Art seen - James Dignan

Dark Sky Across the Plains, by Angela Burns.

(Moray Gallery)

Angela Burns returns to Moray Gallery with an impressive series of "fragments", small works which serve not only as studies for larger pieces but as effective meditations in their own right on the play of light on land and air.

The pieces, which the artist describes as fragmentary memories made while driving through the Southern landscape, focus on the effects of the changing atmosphere through the day, the subtle shifts of colour and shade, capturing an impressionistic essence of each scene. Burns’ ephemeral skies, built up from dynamic horizontal strokes, sit above an equally layered and sketched land, the two separated by the intense white of the horizon, as exemplified in the masterful Dark Sky Across the Plains.

The scenes, if taken from a representational viewpoint, remain deliberately ill-defined, but they simultaneously capture an emotional quality and sense of place and space. The pieces form an extension of the artist’s previous work, with tangible elements within each scene becoming stronger and more focused, and the overall effect is of an enigmatic and constantly shifting land.

It is not claiming too much to suggest a distinct New Zealand style in the form of sweeping ambiguous landscapes which seems to have captured many Antipodean artists, Burns successfully among them.

To Blueskin Bay, Mapoutahi, Purakaunui, by Scott McFarlane.

(Brett McDowell Gallery)

Another artist whose work expresses a personal view on the land and its forms is Scott McFarlane.

The artist, formerly of Dunedin but now based in the far north, has presented a series of his own sense-scapes of the New Zealand landscape in his latest exhibition at the Brett McDowell Gallery.

These are haunted lands, with faces appearing from the rocks and a deep history etched in the textured scores and underpainting of the surfaces, many of them the result of reusing previously worked board.

As with Burns, there is a strong link to New Zealand’s art history, but also with European art history. The ghosts of Fomison and Woollaston haunt these canvases, as do echoes of early surrealist landscapes from Ernst and Dali. Despite these latter foreign influences, the art clearly retains a strong New Zealand feeling, whether it be in the remembered southern scenes of To Blueskin Bay, Mapoutahi, Purakaunui or the more northerly Taiamai Plain. The former work, an impressive amalgam of half-recollected memories, is a particularly strong work.

Where figures are the central subject, as in Portrait with Cones, Oromahoe Portrait or the more prosaically titled Cat, the faces remain enigmatic, portraits of impressions rather than of the individuals themselves.

Wheelie Girl, by Bronwyn Gayle.

(Fe29 Gallery)

Bronwyn Gayle (the artist formerly known as Bronwyn Mohring) is showing an intriguing and fun exhibition at Fe29, which is backed by the weight of her master of fine arts dissertation.

Gayle has long been fascinated by horses and the role they play in traditional fairy tales. Using a childhood photograph of the artist dressed as Little Red Riding Hood as an inspiration, she has explored the idea of the archetypes and continua that lie within our traditional folk tales, focusing on three repeated tropes: the young red-dressed protagonist, the old evil antagonist and the faithful companion animal.

The companion, in the form of the horse, provides the theme for most of the works on display.

The pieces are saggar-fired — made from grainy clay kiln-fired within protective ceramic containers. The resulting items have been augmented with found "reimagined objects", many of which add a gleefully childlike surreal element to the work. The ceramics thus formed tread a line between toys and a submerged horror element, in much the way that many fairy tales are cautionary warnings. They remain, however, charmingly likeable pieces.

The exhibition is well complemented by a series of the artist’s working sketches, giving us a fine insight into the creative and constructive process involved in making the pieces.