The 'Hotere Culbert'' exhibition at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery is spectacularly good but the institution could improve its performance.
The exhibition is focused on collaborative works made by the late Ralph Hotere (1931-2013) and Bill Culbert (b.1935) and there are some real stunners.
Pathway to the Sea - Aramoana extends its magic from the entrance to the doors of the ground floor galleries. Hotere's contribution is the pebble path of paua shells, Culbert's the parallel line of signature fluorescent tubes.
The shells put me in mind of the mole extending from the spit at Aramoana reaching out into the sometimes astonishingly placid sea. The mole is topped by railway tracks and Hotere's shells have a track ground across their weathered backs exposing the brilliant iridescence of the lapidary nacre below. Fluorescence glows, paua glistens: they march into the distance together.
I've seen the work in different settings and it registers differently in each. In the old Logan Park gallery building it was installed in the enfiladed galleries between the de Beer gallery and the Sargood Wing.
Because the succeeding spaces each had connecting arches the work seemed to travel like a train through a series of tunnels. In the wide open territory of the Octagon foyer it's more like tracks across a plain.
Either way it produces a sense of projection or movement perhaps towards infinity, the distant unknown beyond the horizon which arouses a sense of wonder.
P.R.O.P., which the gallery owns and is thus probably more familiar to locals, ought to be a flop but isn't. It is just sheets of black lacquered corrugated iron leant against the wall with alternating longer and shorter neon tubes attached at regular intervals.
Why doesn't it seem like a stack of industrial materials stored at some fabricator's work site? It doesn't because these are artfully stacked and huge and have other ways of capturing our attention.
The initials of the title refer to the protection of Observation Point at Port Chalmers which was in fact a steep inclined plane like the work. But the interaction of white light and reflective black lacquer is steady but almost unholy.
Black and white are the signatures of good and evil. The unwavering, silent struggle between them again moves the mind to the metaphysical.
That such large themes are conjured by such simple means is truly masterful.
This is shared by all the works but my standout favourite is Blackwater.
It was exhibited in the Octagon in the Black Light exhibition in a space created upstairs. That cramped it a bit but now in the downstairs Port Otago Gallery it has enough room to breathe. There's a platform of black lacquered iron studded with lit wands. They lean and cast rippling reflections across the shining surface. I believe it may have been inspired by stars reflected in one of those anthracite Westland lakes. Whether it was or not, it again turns the mind to the cosmic and the eternal.
It's a big exhibition, sprawling through the building - don't miss the drawings on the ramp. It's undoubtedly splendid and I congratulate the curators but unfortunately there's a rub. There are concurrently showing other touring exhibitions but very, very little of the permanent collections.
A letter appeared (ODT, 16.10.13) complaining about this. The director, Cam McCracken, replied, ''At a large metropolitan art gallery such as the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, exhibitions are changed and updated on a regular basis.''
The absence of permanent collection material was temporary. More would be shown in November.
Mr McCracken is an able and amiable man but this is not good policy. It would have been better to defer some of the touring exhibitions - all of which are good - to ensure a significant amount of the permanent collection is on show.
That single letter is not the only complaint. Others have voiced it to me before ''Hotere Culbert'' went up, during its opening and since. The gallery has a good New Zealand collection and the country's most significant foreign collections with works by important artists.
Where is the Monet, the Constable, the Turner, the Gainsboroughs and the Claude Lorraine?These are only a few of many one could mention. A selection should always be on show.
Mr McCracken's remark would have been true if he were talking about a large metropolitan exhibition centre. New York's great Metropolitan Museum of Art always has large amounts of its permanent collections on show, as does the Tate and the National Gallery in London and institutions with significant permanent collections everywhere - except Dunedin.
There was great unhappiness over the same issue at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery early last decade. Policies were established to remedy it then.
They seem to have been lost but should be reinstated. A proper balance needs to be constantly maintained.
Peter Entwisle is a Dunedin curator, historian and writer.
