Ireland geographies

Press, 13 September 1988, Page 33

Ireland geographies

“Geographies” by Peter Ireland at the Brooke/ Gifford Gallery until September 23. Reviewed by Pat Unger.

A Wellington artist, Peter Ireland, exhibits at the Brooke/Gifford Gallery 14 works concerned with landscape, seen through the personal filter of memory and “homage.” The beauty of memory is that it allows extraneous association to animate and enhance pictures. Ireland relies on this to add new life to his New Zealand landscapes. He also contrives a personal sincerity when he paints homages to the artists Arthur Dove, Charles Burchfield, Natalia Gontcharova and de Chirico, their work having special meaning for him. Scenery, colour contrasts and manipulation of geometric shapes are used over and over again in painting. Ireland, for this show, combines all three. On occasion he adds the interesting format of tourist postcard packs flipped open. These "Christchurch, Canterbury and Kapiti Souvenirs” are amongst the more successful works particularly “Christchurch Souvenir (Night)” with its starker tones, bolder contrasts and discernable retreat from pictorial reality.

Divisions and colour overlays blur the edges of his time and alter an otherwise photographically static recall.' Further compositional ploys, such as geometric symbols superimposed on reality in a mind-drift of reflection and afterthought diminish the ail too familiar coding of picturesque representation.

Well known buildings around the Square and local “geographies” are renovated with coloured inserts looking rather like Georgia O’Keefe-edged screens or pointed compass decorations. They are controlled and tasteful but add only modestly to memory’s eclectic charm. This is rectified in later works. Coastline and geographic place are muted in blue-greys. A penetrating geometric red has it all over them. Colourcoded triangles beam out their message and grids become marks of inventiveness that win out over aesthetic judgment. Such boldness, with beacons of light, colour or design sitting awkwardly above their neutral surround, becomes close to insensitive brashness.

Ireland’s memory enjoys a hard-edged recall softened by personal association. His boldness of intent does not, as yet, find fulfilment in these works.