Art seen: March 18

BY JAMES DIGNAN

North from Kaikoura by Peter Belton. Image: supplied

‘‘Arrested Moments’’, Peter Belton
(Moray Gallery)

There is a visceral yet meditative quality to the landscapes depicted in Peter Belton’s images of the South Island. Created in mixed oil media, the pictures capture a evocative hint at place, a memory sensation rather than a defined location.

The scenes are impressionistic, relying on washes of atmospheric blue and yellow brush strokes to create a sense of land, before thick oil pastel is applied to flesh out the details.

Images such as Otago Harbour in Winter Sunlight and The Road North and West, Canterbury, rely on the strong perspective lines of the scenes to imply solidity and depth, whereas some works, such as Swift, Foveaux use shape alone to create their more ambiguous implications of place.

Belton has created the works in this exhibition from sketched visual notes made during trips to the hills and coast, and the use of the mixed paint and pastel media has produced works which have a solid basis and also a dream-like quality.

The reduction of the palette has added to the dramatic atmosphere of the works, although those in which a wider colour range has been used (such as The Road North and West) do not suffer by comparison with the other pieces.

Koraha (Tidal Mudflats), by Jessica Ross. Image: supplied

‘‘Emerging’’, Jessica Ross and Rachel Foster
(The Artist’s Room)

Jessica Ross and Rachel Foster have an intriguing joint exhibition on display at The Artist’s Room. Using similarly muted palettes, the two artists capture glimpses of landscape and the mark of humans upon it.

In Foster’s case, this mark is through structures disappearing into mist; for Ross, it is the more spiritual mark or connection between whenua and whakapapa.

Ross’ works depict an ancestral turangawaewae around Blueskin Bay, and her works include mysterious half anonymous ancestor figures pictured against an abstracted shoreline, all placed against the low hills of the Otago coast. There is a spiritual yet enigmatic feel to these works, with their strong symmetry and bold horizontally layered structure.

Foster’s acrylic paintings create a swirling, atmospheric Otago full of mists and deep earthy tones. Using a Turneresque technique, she has created vortices of colour with long, bold strokes. Sky and land merge, and the paint has been allowed to drip down the canvas as if to suggest a bleeding of realities between dimensions.

The prosaic presentation of human interactions with the countryside, often the symbolic lone telegraph pole, are the only indications of any solidity to the land. The composition and power of these haunting works is a nod to the other string to Foster’s artistic bow, landscape photography.

Alchemy, by Brigid Allan. Image: supplied

A group show currently at Pea Sea Gallery in Port Chalmers comprises work by six artists, all of whom are also teachers, mainly from around the Dunedin area. The display includes photomontages, photograms, collages and paintings.

Cat Robson and Andrea McSweeney use the techniques of photography in contrasting ways. Robson’s evocative photomontages place photographic images against swirling ink backgrounds, whereas McSweeney has placed objects directly on photographic paper and then exposed and chemically toned the papers to produce dramatic results.

Amie Blackwell has created a series of collage vignettes, many of them featuring flowers and other ephemeral suggestions of beauty, which she has placed within repurposed vintage frames.

These works, which hint at traditional memento mori works warning of the briefness of life, are placed opposite Blair Kennedy’s harbourside landscapes which, using the landmarks of a favourite dog walk with a now deceased pet as a subject, hint at the same theme.

James Sutherland and Brigid Allen complete the exhibition. Sutherland’s portraits, unnervingly attached to the wall with a single bolt through the centre of each image, are strong studies of the sitters’ personalities, but the show’s stars are probably Allen’s works.

Her large array of separate images making up a giant portrait and her two smaller vibrant images are memorable works.