bones and snakes and violence. There is also an inconsequential film by Paul Sietsema from the United States.

At the nearby Ivan Anthony Gallery there is a wonderful new exhibition by Bill Hammond that continues trends apparent in his striking work in Bright Paradise. The world of his endangered birds is coloured in pale washes that suggest a faded Renaissance fresco and add a dimension of time to his imagery.