Drawings at Manawa Gallery

Press, 9 July 1986, Page 23

Drawings at Manawa Gallery

“Drawing Out,” works by Christchurch Artists Collective at the Manawa Gallery, 87 Cashel Street Mall, until July 18. Reviewed by Pat Unger. C.A.C. is a small group of “visual art practitioners” who aim to support artists in their struggle against the bureaucratic system, to question the role of established art institutions and to expose inconsistent or biased views where or whenever they are expressed. "Drawing Out” is a group show of C.A.C. members, exhibiting working drawings, etchings, paintings, pottery and Polaroids at the Manawa Gallery. “River,” five drawings in black ink and charcoal by Linda James, show the random rippling and multi-indented surface of disturbed water. Her finelined scribble suggests shallowness and stronger

heavy gestures, waters in greater turbulence. The work is spontaneous, compositionally sure and of limited but realised intent Richard Reddaway says “I hate drawing, especially life drawing.” Hate it he may, but his life studies, sold at $35 a metre bargain, are as good as any around. Torsos, limbs and joints are drawn with both sculptural and decorative skill. Segments of drawings, again competent life studies by Michael Armstrong, are pinned, with Polaroids interspersed, on a large board, casually, to show an avoidance of conformity. He succeeds in creating the disorder of a workspace, which is valid perhaps for the artist but of little interest to others.

Grant Lingard’s series of self-portraits range from at best sensitive works to at worst studies

that suggest “when in doubt — smudge.” “ArtFrame,” three works by Graham McFelin, approach that Clayton position of an art-work you have when you don’t have an art-work. By cutting away the main pictorial area and leaving only the frame, the few smudged thumb prints on the edge become significant as marks of his "personal self.” Diane Miller’s brown and newspaper collage makes good use of coloured brush marks and her manipulation of super-imposed white ,'aper creates the space that saves her composition. In a series of four painting and print collages Tiffany Thornley contrasts loosely painted

areas and casually drawn images with the detail and etched line of the printing process. Her three etch-

ings relate to the self-ice-form of Colleen Anstey’s 1985 exhibition. Thornley, using drawings related to that event, shows how to destroy both plate and image by etching techniques — an exercise with far less visual impact than the destruction of a human form by ice-melt Margaret Ryley, a potter interested in surface patterns, shows three tall, narrow, and slightly irregular cylinders. Pewter-grey with a sheened surface, they have decorative insets of shiny red oblongs and triangles and make a pleasing group. This exhibition suggests a confusion of purpose. The works appear to equate roughness with freshness and lack of presentation with some sort of art

sincerity. They may find the wider audience they seek not of the same opinion.