The galleries: Mythic and feline forces

By T.J. McNAMARA

The big show this week is Nine Lives, which fills the New Gallery and canonises nine modern New Zealand artists.

Jeffrey Harris is equally saintly by virtue of winning the generous Wallace Award. His work and the also-rans are on show at the Auckland Museum. Later there will be time for comment on both exhibitions.

Elsewhere in the city the shows are smaller, quieter and not so radical. At the Lane Gallery (12 O'Connell St) until September 26 there is a double exhibition of two young but established artists.

In the work of Thom Elliot, lines of figures surge forward out of darkness. The figures read as huge, masculine and faceless and their forward momentum as inexorable. Whether they are aggressive or refugees seeking some sort of new home is left largely to the imagination of the viewer, but they have a mythic force. They are the Greeks advancing on Troy in the dawn of history. They are figures in the deserts of Iran.

However you care to read these figures, they are visually very impressive. Although they are faceless and have no specific style of garment, they are full of a melancholy energy.

Each of the six paintings obviously follows the same theme, yet there are differences in tone in each of them. The wide rank of figures is aggressive in Rant, a painting spoilt somewhat by a vertical seam. In a similar painting in two parts called Mute, the strange figures look more like survivors resting after a traumatic experience. In another work they appear actively to seek help.

These sombre strong paintings, a change from the landscapes of the artist's previous work, show that figure painting can still have powerful expressive force.

Emma McLellan, who shares the exhibition, in the past made paintings with dim figures in patterned archaic dresses reaching forward out of darkness. Then the figures were reduced to faces lost in the patterns. In this show only the brocade-like pattern of the dresses survives.

The patterns are silk-screened using rich, unusual but splendid colour. They are at their best when they give a hint of form underneath. Over the intricate patterns there is a wash of paint that expresses a touching melancholy as it runs down almost like tears.

These paintings are more formal than McLellan's previous work but despite the absence of distinct human forms they retain an emotional richness that adds to their immediate decorative appeal.

A show of equal simplicity and tenderness is the remarkable exhibition of drawings/paintings by Michael Harrison at the Ivan Anthony Gallery (312 K Rd) until October 4. This exhibition, which is completely sold out, is almost entirely of cats although you might trace one deer and perhaps a dog.

The cats are lovely things in themselves. Beautifully studied, their attitudes - particularly the carriage of their heads - is very exactly observed but the cats are not done with masses of detail, they are simply pale outlines.

The outlines are filled with thin, wistful colour and the positive/negative interaction between the colour and the background is a source of energy.

These cats are beautiful in themselves but they are also metaphors for relationships. They are usually in pairs and they interact with each other in a way true to cats but also profoundly true to human relationships. There is even a hint of engineering. At least two of the works have cats cantilevered like the trusses of a bridge. The feeling of the work is totally different but Mondrian is not far away.

More subtly and touchingly, there are delicious works such as Small Advances where, in the lower part of the work, two cats make advances to each other but maintain a tense gap between them. At the top of the work their heads are touching and there are birds in their heads like a spirit in their minds and another bird taking flight.

Other works, such as Coma, have the stillness of deep sleep, and Traveller is a remarkable work where the cat is seen from above stepping out decisively, a symbol of adventure.

Even deeper is First Born, where there are two closely allied cats in the background and another in the foreground who bears a weight of expectation shown by his size. This is a superb show, unique in style and impressive in its sensitivity.

A third quiet exhibition is at Artis Gallery (280 Parnell Rd) where Carin Wilson has an exhibition in a variety of media. It runs until October 5. It has signs on posts, stones, glass and cut-out steel on the walls and on the floor.

The works are all about the nature of written signs and how we recognise human marks in the midst of all the multifarious forms of nature.

When a person makes a sign we recognise it as human work and that it had meaning for the maker even if we do not share the language or the sign system.

Wilson's signs have a proud significance since they are derived from the chiefly signatures on the Treaty of Waitangi. The significance is best conveyed when they appear on wood or stand in isolation. They survive on glass. Chipped on a rock they lose their force. It makes no big fuss but this is a proud, thoughtful, important exhibition.