Jane Zusters’ art

Press, 16 August 1985, Page 24

Jane Zusters’ art

Jane Zusters. “Paintings and Works on Paper” at the Brooke/Gifford Gallery until August 16. Reviewed by John Hurrell.

Six large canvases and eight works on paper are presented by Jane Zusters in the Brooke/Gifford Gallery.

These are buoyant, colourful works containing whimsical references to a wide range of artists and styles, abstract and figurative. Their warm,. vivid hues, and varied graphic methods, give them qualities not often exhibited in Canterbury, except perhaps by Gary Collins. The sense of their coming from Auckland is accentuated by references to Auckland vegetation and also by motifs used by Gavin Chilcott and Gretchen Albrecht.

The use of fragmented styles and references taken from disparate sources and then reassembled, is characteristic of several Auckland artists, and also overseas work by artists such as the "Transavantgardia” who are promoted by

the Italian critic, Achille Bonita Oliva.

Bonito Oliva sees painting styles as a sort of “found object” that can be used in artistic hybrids, detached from their historical references. Zusters’ works have this mixture of styles and techniques from sources as diverse as Howard Hodgkins and Raoul Dufy, yet these works impress. They hold together surprisingly well. The method of scraffito, where lines are scratched in to dry paint with a compass needle, juxtaposes intriguingly alongside more orthodox drawing and painting methods.

Jeffrey Harris, depicted in “The Colour Champions” is a possible influence on Zusters’ method of assembling images and her use of reds and oranges. References to personalities such as Harris, and also Karen Silkwood, combine images from art history and the anti-nuclear movement with much more private material.

Paintings with political content do not have to be

sombre or dreary, but there is a cheerfulness and a vibrancy in paintings with titles like “You’d better watch out, nuclear waste is a-coming down on you,” which undermines the urgency of their imagery. They do not seem to be questioning artistic conventions. They are earnest, not ironic.

These are pleasant, decorative works, but the very mixed nature of their allusions makes them unfocused as individual paintings. The magpie eclecticism of their semantic sources shows a reliance on intuition that is typical of many painters. The works on paper interact well with the canvas paintings, especially those which are preliminary studies, but they would have looked better framed, instead being behind cardboard mounts.

Zusters’ paintings have wit, inventiveness, obvious visual appeal and are well made. They are typical of much Auckland art, and in Christchurch, they are well worth a visit.