Zonta print exhibition

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33439, 22 January 1974, Page 12

Zonta print exhibition

The Robert McDougall Art Gallery is exhibiting prints by 1.3 New Zealand artists commissioned by the Zonta Club of Wellington.

The artists were asked to produce two limited editions of prints, one print to be four feet by two feet and the other to be no bigger than 12 square inches. The purpose of working in such extremes of size, apart from novelty, is not explained and does not in itself seem to have produced any significant result. Only Gordon Walters with his familiar koru patterns and Robyn White, “Peninsula Landscape,” handle the larger print size with apparent ease. Robyn White’s screenprint, is particularly impressive with its bands of land/sea/land in which the elements are simply conceived and crisply stated. If the larger size of print proved to have its limitations the smaller area appears to have been even more limiting.

Among the small prints is a smudgy and rather indistinguished “North Otago” landscape by Colin McCahon, an artist who has rarely ventured, publicly anyway, into the printmaking field.

Barry Cleavin seems to have been in a mocking frame of mind with his two entries, “The Lyttelton Gurn” and “Golden Rule,” a print off a 12 inch steel ruler. Guy Ngan’s work leans heavily towards the decorative and Collette Rands makes two multimedia colour statements but the most confusing imagery is provided by John Lethbridge in an etching called "Drifting” in which two ladies appear to be chewing on some old rope. Ralph Hotere, Gordon Crooks, Kate Coolahan, John Drawbridge and Tanya Ashken are other printmakers who have contributed to the exhibition which will close early in February. —G.T.M.