T J McNamara: Spoiled for shows but not for views

The saying goes, "the past is another country", but 35 years ago art in Auckland was a different place altogether. At that time there were two, perhaps three, galleries showing serious painting and, apart from one, they had to be propped up by a framing business or the craft boom. Only one exhibition opened each week; two a week was exceptional.

The critic went to the opening, looked at the work, went to the newsroom, wrote a piece, left it to the mercy of the news editor and the subs and the review appeared the next day. Deadlines were severe, and the length of the review was governed not so much by the merit of the work but the occurrence of fires, murders and whatever mayhem politics had produced that day.

Yet, undeniably, it was a time of enormous excitement. The likes of Colin McCahon, this year honoured by a large exhibition at a great European gallery, had to be encountered, judged and written about in a couple of hours.

However, it is no longer possible to write in the newsroom for the next day's news pages. Times have changed and there is too much art. In one week this year 22 exhibitions opened in Auckland. That was exceptional but there have never been fewer than seven. This means art in Auckland is a constantly renewed experience, varied, wide and of astonishing quality.

But something of the excitement has gone, something of the sense of danger and disappointment. It is no longer possible to write about the disappointment. With so much art there is room only to mention what is good. Enthusiasm reads better than carping.

Enthusiasm takes many forms and it affects exhibitions at public galleries. We have had some big exhibitions at the City Gallery this year and a couple, splendid though they were, were almost too big. The Cartoon Show that began the year promised so much and had such entertaining things - but it spread out into the Wellesley Wing and into overkill as the enthusiasm of the staff put as much as possible of the gallery's graphic treasure on display. Similarly, the wonderful, captivating painting retrospective of Gretchen Albrecht, full of New Zealand light and profound emotion, would have had an equal impact at half the size.

The desire for the blockbuster is still with us and we got close to it in Love & Death although, sadly, the big picture - Solomon J. Solomon's Ajax and Cassandra - on the cover of the fine catalogue did not come to us from Ballarat because it was too big. But it was a superb exhibition of Victorian painting which emphasised, among other things, how good the gallery's own collection is.

A reader wrote that I had said there were some silly paintings in the show but I had not named the artists. So belatedly it is obligatory to profess a profound distaste for the work of Holman Hunt whose Christ and Mary Magdalen was a dry, ill-conceived work.

There were other fine exhibitions at the City Gallery, notably the collages of Hannah Hoch and the current exhibition, which is exactly the right size, of work by Fatu Feu'u. But the show that attracted the most attention because it seemed to strike a chord with New Zealand's love of open spaces and picturesque corrugated iron was the show by Grahame Sydney.

The show designed to attract attention and aimed at being controversial was the lavish Walters Prize.

It should have been controversial but attracted little argument, possibly because the winning works by Yvonne Todd were so muted and oblique that a powerful response was not possible. Her subsequent recent exhibition at a dealer gallery continued to make comment so quiet it was almost a whisper.

The dealer galleries flourished in 2002. There are now three areas where galleries are concentrated. The fascinating grouping of galleries around Kitchener and Lorne Sts was supplemented first by Parnell and now there is a gaggle of galleries in Newmarket. The long established Studio of Contemporary Art and the Morgan Street Gallery have been joined by the Anna Bibby Gallery and Whitespace.

Beyond the central city there is an energetically used exhibition space of te tuhi-the mark in Pakuranga, Lopdell House in Titirangi, the Mairangi Art Centre, the Bruce Mason Centre and a few galleries in Devonport.

The one place that does have an extraordinary epiphytic association is in Karangahape Rd where the taste and shrewd eye of the Ivan Anthony Gallery carries over into Artspace. Artspace is invaluable. All things being equal, the critic should be hunting for talent around the art schools and their annual exhibitions which happen at this time of year. But "life is short and art is long", as the Roman poet Horace said, and so we have to wait until the young artist assembles a body of work that Artspace recognises and shows. This is the kind of accolade the City Gallery used to give. Now Artspace confers the honour and it can be triumphantly successful as in the show by Mladen Bizumic. He and Josephine Do, the printmaker, are fine emerging talents.

Artspace also showed some fine international work, notably the cloned young men, at once innocent and frightening, photographed by Anthony Goicolea.

One thing that emerges from this wealth of exhibitions is the need for young commentators. We need the chatter of debate - the young writing about art at the same length that they write about music. Where are the scrapping, robust little magazines with recent poetry, literature and comment? We would all benefit from more dialogue.