The galleries: Pay attention to detail

By T.J.McNAMARA

The Auckland art year is well under way, with a combination of new names and old. Notable are artists who pay a great deal of attention to detail. A new artist is Lingikoni Vaka'uta at Oedipus Rex Gallery (Upper Khartoum Place) until February 20. He is a Tongan-born Fijian artist who received the Commonwealth Arts Prize in 2002 and received a residency in Auckland last year, when he completed most of work in this show.

Like so much work from the Pacific, the imagery is derived from legend and myth. There is also an influence from the patterns of weaving and cloth-making.

Another characteristic the work shares with other Pacific artists is a strong central image accompanied by a border filled with fine detail that reflects on and echoes the feeling and story of the central figures.

In an image such as What's in a Face we see a large part of the face; around the edge of the aperture that reveals the face is a crowd of small images which are the thoughts of the person depicted and, more than that, the things that contribute to the identity of this individual.

As with most of the work, this image is done in ink on paper in minute, careful strokes. The figures that feature in all of the pictures are highly stylised around a system of curves that have hints of both batik and Indian art. Legs and breasts are decorated with patterns like tattooing.

The female figures have a good deal of charm, especially when there is a juxtaposition of people and natural things, as in I Can't Speak Your Language, where a girl and a bird have obvious sympathies even if there is a difficulty in communication between them.

The intricate details of the work on paper does not completely carry over to the works in oil on canvas. The intricate patterns remain worked by scraping through the wet paint but the broader effects of, say, the night sky in The Medicine Woman are coarse and dull despite the dreaming presence of the main figure.

The exhibition shows confidence and a strong sense of purpose. It is rich and intricate, and repays close study. It can be read without knowing about Tongan mythology, although it does add a note of drama to a work like Tangitangi Lulu (Cry of the Owl) to know that an owl calling outside the house means someone inside is pregnant.

An old hand at the art game is Dean Buchanan, who has a show at the Warwick Henderson Gallery (32 Bath St, Parnell) until February 15. The Heartland collectively makes a statement about a typically New Zealand association of car wrecks and the landscape.

The detail lies in the rhythm of the forms and the brushwork. Distant mountains are a collocation of sharp peaks against a background of sky with radiating clouds and in front of these vistas are piles of junk, mostly old cars but with the addition of other detail of windmills, hay rakes and tin sheds.

The rust and decay is rendered in vivid shades of red which dominates the foreground of all the pictures. What pulls the elements together are the tracks and patterns that lead from the foreground junk towards the distant hills and the grotesque tracery of stylised trees that link foreground and distance.

Everything is infused with a sense of frenetic energy special to this painter and it is this energy that gives life and tension to individual paintings when the theme could fall easily into cliche.

A typical work is called Car Wrecks, Horopito Motors near Ruapehu, where the wrecks lie under the spiky shape of the snowy mountain, but exactly the same idea and feeling is found in Helensville or Porongia. The paintings are at their best when the ferocious red of the junk is modulated a little, as in Blue Plymouth.

The concept of steel wreckage among the natural beauty strikes a chord in every New Zealander and Dean Buchanan has given it forceful expression but only once in the exhibition does he transcend the particular and show the potential to create a grand, visionary metaphor for all such clashing activity when the spiky tines of a hay rake add special complicated menace to Hay-rake with Car Wrecks at Horopito.

Detail is also important in the photographic exhibition by Lisa Crowley called Garden City which runs at the Gus Fisher Gallery in Shortland St until March 13.

Part of the exhibition is large photographs of ground in situations as remote as the Sinai desert. These bring us close to the detail of dry soil, stone and scant vegetation and stimulate more thought than the two photographs of beautiful, marbled stone from Myanmar and Kazakhstan.

The real fascination is found in the main gallery where there are 10 video monitors ranked on the floor. Each monitor is showing a DVD loop and the images are of roof-tops in Cairo. The short loops gain immeasurably over still photographs because they convey movement.

What we see is the intriguing detail of everyday life: women pegging out clothes, conversations, shelters, a goat, gardens and graffiti. In no way do these glimpses of anonymous people who live part of their time on roof tops seem voyeuristic.

They just raise the sense of wonder at the multiplicity of the goings-on of life. They are a triumph of honestly observed detail and use of a new medium.