Take this week's works as red

Red dominates the art scene this week. It colours many things: power, politics and passion.

Red zig-zags spectacularly through the angular patterns of Download, Sara Hughes' award-winning work at the Wallace Trust Gallery where the finalists in this generous award, now in its 14th year, are on show. The exhibition runs until October 7 and has a great variety of work, all full of confidence. Viewing is essential to keep up with what is happening in the art scene.

Red is used in a special way, too, in Jeffrey Harris' From Dream, at the Milford Galleries until October 8. Harris has a big retrospective show touring the country, accompanied by a splendid book that is a tribute to his high status in New Zealand art. His reputation is based on the way he conveys the tension and neurosis that can affect relationships between men and women. The paintings that do this are filled with sharp-edged, angular detail that adds to their drama.

A couple of years ago he abandoned this clear reference and sharp drawing in favour of broad representations of strange, animal-like figures. One such painting, looking like an elephant, won a Wallace Award and here the representations reappear in a full-scale exhibition.

Every painting has a vivid red background but the images are still odd and it is extremely hard to follow the artist's thinking.

These animalistic heads have big floppy ears and flat black circles for eyes and mouth. They stare like crude comic-book characters from their red background. Only when they are tilted slightly in profile do they suggest some sort of emotion. When they are equipped with an elephant trunk, they simply look ludicrous.

Only the two very large works have some sort of force dissipated to some extent by the limpness of the images. From Dream

2481 has two rhythmically curved and drooping figures. One turns its head toward us; the other turns away. The second figure has two hanging, seed-pod shapes which may suggest breasts. The figures are forced apart by a rod. There is a head impaled on the rod. The figures are linked by a curious bit of tubing, which may or may not be a penis. They are too stylised to evoke a human response and yet not stylised enough to be a vivid visual image.

Yet this and a big painting, From Dream

4889 which has heavily lidded eyes and an oval mouth that refers to Munch's Scream have at least the impact to go with their oddity - but the exhibition is puzzling and unconvincing.

Up in K Rd, at Michael Lett until October 15, there are paintings which are not about the human condition but which just celebrate red as red. Chris Heaphy works in minimal, geometric abstraction. In Kawau he makes great play with different shades of red with only a high horizontal to suggest the origin in the painting looking out to sea from an island.

The red of the horizon glows and then a bar of immaculate white falls between two darker shapes of red. Small optical events happen where red meets red in a painting like this, giving it energy despite its plain surface and extreme simplicity of form.

The Wallace Award exhibition has a Salon des Refuses on the third floor of 47 High St. It is hard to find but worth the effort because the painting there is good enough to make the choice of the finalists debatable.

Coincidentally, there are works which feature red by two artists who have substantial exhibitions in dealer galleries.

Niki Hastings-McFall's latest thing is to cover manufactured objects with bright paper flowers, a process she calls Polynisation.

The piece in the salon decorated this way is an old radio and it has an impressive bulk but the point about bright Polynesian decorative take-overs is more sharply made in her show at FhE G2 Gallery by the flowers that cover television and telephone. This witty show of de-colonising the mind runs only to the end of the week.

The other artist with work at a dealer gallery is Gary Freemantle, at the McPherson Gallery until October 8.

His beautifully drawn figures, in action poses or yielding to fierce emotions, are poses against dark backgrounds.

The figures, men and women, offer characterisation and intense expression. The emotional content is sometimes reinforced by making the background a dark red.

This works extremely well in the painting at the salon called No more Waiting and Wishing and in In Red, a striking image of a barefoot woman in the gallery. The intensity and draughtsmanship of these highly individual works show Freemantle is a talent to watch.

The exhibition is shared with Jo Smith who chronicles the atmosphere and doings of Waiheke. Her seascapes are tensioned by tall fishing rods. The best of the work shows lone fishermen and women on a sweep of beach with everything pulled into unity by her individual palette of sandy colour.

If you do go to the Refuses, make a point of going up one more floor to the Anna Miles Gallery to see another delightful de-colonising exhibition by Gina Matchitt where the baskets of food and wisdom given to humankind have Maori names including the bright red of Te Wharewhero.