‘Five Artists’ exhibit

Press, 9 October 1987, Page 22

‘Five Artists’ exhibit

“Five Artists,” at the C.S.A. North Gallery, until October 11. Reviewed by Pat Unger. This exhibition of five artists was inspired by the visit of the curator, Bruce Finnerty, to the Portal Gallery in London where he was impressed by the naive works of European artists. Their popularity prompted him to put together a show of New Zealand artists under the same loose heading. Naive art has been described as the work of painters who enjoy painting in an untaught way. They “belong in the twilight zone between childish accomplishment and schizophrenia” and are often associated with the category of amateur or Sunday painters. Maurice Askew’s work, surprisingly labelled as naive, is far from any twilight zone. It has the elegance of simplicity and the nostalgia of unchanging images in a world of rapidly altering values. Fields are open and free, domestication of the land is logical and his country-

side has universal qualities. His touch is light and his work enjoys the restraint of understatement. Marie-Gabrielles Hudson’s five paintings take a more robust look at life. Fattened, jollified people, plants and animals inhabit a colourful world of beds, windowboxes and intimate spaces. Another of these artists — who all have New Zealand-wide and overseas experience — is Triska Blumenfeld. She takes incidentals, such as the horse jumping trials within the panorama of the Agricultural and Pastoral show, tourists photographing sheep and buying at the Chinese takeaway, and accommodates them in casual but contentious detail. The clutter, the vibrancy and the haphazard patterns of suburbia are quickly jotted down in Annie Baird’s familiar style. They contrast Askew’s more minimal approach, but not as much as Ivan Hill's diary of sentimental fantasy does.

“Chasing Piglets,” “James K. Baxter Seeking Solitude on Scrogg’s Hill,” and “The Death of a Pom who Dared to Catch Lance Cairns on the Boundary,” entertain with their whimsy. Hill’s illustrative style shows the idiosyncratic mind of a true, naive romantic. Complex to simple, considered to indulgent, subjective to discrete, these artists’ works are a wide contrast within a generalised framework. One wonders if they have an enduring appeal as claimed and if so, is it because they deal with the popular opera of “life,” while contemporary art, by its very nature, is temporary, as it preoccupies itself with changing “ideas” and “isms.” In the Mezzanine Gallery, Sam Mahon’s immaculate paintings and drawings of law court caricatures offer in their stylised charm further emphasis to the naive artists’ more flowery excesses. They all help to make the C.S.A. a good place to be.