Art Seen: July 7

This week, art critic Laura Elliott looks at works by Euan Macleod, Dick Frizzell, an Megan Huffadine. 

Turtle (with Night Sky), by Euan Macleod.

One of the most significant exhibitions to come to Central Otago, Euan Macleod's "Painter'' is a haunting, beckoning, at times unsettling, and ultimately very thought-provoking experience.

An early work that the viewer encounters is Macleod's 1984 Dark Self-Portrait: a morose, almost secretive piece, vigorously painted in thick slashing strokes, a cathartic transfer of self to paper.

This is the most traditional of the self-portraits, but Macleod's presence travels through almost every canvas in the form of his ghostly, shadowed walking figure, an elusive embodiment of one man and perhaps humankind as a whole.

Often painting outdoors, recording his journeys, Macleod creates a disorienting blur between the physical and the metaphysical; in Turtle (with Night Sky), the environment itself, earth and stars, is brought inside the figure and the boat he carries on his back like an encompassing shell.

Most of the works pose man against, in, and entwined with nature: the sea-goer and his boat, the climber of mountains, the creator of fire.

Desert, Painter, Painting is one of a series of images that depict the painter in the act of painting, a self-referential endless cycle of creation. It is probably the goal of every artist to invest an intrinsic part of themselves into their works, and Macleod's powerful, eerie imagery seems to have forever captured memories, emotions, and thoughts, as well as snapshots of the land as it was in a fleeting moment.

Bedtime, by Dick Frizzell.

Dick Frizzell has always defied artistic boundaries and labels. His eclectic works bounce from one style and subject to another, dragging elements of one into the next, and mingling realism with parody, pop art, illustration, abstraction, and techniques that refuse to be restrained in a single box.

Having formerly worked in advertising, he has purposefully reached out his brush over the years and blended the lines between so-called "high art'' and commercial art.

Drawing on his skills as an animator, he brings together graphic design, modern art, and the traditional school of painting, and does so with tongue-in-cheek witticism and gentle satire.

This exhibition includes pieces from the 1980s right up to 2015, and is so fascinatingly diverse that it's difficult to believe every image came from the same creative mind. It's rather like Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, and Roy Lichtenstein have got together for a group show.

Classic illustrative Frizzell in 2008's Bedtime is set against last year's beautifully evocative landscape Misty Morning on the Forgotten Highway, and 2013's abstracted Picasso-esque Pascoid Tiki #17, and the intensely detailed realism of 2012's Hay Rack.

There are countless nods to famous names and art movements in Frizzell's work, but the whole is invested with his own unique sense of vision and humour. The selection follows no set pattern of progression, but creates an intriguing sense of harmony in its very dissonance.

The Stone Gatherers Constellation, by Megan Huffadine.

The 15 artists of Cromwell's Hullabaloo Art Space celebrate their 10th anniversary this month with a major group exhibition at Arrowtown's Lakes District Museum and Gallery.

The collective's members usually take turns producing solo shows, so it's a treat to see their individual styles brought together in this complementary, highly successful display.

There isn't a single weak link in the collaboration; quality is consistently high, and it works to the group's credit that each person's creative ethos and technique is so distinct.

Highlights include the remarkably atmospheric bleakness of Ro Bradshaw's SH Flight I and II, in which the tiniest specks of birds in flight command the centre of the eye's attention against the vastness of the landscape.

The cool, clear serenity and sensitivity of Eric Schusser's black-and-white photography is offset by elements of drama, such as in the gathering thunder of Storm Clouds, Coronet Peak, and hints of poignancy and nostalgia in works like Huts, Falls Dam.

Painters Rachel Hirabayashi and Gail de Jong excel in delving into the Central Otago landscape. Andi Regan's cable-tie Kina and Urchins have such a quirky energy and realism that you might almost expect them to ripple with the movement of a sudden wave, while the medieval beauty of Lynne Wilson's Impressions Series is contrasted against the ethereal ghostliness of Annemarie Hope-Cross's photography and the vivid energy of Megan Huffadine's galaxy of iconographic planets.

-By Laura Elliott