The galleries: Avant garde in their time

By T J McNAMARA

"The New Zealand art scene is smug and complacent." This dictum inscribed on the wall of the university's Gus Fisher Gallery at the top of Shortland St is a quotation from Petar Vuletic who, in 1972, opened a gallery called the Petar/James Gallery. (His brother James was a sleeping partner.)

The aim was to concentrate on a theory of art that would ensure quality work, drag us out of provincial lethargy and link us to what he considered the only valid international art, Greenbergian abstraction.

The gallery brought together a group of talented abstract artists and gave them a forum and some theoretical underpinning.

The gallery has long since closed, but art historians Edward Hanfling and Alan Wright have chosen an exhibition of the work of 10 artists who had solo shows there between 1972 and 1976. Vuletic and his Circle is accompanied by a hagiographic catalogue and runs until June 28.

This is a historically important show. The selection has been tight and the 21 paintings still retain their power, though often one generation's avant garde is the next generation's old hat.

In their time, paintings like Phillip O'Sullivan's Red, a tall slab of colour done in 1974, seemed almost impossibly radical although it clearly emerged from the New York School of thought and practice Vuletic subscribed to so wholeheartedly.

This may be one canvas that has not stood the criticism of time but most of the others still impress, even though the painters have gone in different directions.

Dominating all are three paintings by Milan Mrkusich who was well-established before the gallery opened. One is in the foyer and the others give grace to the main gallery. They are challenged by Gordon Walters' untitled work in black and white that uses the koru form he made famous. The precision of this work and the energy it generates with collisions of the poles of black and white is Walters at his best. Works by Stephen Bambury, Roy Good and Geoff Thornley are excellent examples of the style they maintain to the present day. The surprise is a fine triangular work by Alan Wright, co-author of the catalogue.

What is food for thought is the work of the quirky individualists: Richard Killeen and Ian Scott, abstractionists in the 70s, figurative painters now.

They have never ceased to search for expressive means of presenting their concepts, though maintaining a degree of impassiveness inherited from their minimalist period.

Scott's sheer talent in handling paint is apparent in his Orchard Light, which is rising streams of colour. His delicious Ether, a warm line of red on a background of rollered colour, is simple and warm.

Killeen is represented by one of his spiky abstractions given tension by being just tilted off the vertical, and by a work that is exceptional in this show since it is a combination of found object, collage, bits of broken glass and some quickly flicked paintings of birds.

Killeen is the classic case in New Zealand of the endlessly seeking modern painter who never rests for long in one style. In his show at the Ivan Anthony Gallery in Karangahape Rd until June 14, he has achieved an almost unprecedented resolution of his various styles.

Each of these works is confined within the outline of a beetle shape. The works are not paintings though they are done on canvas; they are ink-jet prints in editions of three. To achieve them Killeen has drawn on the enormous bank of images in his computer, assembled them thematically and juggled them into tight patterns that are like the accumulation of images in memory.

The colour is more intense than you might expect from ink-jet printing and each part is emphasised by black line. The effect is simple and crowded and often quotes from Killeen's earlier work such as might have been seen at the Petar/James.

Imaginative, ironical in subject and technique, witty, visually fascinating and more than a little disturbing, these images are Killeen at his quirky best.