Art seen: Sustainability in life and art

When I Grow Up I Want to Live Like a Movie Star, by Jenufa Waiti.

•Summer Show, various artists (Gallery de Novo)

Before the new round of exhibitions kicks off for another year many galleries use this time to display art from their storeroom by the various artists they represent.

This is a great opportunity to view a range of works by contemporary New Zealand artists, from around the country.

Gallery de Novo has a diverse selection of paintings, prints and mixed-media works on display for its summer show.

Catherine Garrett's landscapes, for example, are characteristically bright and bold, with pure colours and clearly defined topographical forms.

Taieri Ripple, currently on display, is a fantastic example of her work.

Garrett has broken the landscape up, the fast-flowing river gushing out from between shattered mountains.

The title also has an element of humour, referring not only to the ripple of the water's surface but also the corrugated-iron surface on which the work itself is painted.

A collection of Kelvin Mann's etchings also has a comical, almost caricature-like aspect.

In Two-stroke Trombone and Exhaust Pipes Mann constructs mechanical hybrids, delicately drawing characters with exaggerated features, who play bizarre objects which are part engine, part instrument.

Narrows Halls Arms is a striking work by photographer Gilbert Van Reenen.

Reminiscent of sublime 19th-century landscape paintings, this work depicts the towering, rugged coastline of a watery vista.

The hills are an almost-solid black silhouette, daunting and immense.

Van Reenen captures a unique New Zealand landscape, unpopulated and pure, with a dramatic intensity.

•HeARTbeat, group exhibition (Community Gallery Dunedin)

The current exhibition at the community gallery brings together the work of local artists with an interest in sustainability, both in everyday life and the production of art.

Recycled materials, from mirrors to blankets, along with sustainably-produced wool and low-toxicity printing inks among other unconventional materials, are given a new life in the hands of these artists.

The resulting objects are both beautiful and in several cases functionally practical, while containing an underlying message of reuse, reinvention and environmental awareness.

Some artists, such as Jacque Ruston and Katie Whitefield, have utilised found objects as grounds on which to develop their own distinct and personal means of expression.

Simone Montgomery draws on the tradition of "waste not, want not," transforming hand-me-down blankets into unique satchels and bags.

Lynn Taylor's intricately folded and delicate paper boats float gracefully in the window.

They are part of an artistic project which documents the journey of the ship Westland from Scotland to Dunedin in 1879, created out of materials relating to the New Zealand context of that journey.

The exhibition also features the work of several jewellers.

Brendon Jaine, for example, recovers old glass bottles washed up on the beach, shaping them into smooth pendants with symbolic form.

•Hello Lamb/The Perspectives of Elsewhere, various artists (Blue Oyster Gallery)

The Blue Oyster has started 2009 with a collaborative exhibition, including the work of several Japanese artists and the project Do It Yourself Shelf Museum of Opportunities by New Zealand-based collective Hello Lamb.

The title strongly places the project within a distinct cultural identity, the self-sufficient DIY attitude of many New Zealanders.

The shelf, literally a kitset brushed-steel unit, houses a variety of objects that establish a cross-cultural dialogue.

A Milo tin with table tennis balls sits below a Japanese bowl with chopsticks, while cute kitty moneyboxes converse with terracotta figures.

This museum is full of opportunities indeed.

The work of contributing Japanese artists includes film, photography and mixed media using found objects.

Ichiro Endo's performance film takes place in a busy public plaza, where he repeatedly runs full tilt at a wall.

Go Watabe's work is made of thin strips of magazine paper fastened to a rectangular frame.

The paper flutters gently in a breeze, so that the work resembles a feathered cloak.

In the gallery entrance a precarious pile of golden lucky cats arcs from the floor to a shelf in a work by Ryuzo Nishida.

The top and bottom cats have mechanically beckoning paws, a movement which threatens the stability of the work yet is comical and endearing.

Some elements of this exhibition are unfamiliar, referring to the "elsewhere" of the title, yet they provide a unique opportunity to discover similarities among the differences.