Art seen: July 25

Raindrops, by Mabel Tennent.

(Tūhura Otago Museum)

Tūhura Otago Museum is celebrating its 25th annual photography competition with a display of leading entries from this year’s crop.

The works are arranged in several categories: wildlife (adult and youth), botanical (adult and youth), landscape, and monochrome. All the works on display are of excellent quality, and prove that the standard of nature photography in and around the region continues to excel.

Given the excellence not just in the adult categories but also in the youth competition, that standard looks likely to remain high. This year’s top prize, worthily, went to a youth entry, an image of raindrops on flax leaves by Mabel Tennent.

Several themes recur throughout the exhibition. Portraits of birds and studies of fungi are popular, as are mountains at sunset, and recent displays of the aurora australis inspired numerous entries. With photography, however, it is not just an attractive subject which is important. The photographer’s skills (and sometimes luck) in getting the perfect moment and their understanding of composition are often what moves an image from good to great.

There are too many fine works to do more than mention a handful of the photographers; images that caught my eye included pieces by Neale McLanachan, Zoe Eng, Angus Burns, Benny Chia, Kate Baskerville, Kavan Chay, Geoff Smith, and Oscar Thomas.

Terra Nova, by Rob Foote.

(The Artist’s Room)

The Artist’s Room’s current exhibition features work by two artists, who present some remarkable art.

Ruth Phipps’s work is perhaps the more connected to the exhibition’s title, as the fall of shadow plays a distinctive part in her delicate oil paintings. In muted tones, fine embroidery and lace work is painstakingly recreated, the folds of fabric delicately delineated by the play of light and shade. In images such as Heavens Embroidered Cloths, colours are reduced to cool blue shadow and warm umber light, the two shades emphasised by the rich blues and browns of a delftware jug and plain wooden shelf. In Shadows Fall and Shadow Lace twisting strands of lace border vie for attention with their shadows in sparse, elegant images.

Alongside these works are some eye-opening charcoal works by Rob Foote.

In these, the artist creates cathedrals of light and sombre, shadowy studies, the shades and tones of the images honed to perfection by Foote’s skill. In the Sanctum pieces and Ethereal Abode, the works seem lit with a powerful internal glow, creating breathing space within the image.

In other pieces, such as the psychologically layered Terra Nova, a more enclosed, meditative space is created.

Wander Through the Wildwood, by Mel McKenzie.

(Gallery De Novo)

Spring has come early to De Novo, with an exhibition of blooms to brighten the dark winter days.

Over 20 artists have work on display in the exhibition, with pieces ranging from traditional, classical still lifes through to abstractions and expressionist images where the heady implication of the flowers is more important than their realism. Among these latter pieces are bravura impastoes by Anna Stichbury and John Badcock, and the swirling vortex of Anita de Soto’s Spirit of Flora.

Soft focus is a feature of several of the works, notably impressionist pieces by Siobhan Wooding and Jenni Stringleman, the latter of whom presents an image of a florist’s shop filled with colour and airy light.

Several eye-catching pieces by Mel McKenzie, using a style imitating soft focus "bokeh" photography, are also worthy of note. Among the works using a more clearly delineated realism, fine images by Julie Battisti, Sarah Badcock, and Jan Ingram stand out, as do the more stylised work of John Santucci and Eion Shanks.

Though paintings make up the majority of the show, other works are also on display, among them Ana Teofilo’s intriguing Pasifika-influenced mixed media pieces and several smile-inducing ceramic birds from Kylie Matheson.

By James Dignan