T. J. McNamara: Islands of colour mixed media and visual invention

Andre Hemer's New Representation # 9 (No. 5 in the exhibition).

From painting to sculpture, richly creative careers are on show.

Much exciting contemporary art aims not to promote meaning or message but rather to engage the eye with new visual experience. The exuberant, intensely colourful work of Andre Hemer has mystery in its making while, at the same time, makes the actual action of the artist's hand abundantly plain.

The paintings are layered works and the underlying levels are complex with subtle shading of areas that might be close-ups of natural forms. They usually appear to have form, such as ridged surfaces and wild brushwork, but are created by scanning natural shapes and surfaces and are therefore flat. A network of cut-out shapes in often flaming colours overlay these.

Again there are laid and isolated islands of complex colour that float on the surface interrupting the harmonies. In some works, notably in the spectacular Node paintings, the final surface is thick gold pigment worked into a heavily textured impasto with a wide palette knife. The whole makes restless, shifting clouds of colour.

Several fine paintings dominated by shades of purple and violet are full of charm and surprises - like the deceptively cratered surface of New Representation #8. The outstanding and more flamboyant paintings works such as the big diptych Big Node #32 and the vivid flames of New Representation #9 have great carrying power matched by the lyric qualities that are the main impact of this work.

Hemer's work has recently gained a measure international recognition, featuring in 100 Painters of Tomorrow, from the prestigious firm of art publishers Thames and Hudson, and details of his work appear on the cover. The invention and flamboyance of this exhibition shows the justification for his gathering reputation based on finding his way to work a multiplicity of forms around into coherent, yet dynamic, painting.

Omnium Gatherum, the work of Julia Morison, is more ordered and precise but equally as inventive as Hemer's painting. During her long career, Morison has endlessly changed mediums, using material as disparate as gold and hardened liquefaction.

This show is spread across nearly 50 unframed sheets of laminate, occupying both levels of the gallery. Downstairs the images are done in mixed media within a framing edging and background of steely grey. The individual images, when they complement each other, are set together in groups of up to six but retain their individuality and can exist separately.

The design elements are often linear and intricately interwoven in engaging patterns and grids. Within these patterns are surreal motifs: bulb horns spouting red blood, a flower-like cup with a stem woven on a cross, inky burst of black that resemble spiky forms such as kina or odd vegetables.

The variety extends to squares joined by drips of paint, abstract and architectural forms and such things as in Omnium Gatherum 004, where a corset shape forces spiky explosions in four directions. This is, alongside 007, like a plan of a medieval city drawn on a taut skin but intersected by the straight lines of railway. All this is often backgrounded by geometrical patterns and some of the designs have been printed out as line only and made into a prototype colouring book that seems far too precious to be actually used. Its presence is part of a major show typical of such a varied, richly creative career.

Young Melbourne artist Brendan Huntley is both a ceramic artist and a painter. His work, seen here for the first time, combines both sculpture and paintings but the subject is always unmistakable. He makes clay towers and wild paintings of the female torso.

The materials of one are pots and vases and in the other, the swooping curves and pushful prominences of women's bodies are conveyed in the most abrupt and deliberately clumsy way.

The works are all body: no arms, no legs and no head. The aim is not to be seductive or realistic in any way but to push the image as far as it will go and still be recognisable at its extreme expression. The work, trying always for directness, makes a merit of being clumsy and ugly but still remains inventive in its making. To some eyes, it might also be amusing in its extreme distortions.

It neither denigrates nor produces wonder or identification. Its merits lie entirely in visual and impromptu invention confined to the rude essentials like Neolithic fertility sculpture. The colour is usually bright primary with the baked orange of clay in the sculpture.

The ceramic may be made of an upturned flowerpot topped by a vase with two bright red promontories or it may be a bowl with an upturned vessel on it and the usual protuberances. The paintings are mounted on a sheet of paper within a frame. Layers of collaged paper with swirling curves of breasts and belly overlap the rectangular shapes.

It is all very direct, rhythmic and almost violent but whatever the permutation it certainly makes an impact.

Gow Langsford

What: New Representation III by Andre Hemer
Where and when: 26 Lorne St, City, to May 14
TJ says: A tightly controlled, inventive technique produces exuberant, vivid abstract painting.

Two Rooms

What: Omnium Gatherum by Julia Morison
Where and when: 16 Putiki St, Arch Hill, to May 28
TJ says: Cleverly inventive motifs set within intricate linear patterns make a large show of uniformly creative panels.

Bowerbank Ninow

What: Out in the Open by Brendan Huntley
Where and when: 312 Karangahape Rd, to May 7
TJ says: Sculptural pots and paintings of the female form done directly to the point of crudeness while striving for impact.