Brooke-Gifford Gallery shows drawings

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33917, 9 August 1975, Page 8

Brooke-Gifford Gallery shows drawings

The Brook Gifford Gallery is showing a collection of drawings and small works by Ted Bracey, Ralph Hotere. Quentin MacFarlane, and Julia Morison in an exhibition which will continue until Friday, August 15.

Morison manages to hold her own with conviction in her present, substantial, company. In spite of this being her first exhibition, her work, quite thoroughly resolved, is presented in a professional fashion consistent with her co-exhib-itros.

Four untitled tiny works i from 1974, resembling aged: ' parchment leaves bearing: mysterious inscriptions, ac-| company eight altogether) more interesting sheets from; a series. “Towards Antithesis.’’ In these she places forms in tranquil opposition; 1 step-like rectangles in one, arrows in others alternate the one with the other, both describing and opposing each other. Strata of bundled short vertical lines march into confrontation, but on close examination'it can be seen that, as in all the antithesis' works, there is a contradictory duality where the i rhythms follow the same direction yet are also in opposition. Her cool, clear (lines on white paper and sil-< very grey paint continue the same feeling for precious surface with which she is! concerned in the four small ; untitled pieces. Bracey shows a number of delicate pencil drawings, three pale tinted wash draw- . ings, and three vigorous little paintings, all of landscape forms. In all he can be seen to explore line and linear rhythms — in the paintings where a black sky meets an agitated green land area the'line is I

ia painterly indistinct transition from plane to sky; in the wash drawings and pencil drawings the line is a contemplative exploration of linear rhythm sometimes even cartographic in quality. His landscape varies from a horizontal, stratified, zonal conception, to the same incorporating a geological shift where some zones continue beyond the division while others are halted by it, to undulating hill forms. These works are delicate tracings of a sensitive eye ( privately scrutinising recolI lections of landscape — they : are refined and adapted : rhythms derived from a landscape experience rather ] than from physical coni frontation with the forms, ■ and as such possess the reflective organisation of studio landscape. The drawings chosen by! Hotere happily reinforce the 'Requiem'’ and “Port Chalmers Requiem” paintings re-j cently seen at the Brooke Gifford Gallery, and like the paintings are the most extraordinarily rich objects created with the barest i means. Hotere’s feeling for Hine, for the edge of paper, for soaked lines of wash and controlled painterly colour has a Japanesque delicacy — pencil on the black paper which most works employ : becomes a rich scintillating silver, his lines glow in mauves. reds, browns, and • blues against the dark frequently sky-like fields, sometimes asserting themselves in a strident white.

The strong pictorial structure. an integral part of the two-dimensional organisation of “Drawing Requiem. Drawing for a diptych” and “Drawing for Black Painting,” emerges in some works as a formal web superimposed upon a latently dynamic field. In -'‘Drawing

for Requiem” this is particularly successful, but in one or two others it creates a certain spatial ambiguity.

That we are able to see a vulnerable side of Hotere in the drawings is interesting, for his paintings are so well-considered that such evidence of fallibility is eliminated.

Hotere’s richness proceeds , from the most minimal means, but MacFarlane, on: the other hand, is a sensual-! ist who knows his rich: painterly vocabulary well| and delights in parading it) as an erudite scholar does his knowledge. It is abstracted trompe I’oeil painting where the most appropriate colour is sure to emerge at the most appropriate point in the most appropriate quantity. Whenl this proceeds hand in glove i with obvious reference to) 'the countryside around him ) MacFarlane’s erudition turns jhim into a romantic poet of | the landscape, when he (eliminates reference to the I world of visual appearances ;he can be seen to flirt with ! the prospects of visual gout. The landscapes he shows I with sweeping strata of sky 'and cloud, mountain plane and foot hill, with watery; estuary forms and lumpish lines suggesting belts of) trees, are fine pieces of uncomplicated painting. He juggles line and geometric elements to create formal counterfoils to his atmospheric forms — like the colour executed with the necessary taste and good judgment. One cannot help but feel, however, that this painting comes a shade too easy for MacFarlane, that when sensuality does not preoccupy his energies he i produces more substantial Iworig— T.L.R.W.