Intensity in 'Recent Works’

Press, 5 April 1989, Page 44

Intensity in 'Recent Works’

“Recent Works,” by Sue Cooke and Roger Hickin at the Canterbury Gallery, 48 Papanui Road. Until April 16. Reviewed by Pat Unger. Two artists, Sue Cooke and Roger Hickin, share exhibition space at the Canterbury Gallery. Both succeed in conveying a sense of intensity in some of their works, even though their purpose and their media are very different. Although Cooke is a printmaker by training, it is in the paint-on-paper works that she makes her strongest statements. These landscapes look as if the artist has attempted to drag romanticism into the late twentieth century with Van der Velden’s brooding darkness as her backstop. Or that she has beguiled a wildness of style to unite with the barrenness of the high country to produce

dramatic vistas. Her free, rough painting comes over as true modernist expressionism. In No. 9 “Port Hills” and No. 5 “Mt Charles (Otago)” Cooke’s gesture, colour and composition realise pleasing visual harmony. Other similar landscapes miss the mark to a degree, because of either a loss of structure in the crossfire of paint and tone, the introduction of arbitrary colour, or black skies equating black foregrounds, so that an unintentional 2-dimen-sionality develops. From her recent large work of the Port Hills (now in the Park Royal Hotel), Cooke has innovatively painted and framed her Whakatane board printing plates. The resulting two works, particularly No. 2, are eyecatching. The modelled surface, polyurethane sky

and oil pigment combine interestingly. No. 3 again suffers from colour applied for no observable purpose and distracts from the original shape and contour of the layered hills. The paintings’ natural, heavy frames fit in well with the wooden constructs of the sculptor, Roger Hickin. His once hot wood is still warmed by the fire of his intentions — that is of a visionary who sees in burnt wood a metaphor for salvation. From the series, “The fire of despair has been our Saviour,” his “In foco amor mi misi” (he has put me in the fire of love) is an impressive totara/ matai/brass hanging. The dark markings, the polished brass nails, brass “X” and burnt-in lettering are surface reinforcements to a compelling,

burnt and charred elongated T cross. No. 20, "untitled,” also a T cross, is splashed and scarified with paint and indentation. Dark, as if with the aftermath of fire, it and others show beauty arising from misuse and a future from written word and glint of metal (perhaps to be read as courage). The most successful of Hickin’s wooden works depend ultimately on formal factors. The elongated Ts make the Y shape and the Y-T shape seem gimmicky. The basic T has a universality and strength which can only be enhanced by decorative surface embellishments. The pleasure of wood skilfully fashioned, the shine of metal, the reminder of fire’s threat and the strength of a cross make these works richly attractive and reflective.