Art seen: Suite 2023 (Dunedin Public Art Gallery)

"Looking at things as a whole" by Kate Fitzharris is a welcoming tableau of animated and personified vessel figures. The exhibition communicates as a single assemblage made up of many elements and is punctuated by distinctive almond eyes that act as focal points for the viewer.

Scale and form are key considerations that inform the thematic whole, as does an acknowledgement of the material and geological qualities of the clay itself. Reduction firing techniques draw out and celebrate the colour of the clay as also indices of connectedness to place.

Installed high on a wall across from the central table is a signature work by the artist: a rendition of a sheela na gig. This piece refers to a deeply mysterious iconographical tradition of an architectural grotesque found across Europe and originating from the 11th century. In this configuration it appears both whimsical and conceptually grounding, spanning cultural and spiritual histories as it also watches over the exhibition.

"Precious and Pathetic" by Small Measures (Jane Venis and Hannah Joynt) is a theatrical and comedic multimedia exhibition comprising four short-duration film works and accompanying sculpture and painting.

The films make incisive, hilarious and relatable commentary on a range of social complexities, some of which are much larger and very serious in scale. In one of the works, a spoon full of water is carried from St Clair beach to the Arabian Desert in an effort to counteract sea-level rise. In another, the design for a self-contained vehicle (where the toilet unit is a portable shrub) is undergoing regulatory inspection.

Satirical, down-to-earth and honest, this exhibition approaches wicked problems and everyday frustrations of just being in the world. Taken to exaggeration, in Joynt’s work, Agree (2023), for example, the bureaucratical becomes ontological: "Tick box the box to proceed. Ticking the box confirms that you agree. If you do not tick the box then you will go NO further."

"TAUTIAKI HAPTIC" by Madison Kelly (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Mamoe, Pākehā) is an interactive architectural space, housing sculpture/drawings in bronze, that celebrates habitat edgeways and the whakapapa of mokomoko/lizards, kōhatu/rocks, and wai/water.

Riparian field drawings are translated and cast in bronze, then framed and installed like windows. The viewer is invited to turn them over in turn, creating a play of light and shadow, while tiny percussive kōhatu scatter down their surfaces.

In the centre of the exhibition is a single bell, inscribed with a composite of leaf litter and ground matter. It becomes a call to listen and a location marker, in the way that mokomoko are indicators in connected ecologies.

The bronze mokomoko are exquisitely rendered, with the waxy casting process capturing life-like qualities and tell-tale marks: horizontal lines or scale patterning that distinguish geckos from skinks, for example. Two splash cymbals are an invitation for the audience to play and to listen to the works, and we are given harakeke and tī kōuka to do so.

"My Sky" by Motoko Kikkawa is a world-scape in soft fluorescent watercolour and three-dimensional animation, additionally rendered in the form of a digital game that can be accessed through a QR code.

In panoramic form, Kikkawa’s signature calligraphic drawing practice is a scrolling network that extends skywards, reaches laterally, and is tethered, as if to anchor compositional flurries that expand at its junctures. There is a significant tension in the scale of the piece too: the swathe of white paper contains immense detail and incredible intricacy.

The experience of viewing the mark-making up close evokes a sense of wonderment: abstract biomorphic form becomes mineral, cloud or animal alike, and cities become forests or birds or spiralling helicopters.

A discordant quality is often counterbalanced in Kikkawa’s intuitively guided practice and there are elements of this sensibility here too: in the softness of an atonal soundscape, in asymmetry, and in a game that will take on a life of its own.