Strong Paintings In One-Man Exhibition

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31177, 29 September 1966, Page 7

Strong Paintings In One-Man Exhibition

G. T. Moffitt’s fourth one-man show is being held at the Little Woodware Shop and Gallery, 12 Victoria street.

His strong paintings project a rugged scorched-earth, harsh landscape matched only by his portrayal of the tough, bone-headed, iron-fisted men who wrested gold from it. The dry, brittle paint, strongly reminiscent of baked mud—it is hard to believe it was once a sensuous plastic material—has been pulled and torn into rough, anguished textures that assault the eye like particles of grit in a nor’-wester. The exhibition comprises paintings of miners (drunk, asleep, fighting, contemplating, walking, washing, etc.); four “Pareora Gorge” pictures; a “Mountain Series 1-5”; and last, "Winter Sun,” which is the odd man out of the exhibition. I propose to comment on the exhibition in this order.

Moffitt’s miners ar e heavyweights of square build, bald but with black beards and surprisingly incongruous Attic profiles. The roughness and simplicity of handling remind one of scene painting, such as the economy of handling. Prints from lino cuts of “Mackenzie the Sheep Stealer” may be considered part of the same theme. The almost crude and rudimentary design may be mistaken as incompetence, but the consistent characterisation shows that this simplification is a distillation not a short cut. Nevertheless, one is not aware in these prints of the intense richness and beauty of black and white

which after all Is the main point of much modern print making, constituting, as it does, a hymn of praise in honour of the superb and absolute beauty of black and white.

The five pictures on mountains show greater adventurousness and searching of colour and pattern than we have seen before in Moffitt’s work.

The picture entitled “Winter Sun” is unlike any of the others, the heavily broken texture of the paint is here identified with glacial terrain and the hard, cruel qualities of high mountain landscape. This in some ways is the most interesting work in the exhibition. Colour, mood and intensity place it on a different level from the earthy evocations of “Ye Olde New Zealand.”

In general this exhibition is extremely interesting, for the works have individuality and integrity. But I regret the too frequent intrusion of a heavy black squiggle into some pictures; it often has little to do with the surface colour or form on which it is painted. It almost appears to be the result of a muscular spasm and hints on at least two occasions at fairly elementary mistakes in drawing. As for the nostalgic play of romantic goldmining notions, surely these are more remote from present-day visual experience than the influence of the fashionable, glossy magazine? If so the popular parlour game “Indigenous verses International” is hardly relevant to Moffitt’s miners. The catalogue number of pictures are often placed on the side of or even underneath, picture frames. This is one way of avoiding that distracting little white square on the edge of a painting; surely there must be better ways of doing it. Most pictures are priced at 18 or 20gns; some must surely be bargains?