The galleries: Subversion across genres

Malone’s work shows the detritus of everyday life.

Marcel Duchamp has a lot to answer for. When, in 1917, he exhibited a urinal as a ready-made piece of art and made it into all the histories of art, he established the use of found objects and the concept that ideas were all that mattered.

His urinal tipped on its side dealt with the idea that a sculpture should have a high degree of finish and that it should be simple, monumental and strong. "Here," he said, "Cop this. It's heavy. It's polished. It's in an art gallery. So it's sculpture. Ha ha." His wit was intensified by signing it, R. Mutt, meaning, "a dog" or "an idiot".

What followed was that idea and irony became all important. Art was about subverting accepted ideas. Such an exhibition is at the Sue Crockford Gallery until December 11.

Daniel Malone, an artist of considerable status in the closed world of conceptual art, has taken the found objects of his life, gathered them together and spread them on the floor and walls of the gallery.

Boxes are full of the cardboard inners of the toilet rolls he has used, and he has included the worn-out heads of his electric toothbrush and the clear plastic triangular packages from sandwiches he bought.

On the wall are printed bags from local and overseas stores. A bench with brushes and paint and Sellotape gives the artist's studio touch. The brushes are new and unused.

The immediate predecessor is Tracey Emin's bed. It had the detritus of life around it - cigarettes and condoms - but the English artist's bed had a sense of presence. When you looked at it you felt it was still warm. It had a sense of personality and an emotional, even erotic, charge.

Malone's work does not have this emotional charge. It is too spread out. It lacks concentration. Only the working bench has any sense of personality. This is because he has put an extra spin on the matter by relating the collection to his dealer gallery.

He is not really a man for dealer galleries. He usually spreads himself round public galleries but through the dealer gallery you can decide which heap of the discarded matter of life you prefer and he will take it and make a work of art for you.

This is the special irony; one person's rubbish is another person's art. It is clever and a commentary on the processes of art and selling art, but the show lacks the energy of a personality and the special sense of life that might involve the viewer emotionally.

Irony is heaped on irony at Auckland University's Gus Fisher Gallery in Shortland St, where Australian artist John Nixon joins Auckland artist Julian Dashper in The World is your Studio until February 12.

It features paintings on drumskins, some panels of pure colour and recordings you can't listen to. This corroborative effort has already been the topic of two public lectures and is an important retrospective show, we are told.

Yet it is all cold philosophy. Art about the ideas of art. Nixon for more than five years painted nothing but the colour orange and his orange panels are on display with a new development, some panels of silver on poor quality plywood.

The orange is intense. He is saying, "You admire colour in art? Well here it is." Pure colour, unmodulated, bold, ordinary colour straight off someone's bathroom wall. But here it is hooked up with culture because these panels of plain colour lean against the history of Western culture exemplified by a grand piano in the middle of the floor.

The drumskins on which Dashper paints his circles of colour are similar. The skins support the pale harmonies he favours and look decorative when hung with Nixon's orange panels in the main gallery.

To push their import further they are hooked to a symbolic idea when attached to a drumkit and placed on the floor near the grand piano. This illustrates a link between minimal art and modern music and beats the big drum for abstract art. Both are international artists. International does not make them important.

Irony is also present in Dick Frizzell painting the signs on show at the Gow Langsford Gallery until December 11. In effect, these are still-life paintings. When a painter painted a traditional still-life we did not admire the fruit and flowers as such but the way and the accuracy with which they were painted. So it is here but other levels of meaning exist in the work.

First, they are a special kind of still-life that shows a typical aspect of life in New Zealand's orchard country and Frizzell's handling of paint is superb. It takes great art to be so artless.

He has included witty references to McCahon, who is in his sights when he paints a sign in white letters on black.

These are the show's least-successful paintings. The McCahon connection is a red herring and matches the title of the show, The Pumpkin is a Red Herring.

When Frizzell gets away from being clever about McCahon he celebrates the picturesque aspects of provincial life, the extraordinary qualities of paint, and the charm of naivete. It is a great show. Irony works when it is funny.