Six Large Works, Martin Thompson (Brett McDowell Gallery)
In his current exhibition at the Brett McDowell Gallery, Martin Thompson presents six large panels made of graph paper.
Using an ink pen, Thompson has coloured in tiny squares on each piece of paper, slowly and painstakingly building a series of geometric patterns that are presented in a mirror image on each panel.
The result is a strange combination of intricate patchwork and highly-pixelated form, each piece revealing its own unique sequences and characteristics .
The viewer's eye is drawn dramatically around and across the surface of the works, zooming in on the minutiae of each tiny square, only to be thrown back to see the bigger picture of perfect symmetry and order.
While they may seem to be the random result of a laborious and almost obsessive technique, Thompson's designs are actually the visual manifestations of mathematical equations and sequences.
This may only be recognisable to Thompson's fellow mathematicians, but there is a sense of magic in these works in that they seem to have a hidden meaning.
As each square is either filled in or left blank it is encoded, switched on to form one element in a complex and fascinating message.
The fact that each sequence is repeated with the negative and positive fields switched over suggests that two alternative readings of the message are possible.
Our Wider World, Gilbert van Reenen with poetry by Brian Turner (Gallery de Novo)
New Zealand art and literature have always had a close relationship, and the current exhibition at Gallery de Novo shows just how effective the combination can be.
A large collection of photographs by Gilbert van Reenen have been displayed alongside poetry by the celebrated Dunedin-born poet Brian Turner.
They have been carefully matched, van Reenan's photographs acting as pure visual expressions of Turner's honest and graceful passages.
The sublime, powerful landscapes in van Reenen's photographs speak for themselves, but their association with pieces of poetry establishes a more literal dialogue.
Van Reenen's First Light on Mount Grandview, for example, is a striking image, with an almost tangible pink and purple sky hovering above open grassland that is glowing with the rays of the rising sun.
The effect is echoed in Turner's text, which states "and before the dusk mellows and fails the light is like honey on the stems of tussock grass".
Each of the photographic and poetic works in this exhibition contains the same sense of wonder and discovery.
In the poem In Your Place, Turner states, "You know beauty when you behold it, when it catches you off guard".
Van Reenen's photographs reveal to us those breathtaking and beautiful moments, expertly captured and expressed.
10 Years and Counting, Various artists (Temple Gallery)
The last of the summer stockroom exhibitions are coming to a close for the year as the 2009 exhibition programmes begin.
At the Temple Gallery on Moray Place, 10 Years and Counting brings together a large variety of works by contemporary New Zealand artists.
The Temple is literally a treasure trove of contemporary art, with pieces displayed from the main entrance, up the stairs and in the large exhibition space above.
As such there is always something new and exciting to see, and the current exhibition is a great opportunity to sample the range of artists the gallery represents.
In the main space, for example, there is a working drawing by Ralph Hotere which is a part of his black union jack series, commenting on the Springbok tour of 1981 in the context of apartheid in Africa.
The work contains a clever stress on words, moving from "this is a black union jack" to "this is a black union, Jack".
Also on display is a portrait by Peter Stichbury which depicts a nerdy character named Ron Clearwater, complete with bright yellow jacket and Hawaiian-print tie.
While this work is bright and somewhat comical, Ben Webb's portraits take on a much more sinister feel.
Webb takes large black-and-white photographic portraits and disrupts the surface of them with silvery streaks and marks, disfiguring and distorting the features underneath.
