The galleries: Spontaneous approach does Pompallier proud

McArthur's Pompallier takes on the Anglican clergy.

Artists face the question whether to be national or international. Piera McArthur has had exhibitions internationally but in her work at the Studio of Contemporary Art in Newmarket she chooses to concentrate on New Zealand history.

The paintings, on show until November 18, are about Bishop Jean Baptiste Francoise Pompallier who came from France in 1838 to preach the gospel to Maori.

His deeds and personality were the sort of material in which a 19th-century narrative history painter would have rejoiced - the bishop wading ashore to make his first contact, his meetings and debates with Anglican clergy, his being carried through the swamp, his endeavours to dissuade Hone Heke from cutting down the flagstaff, his presence at the sack of Russell in 1845 when an ammunition dump blew up.

In the 19th century such subjects would have been material for detailed historical reconstructions, taking a year of concentrated effort. Now McArthur makes it look deceptively easy, the work of an hour.

She is the proponent of dash, vigour and improvisation. Her version of history painting has more than a dash of Dufy's spontaneity and a nod towards Jackson Pollock's rhythms.

She has the energy that comes from immediacy, but her special contribution is a caricatured view of events.

Her comic method is to apply vigorous patches of colour, notably the purple of the bishop's robes and a great deal of red. The explosion of the ammunition dump is splendid.

Added to the colour are lines in black which outline the colour and sketch in the faces and figures. If the situation remains unclear, a goodly dollop of lettering gives a guide.

The bishop is shown as a tall figure with a hooked nose, wearing his wide-brimmed hat to indicate his place in the Catholic hierarchy.

The paintings are not only energetic and colourful but at times very funny, notably when dealing with the confrontations between the bishop and the Anglican clergy.

Not all the paintings are equally successful. Their cultivated craziness can disintegrate into chaos, particularly when cattle are involved.

Sometimes there are mixed results within a single picture, as in the paintings of the bishop speeding in his coach where the whirling of the wheels and the speed of the coach are well conveyed by the attacking style of the painting but where the horses are crammed awkwardly against the frame.

The little chirping bird for the Holy Ghost is in keeping with the mood of the work but is inadequate to the point of silliness rather than being comic.

McArthur's work is certainly not to everyone's taste but there is nothing else quite like it.

The work of Robyn Kahukiwa at the Warwick Henderson Gallery until November 20 is also focused on New Zealand, race relations and Maori rituals. She is as serious as McArthur is amusing.

There are seven paintings in the show which is connected with the publication of a handsome book by the artist. The subject of some of the paintings is the celebration of the difference between Maori and Pakeha and the way a national identity is constructed across the difference.

This is celebrated in big, plain paintings made simple and clear as a poster by juxtaposing European and Maori colour and conventions of representation. The clear ideas expressed are emphasised by lettering.

There are two very solemn paintings about death, showing a body displayed in an open coffin according to Maori ritual.

One of the works - on a big unstretched canvas - sums up all the rest of the show. Whakapapa Birth and Death progresses from a background of hills to a scene of birth emphasising the importance of the umbilical cord, to an attendant grandmother seen through an open coffin, then past the presence of a god attended by the symbolic figures of fantail, owl and lizard, and on to finish with a moonlit scene which is the best passage of painting in the show.

To go from these deep concerns about myth and ritual in New Zealand to the work of Bill Riley, at the Vavasour/Godkin Gallery to December 3, is to go international. His geometrical abstraction might have been done anywhere in the world yet it has a very personal spin - it is paint but not exactly painting.

Riley exploits the ability of acrylic paint to form a strong skin. He has put acrylic paint on glass, then peeled off films of paint and assembled rectangles of them on canvas. The works are described in their titles as Reconstructed or Re-dressed.

Some works are monocolour, such as Reconstructed White where rectangles of white paint overlap and cause faint lines and faint shadows in an intricate but unpredictable composition.

The same process in Reconstructed Red creates a rich and imposing surface. Yet even academic abstraction such as this must be given an edge and the edge here is colour. In the Re-dressed paintings there are big areas of strong colour with smaller rectangles emerging under the principal skin. These gain tension by having one small square discordantly out of phase in tone.

It makes for a bright and thoughtful exhibition.