Sculptures show substance and style

By TJ McNAMARA

It is a commonplace that sculptors are rarer than painters or, these days, even video artists. The corollary of this is that when a good sculptor has an exhibition it is usually a substantial one.

Warren Viscoe's chosen medium is wood, and his handling of it is masterly. He has great feeling for when to carve and when to leave natural characteristics on display.

In his show, at Artis Gallery in Parnell until November 7, he extends his feeling for natural things to include birds and birdsong.

The sculptures are all shaped like books that honour books and birds. These are immensely solid pieces whose unfolding rhythms have their origins in pages and binding, though there is no effort to mimic the thinness of paper.

At the entrance to the gallery visitors are greeted by a statue of W.I. Buller in the pose of a Victorian sage. He has a gun behind his back. He was fascinated by birds - and he shot of lot of them.

This slyly witty statue is followed by the book sculptures which are at once a monument to and a celebration of birds. They are inscribed with birdsong and the heavy carving is decorated with feathers, often huia feathers as a mark of distinction.

The variety of the "books" is a tribute to the artist's invention.

The Honeyeaters Pocket Book is inscribed with notation around all four sides like a manuscript in the middle of a medieval choir.

With the immensely impressive Nestoridae - The Parrots , the front of the book takes on the character of the bird, bright eyes and a beak reaching from the pages.

The back of the work is as impressive as the front because it has the natural texture of the immense lump of wood from which the piece is made, and this is enhanced by splendid use of stain and wax.

The notation of birdsong, taken from compositions by Peter Willis and Eve de Castro Robinson, is used in various ways. In Sylviidae - The Warblers the books are not open but instead there are three massive tomes all stuck with markers, each with birdsong on them.

Overall, apart from the witty figure studies, the mood of these sculptures is dark.

One is called Icarus Over the Ruahines, and we know what happened to him, yet they represent a marvellously rich celebration of natural things brought about by the extraordinary woodworking skills of Viscoe, who has never had a better or more accessible exhibition.

Another big show, this time in ceramic, is I Appear and Disappear by Gregor Kregar at te tuhi - the mark at Pakuranga until November 10.

This young artist has never been afraid of big projects. He has made big, weighty models from lead and stained glass.

Here he is on a new tack, creating 20 ceramic self-portraits which are spread through the gallery. The effect of his two years of work is spectacular.

He is making several points. All of these self-portraits show the artist standing forthrightly with feet apart and hands in the pockets of his bright orange workman's overall.

Both the overall and the stance show that his artist, and by implication all artists, are workers, and there are many of them, in all sizes.

The second point is about the nature of ceramic. Clay shrinks when it is fired. Each of these figures is moulded from the one before, so they get progressively smaller.

The variations in size are important. If you stand alongside a lifesize artist he is a comrade; if you are looking down at an artist up to your knee he is a doll. So the exhibition is also about the effect of size.

Given all this, and the huge amount of work involved, there is one dimension missing. The arrangement of the statues is random. Surely the installation could reach another level if somehow these variations in size could be ordered in some significant dramatic way.

In the smaller gallery at te tuhi is an exhibition that harks back to those rulers we all had in school, with little inlays of New Zealand woods.

In this multi-media show, Jane Zusters has videos of cheerful congregations of birds in natural surroundings and contrasts this with wood polished into rulers and plates and inevitably decorated with tuis and fantails.

The contrast is between natural and unnatural. It's a obvious comment but deftly done and supported by excellent text.

Much more compelling in its use of multi-media image and sound are the Polar Projects of Philip Dadson, which can be seen at the Gus Fisher Gallery in Shortland St and Starkwhite in K Rd.

These works are the result of a visit to Antarctica and they bring the grim, bleak power of that continent home to New Zealand in a singular way.

At the Gus Fisher, the outstanding work is a video that shows the end moraine of a glacier. There are two levels, the stones in front and the great wall of ice, stained and marked as it reaches its end point.

Its immensity is conveyed by the tiny human figures that walk in front, speaking in a human but unintelligible language. When they leave, the great cliff of ice remains, and as the camera comes in the imagination sees giants in its folds and crevices.

At Starkwhite, video image and sound combine to convey unrelenting winds.

The images are simple: a pole with a wildly flapping marker driven by the howling wind; and a static feat of engineering, a radio mast stayed by a network of cables which hold it still as a storm blasts through.