Smillie goes behind facade, Peyroux beneath the surface

'The little man of the house' by Diana Smillie.

'Wrap around, Bull Creek' by Steev Peyroux.

Diana Smillie returns to the Temple with her latest excursion into the darker side of the human psyche with "That's My Boy".

These works, dwelling on dysfunctional familial relationships, are difficult to view because of their subject matter, but are a tour de force in terms of their painterly nature and raw power.

In previous exhibitions, Smillie has examined the emotionally charged spheres of domestic violence and mother-daughter relationships.

In this latest exhibition, she turns her gaze to the twisted realm of the manipulation of sons by overbearing mothers. The works are simultaneously sickening and glorious.

Mining a rich vein of psychosexual mythology and art ranging from Greek tragedy to the works of Goya and Ensor, the paintings are overwhelmed with symbolism.

The stinging barbs of Portuguese man o'war jellyfish sit alongside Oedipal allusions and two-faced sweet/vicious cat-headed women in a potent melange.

The works show the artist's strength, not just in her ability to present such difficult subjects, but also in her skills with her medium.

The images move from lambent background to visceral, occasionally violent foreground without losing their internal reality.

The strong technique and strong subject combine into powerful effective art.

- Humans are, by and large, surface dwellers.

We walk across the surface of the land without thinking twice about what lies beneath the surface.

Beneath, in the depths of the earth, is an entirely unseen world.

These are the sorts of thoughts that spring to mind in viewing Steev Peyroux's latest exhibition "The deep" at The Artist's Room.

The works are an extension of Peyroux's previous pieces, using the same subtle muted palette of sepias and blues.

But whereas in the past Peyroux's stunning prints have concentrated on the textures and subtle tones of the land - trees, cliffs, and windswept places - this latest body of work looks beneath, figuratively and literally going to the roots of these features.

Even where the roots - the hidden half of trees - are not tangibly present, they are implied in reflections on water or tangled vines across stones.

The structures that the artist has created for these unseen places draw on the same vein as the animations of fantasy films, yet present it in such a way that there is an undeniable realism to the forms.

The resulting images are simultaneously magical and prosaic, ordinary and extraordinary.

- Port Chalmers Design Store has a new gallery space - an area formerly used by Simon Kaan as a studio.

Its inauguration has been marked by a group exhibition from three artists associated with the port.

Simon Kaan presents several of his meditative seascapes.

The gentle washes depict small canoes adrift on an eternal watery space somewhere at the point between sea and sky.

In some pieces, rich red tree ring-like markings have been gouged into the work, adding a bold coloured element.

The works are timeless yet suggest the passage of time; vessels await, ready to ferry the living or the dead across the uncharted waters which lie far from known shores.

Martin Poppelwell's work focuses on the forms and interplay of words.

In his large etchings, sentence fragments jostle against each other like the murmuring of a crowd.

There is a political inflection to many of the pieces, though it is the juxtaposition of phrases which immediately strikes the viewer.

This is particularly true in his drawn studies, in which lines, charts and interlocking segments are superimposed on pages taken from an old accounting ledger.

Chris Clement's works explore composition and space within the theme of the Port's timber pile.

A multitude of stacked logs present their sawn ends to the viewer, each individual yet within a seemingly uniform stack.

The sea and sky and their point of contact become major features in the startlingly composed diptych Wood with beer bottle.

- The Otago Museum is showing an exhibition on the life and work of E. J. McCoy.

Ted McCoy is a notable figure in Otago's 20th-century architecture, with an important body of work straddling the divide between modernist and traditional styles.

This exhibition, celebrating McCoy's achievements over five decades of design, is timed to complement his recent book, A southern architecture.

The exhibition is well presented, firmly placing McCoy within the framework of Otago art and architecture by presenting his work alongside photographs of older Dunedin stonework (images from an earlier book by McCoy and J. G. Blackman).

An insight into the architect's stylistic preferences and influences can also be gained by the additional display of items from his own art collection.

The bulk of the exhibition focuses on McCoy's own work.

The photographs, plans, and sketches show the architect's skills, especially when dealing with Dunedin's often unforgiving topography.

Given that McCoy was responsible for the remodelling of the museum housing the exhibition, perhaps Sir Christopher Wren's famous epitaph ("If you would see his monument, look around") would be an appropriate byline for the display.