Rare Weeks paintings

Press, 19 November 1977, Page 21

Rare Weeks paintings

John Weeks. Paintings Brooke/Gifford Gallery until November 25. Reviewer: Michael Thomas. A rare exhibition • "f paintings by John Weeks] (1 8 8 8-1965) recently opened at the Brooke/Gifford Gallery. Few examples of John Weeks’s work remain

apart from those in public or private collections, as many were destroyed by fire at the Elam School of Art in Auckland. Most of the 34 framed works and six mounted studies in this display, which come from the artist’s estate, are experimental and have not been exhibited previously in Christchurch. The paintings are highly innovative and varied in approach, and yet there is a consistency about them. They reveal an exceptionally competent artist who, while being responsive to international influences, was able to absorb them and produce works of distinct individuality. “Mountain Torrent” — the pick of the exhibition •— is a particularly

satisfying tempera painting which contrasts the flow of water against solid cubist rock forms. “Facade II,” hanging next to this, explores the media of oil paint in an adventurous way. Echoes of movement are beautifully orchestrated in many works, but nowhere more successfully than in “Umber, Black, and Ochre,” a small piece of tasteful colour and perect scale. “Still Life with Fish” is a collage entirely made up of different papers. From a distance the bread and objects are completely convincing and are contrasted to make a strongly interlocked composition. Coming from Devonshire, John Weeks studied at the Canterbury College

School of Art in 1921, and then returned to Scotland to study at the Edinburgh College of Art and the Royal Scottish Academy. He returned to New Zealand in 1929 and the next year began teaching at the Elam School of Art in Auckland until his retirement in 1954. Two early oil paintings of Christchurch are also included. Rather dark when compared with the later paintings, these little naturalistic studies of the Avon River and Hagley Park possess that mastery of media and scale which characterise all the paintings in this high-quality exhibition. Prices range from $B5 for the small mounted studies to $l4OO for “Mountain Torrent.”