Artist Graham Kirk, comic genius or genial comic

By MALCOLM BURGESS

True to form, the launch of Graham Kirk's new show, Superheroes in Auckland, was brimful of characters to rival the greatest of comic strips. And not just on the walls.

One gallery-goer, who likened the painting Rupert and the Westhaven Marina to a view from her apartment, wasn't fooling anyone; she was, in fact, The Vendor, a super-vigilante charged with keeping the real-estate industry in check.

And Frank, who claimed his rough-housing at the hands of police and a television network had forced some kind of legal precedent back in the 80s, was none other than The Computer Pirate.

At the eye of this heroic hurricane was, of course, mild-mannered Taranaki artist Kirk, working the room, keeping tabs on his super-cadre.

"I'm revisiting the superhero works, but it's more a sideways move, I suppose," he says, perhaps indicating that this latest exhibition is about unfinished business with a nemesis that won't go away.

Kirk is either a comic genius or genial comic. He is best known for paintings depicting famous cartoon characters - Batman, Superman, the Phantom, even Rupert Bear - in recognisable, hyper-real local settings.

The backgrounds are taken from photographs, explaining their acute detail.

Where he once used airbrush, with this series he has employed cotton buds and brushes. His earlier use of photography, which was published in PhotoForum magazine, also comes to the fore. Each background is a well-composed shot on its own.

"I've never wanted to be a painter in the traditional sense, working from sketches and painting from life.

"I've always preferred the immediacy of the snapshot image, and there has always been something about the photographic truth that appeals to me."

In the gallery on Jervois Rd, Kirk almost seems like one of his characters, dropped into a scene quite alien from his native Hawera.

This very dilemma just happens to feature in one of his newer works, Batman in Jervois Road.

It's not every day you see a painting of a part of the street on which the gallery showing it stands.

Although Kirk's backgrounds were painted from digital pictures taken around Auckland in the past year, the city has moved on.

In the Batman work, the building in question has already been repainted, with two life-sized Blues Brothers statues frozen mid-romp on the decking.

Compared to reality, Kirk's work, in which the caped crusader recoils out front, is rather a conservative scene.

Is Kirk's work art or comics? Both. He is certainly qualified as a comic artist as he drew for the Listener for four years in the 80s. Dioxin Man later emerged out of a real-life chemical spill in New Plymouth.

In the 80s, Kirk moved towards exhibition work, although his link to comics was still strong.

After illustrating the Barry Crump book, Bastards I Have Met, he had a string of exhibitions in Christchurch, Wellington, Auckland and New Plymouth.

Are comics art? Something to ask Roy Lichtenstein, Neo Rauch, or even Dick Frizzell, next time you see them.

As if in answer to this question, Kirk's work featured in the 2002 cartoon show at the Auckland Art Gallery - a show which sought to chart the symbiotic nature of art and comics in a glaringly institutional setting.

Exhibition

*What: Graham Kirk, Superheroes in Auckland

*Where and when: Letham Gallery, 35 Jervois Rd, Ponsonby, to April 10