N.Z. Paintings Exhibited

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31360, 4 May 1967, Page 14

N.Z. Paintings Exhibited

The 1966 Anthology of New Zealand Painting, at present on display at the Durham Street Art Gallery, continues the series dealing with serious New Zealand painting which the Auckland City Art Gallery started 10 years ago. On this occasion the Auckland gallery, which in previous years chose the entire exhibition, delegated selection to the four main centres. Differences of population have been deliberately overlooked, and each centre is represented by eight artists. Because of this the exhibition will appeal to a wider public. Discerning viewers may, however, feel that Auckland’s liberalism has given them an exhibition which is less good. The practice of the past could be relied on to provide an uncompromised opportunity to view the strengths of New Zealand painting but now we are shown fewer of its strengths and much mot-e of its weaknesses. So much in the exhibition is plainly indifferent painting. Particularly is this true of the Dunedin work, where finding eight painters was clearly uphill work. With the best will in the world I can find little of value in Dunedin’s choice of W. J. Reed’s oil entitled “Moeraki.” The canvas is overloaded, the colour like confectionery, the conception trivial.

Auckland, of course, would have had no difficulty in finding eight representatives. In this section we find an impressive series by Colin MeCahon on the theme of the 14 stations. All the works in the series are similar in size, and each has the same lowkeyed richness of tone attuned to the solemnity of the theme. But it is not just in relationship to their anguished subject matter that they impress. They do so individually and so a group because of their authority as pictorial statements. To my mind these works are the substance of the exhibition.

Don Binney, also of Auckland, shows two works. He is, I suppose, a gifted painter, but one wishes that techni-

cally he we-e a little less scrupulously precise. In “Anawhata Diptych” his effort to give us two paintings as one ends in our being given two paintings in one. Nevertheless the fact that he had the nerve to attempt such a difficult task makes one more indulgent towards his failure. There are other good things in the Auckland section, notably Ralph Hotere's “Big Red X” (illustrated). The addition of the transparent plastic element does its job here as a stabilising point which effectively counters the strong diagonal thrusts of the shaped canvas. In Hotere's other work, “Vertical Orange”, however, the addition of several similar elements only titi. vates the canvas without contributing anything of significance.

Wellington has gone to New Plymouth to find its best representative, Don Driver. His work is in no way gimmicky, and unyielding surfaces exact an immediate visual response. Gordon Walters, also of shows

work which should not be overlooked, for he charges a seemingly artless pictorial alphabet with a good deal of visual interest.

Michael Illingworth exhibits with the Dunedin section, although one usually associates him with the Auckland scene. His work has imaginative qualities which are the more telling through their having been subjected to a pictorial discipline. Illingworth is an impressive practitioner. In a very different way so, too, is David Graham, of Christchurch. His two works command attention not only because of their lively colour presence but also because of their vigorously charged inventiveness. In a way they rather consign the works of Milan Mrkusich, his neighbour in the exhibition, to the role of bland emptiness. The impression given by the exhibition is of a vast body of energetic work. With few exceptions it is neither very good nor very bad, but something in between, —D.P.