From the scant to the generous

By T.J. McNAMARA

One thing leads to another. A show at Artspace on Karangahape Rd is part of a discussion about the future of Auckland that includes the exhibition, a debate and a broadsheet.

The exhibition is very thin, lost in the spaces of the gallery except where, projected at one end of a long room, subway trains come crashing in and thunder out of a station in Korea. It gives a glimpse and the sound of a hellish underground future.

The rest of the exhibition has some awkward trees modernised and plasticised by Richard Maloy and a startling photograph by Allan McDonald of bulldozed ground being readied for housing.

This limited exhibition should lead the curious to find the Ivan Anthony Gallery on the opposite corner where there is a very complex show called Largesse by Andrew McLeod until October 5.

This show discusses occupants of buildings - not in a particular city but as habitation in general. The works are technically brilliant. The artist has a huge bank of images drawn from many sources but notably from the software for architectural design. He arranges images in intricate compositions against a dark background.

There is a strong sensation of the eye of God looking down on the multifarious goings-on of life, the patterns of buildings, human activities and the arrangement of planting and gardens.

At the same time there are stars and nebulae worked into the pattern; as spectators look down into a teeming world they also look up into infinity. The human world is confined between walls of geometric rigidity and all the images in some measure resemble architects' plans.

The architectural quality is reinforced by the way the works are printed by inkjet on stiff architects' paper. A certain piquancy is given by delicate trails of text that wander through the structures, speaking with more than a touch of acerbic irritation at the confines of the world, art and systems.

The results can be charming, as in The Sweet Forest which is a mass of stylised trees enlivened by dots of colour, or the witty Design for a Bedroom where goldfish glow against the dark background and are counterpointed by geometric structures and some irascibly obscene comment.

Much sharper in tone and with more visual bite is Design for a House where the outline of a house contains innumerable other houses and a variety of outlying buildings. All the spaces have tiny human figures seen from above, trapped in corners and never communicating from group to group.

The architectural setting for these concepts works brilliantly and the works are literally fascinating. The style is much less effective when it is more explicit, as in Design for a Brothel which is confined within the outline of a female figure. The figure is matched by the outline of a police cap which is compartmentalised into a series of lavatories.

When McLeod forces the social comment his work is at its weakest; when he relaxes and indulges himself with the immense multiplicity of the images he has absorbed, his work is truly remarkable in its complicated references.

From this complexity we can turn to the utter simplicity of the work of Elizabeth Thomson whose wall relief sculptures are showing at the new Anna Bibby Gallery in Newmarket until October 12.

Her work blends nature and art in equal parts. She makes precise copies in bronze of various kinds of leaves and then arranges them in artificial patterns.

Frequently she uses the juvenile leaves of lancewood cast in bronze and painted to exactly replicate nature and then aligns them in rhythmic arrangements where they diminish in size and increase again to make waves or circles. Each piece is almost invisibly fastened to the wall but is independent enough to cast a shadow.

The patterns have a special magic about them and more than a hint of ritual. In Islands of Dodonaea they spin in ritual circles. In Antequera 2002 they form a cross and match reality with artifice by mixing leaves with hand-formed drops of glass. These works are utterly spare and devoid of background. They are simple, transient things imbued with magic and authority that confirm this exhibition as something very special.

This leads on to another new gallery in Newmarket: Whitespace, directly opposite Anna Bibby in Morgan St, and an exhibition that caused quite a stir when it was in Australia. It is called Pacific Notion and runs until October 4. The artists are Polynesian and the gallery will specialise in South Pacific work.

Lily Aitiu Laita does big Expressionist works with lots of attack. Filipe Tohi builds complex structures in wood based on patterns of binding and lashing and he makes stone sculpture as well.

The show is dominated by an installation by John Ioane which is at once funny, satirical and bitter. A mannequin male plays a ukulele while his grass skirt jigs. Behind him is a wall of artificial leis each adorned with a limp plastic penis. The whole is a comment on the interaction of Polynesians and modern materials as well as the subversion of gender roles. It is called Poly Wants a Cracker.

The satirical mood is completed by some politically explicit works by Andy Leleisi'uao, whose figures all have a power point in their heads, and some huge abstractions using chevrons of reflective vinyls by Niki Hastings McFall.