Of nymphs and nereids

On Saturday I dropped into Hamish McKay's to see Seraphine Pick's latest show, 'Pocket Full of Rainbows'.

As Over the Net have already observed, Pick's major survey show (created by Christchurch Art Gallery, now on show at City Gallery Wellington) doesn't seem to have thrown the painter into a state of existential crisis (as can happen when an artist sees their career tidied up into chronological slices and didactic wall panels). Instead, 'Pocket Full of Rainbows' suggests that Pick has sailed through the experience, and burst out the other side.

Musical themes and tropes - from heaving crowds to Elvis leaving the building - flow through the show. A trip to America in the past two years - which, if I recall correctly, included a long roadtrip - appears to have informed the imagery*. In this sense the work at Hamish McKay's develop the subject matter that emerged in the most recent paintings included in Pick's survey show (see the right-most image on this page), but with a different lightness and beauty.

I've always been most attracted to Pick's less intricate, less heavily built-up paintings, and to her delicate and suggestive watercolours. The paintings in 'Pocket Full of Rainbows', each accompanied by a large watercolour sketch displayed in the gallery's wood-panelled 'den', are in this style, full developed but still full of light and air.

The title work of the show (above) captured me in particular. A pale-skinned, bare-breasted woman is held up, triumphant, by a blurred crowd at an outdoor concert - it's an utterly contemporary work which, seen from a distance, melts into waves of Lalique-like blues and greens.


It might be shades of A.S. Byatt's 'The Children's Book' coming over me, but Pick's joyous nude had me thinking of Pre-Raphelite paintings of girlish nymphs - until you get up close and see the smeared faces of the crowd.

The painting has a green pin on it. I hope it's there while one of our public institutions is getting the acquisition papers signed off. Pick's show is on until 11 March - don't miss it.

*The pink nudie suits are the odd ones out here. I don't know how to stretch my metaphor to include them.

Images

Seraphine Pick, Pocket Full of Rainbows, 2010. Image from the Hamish McKay Gallery website.

J.W. Waterhouse, Hylas and the Nymphs, 1896. Manchester Art Gallery.

Get in quick

On Saturday night I tweeted that I would give one finger (after consideration, I selected my left-hand little finger, because I don't use it to type) or up to two toes (I figured if you lost one, it would be easiest to balance if you took one off the other foot too) if it meant I could live with this painting.

You have today and tomorrow (Wednesday and Thursday ) to catch it and other works on paper by Julian Dashper at Hamish McKay's; the exhibition is online too.

I missed Dashper's early career; in 1989 I was wearing Adidas three-stripes trackpants with the cuffs rolled up to primary school. It was lovely to see early works in the flesh, especially this very elegant Phillishave drawing. If only I'd had a trust fund when I was ten and parents who encouraged me to spend it on art.


Image
Julian Dashper Phillishave 1989. Acrylic and graphite on paper. 600 x 800mm
Image from the Hamish McKay website

Foxy lady

Last weekend I fell head over heels for this new work by Seraphine Pick, on show at Hamish McKay's. What I love about the work is that Pick seems to have stopped painting at exactly the right moment, leaving the work with a sense of undone-ness that matches beautifully with the precariously-clothed model: the bold streaks of dusty rose down the right-hand side of the canvas, the curls and wisps of brushwork on the nape of her neck, the light that pools under her chin. It's a lovely, sexy bit of painting.

Pick's girl reminded me of Raymond McIntyre's women with rosebud mouths - in particular, the McIntyre portrait reproduced on the cover of the first Art New Zealand. Perhaps she's the same young woman, brought forward 85 years .


One of my favourite works in Te Papa's collection is what I've always mentally called "the foxy young man" portrait (as with Rita Angus, I have a suspicion that when McIntyre painted other people he was always really painting himself).

The foxy young man in question (and I mean that, of course, in the vulpine manner, rather than the phwoaarr manner) is of course Edward McKnight Kauffer, the later-to-be-famous graphic artist, and like McIntyre, London-based expatriate.


Images from top:

Seraphine Pick, Untitled, oil on canvas, 2008, from the Hamish McKay Gallery website

Squitty little image of the cover of the first Art New Zealand, from the Art New Zealand website

Raymond McIntyre (1879-1933) Edward McKnight Kauffer, about 1915, oil paint on panel. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Gift of C Millan Thompson to mark the occasion of the retirement of the Director [of the National Art Gallery], S B Maclennan, 1968. From the Te Papa website.

E. McKnight Kauffer, (1890-1954), Soaring to success! Daily Herald - the early bird [Daily Herald] 1919, planographic colour lithograph, photolithograph. National Gallery of Australia. Gift of the estate of Garry Anderson. Accn No: NGA 97.641. From the National Gallery of Australia website.

Yay for Don Driver

My cup runneth over with Don Driver goodness in the coming months.

First, a show of works from 1968-2008 opening at Hamish McKay Gallery on 28 May (I'm hoping for something with the enjoyability of last year's Mrkusich show, but with a few more pieces).


Second, a exhibition of Driver's banner works from the 1970s to the present at the Govett-Brewster, opening 31 May.


I wasn't around for the big Driver retrospective in 1999. Over the last few years though, as I've seen bits and pieces of work here and there, I've become more and more interested. With Spirit was a standout work for me in Reboot, and I really enjoyed the Driver/Dashper pairing at Hamish McKay's last year. The pieces that really ring my abstractophile bells are the painted relief works, which I've been lucky enough to see at people's houses - where the banners squawk and the assemblages growl, for me, the reliefs sing.

Images
Don Driver, La Guardia, 1966, mixed media
Don Driver, Another Belt Pocket, 1981, mixed media
From the Hamish McKay website (now in a nice chocolatey tone).

Don Driver, Horizontal Relief, 1973, acrylic on canvas and stainless steel.
Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery (and nice to see that the AAG's collection database is now regularly returning results on Google Image searchs, alleviating the poverty of images of New Zealand art on the web).

Little red towel

In preparing for his current joint show with Don Driver at Hamish McKay Gallery, Julian Dashper selected and responded to Driver's works - this set of three red white and blue circular digital prints, for example, are carefully matched to a flag in one of Driver's assemblages.


What I like about the show is that it makes you look a bit harder at both of them. A tarp in one of the Driver's play up the plasticky finish on one of Dashper's paintings. You think more about the way Driver uses colour. A block of wood nailed to the wall might belong to either of them.



Dashper currently seems to be New Zealand's busiest artist. It's great to see more of Driver's work, but 'With Spirit' was eight years ago .... is it getting close to time to have another prolonged look at his work?

Images: installation shots, from the Hamish McKay Gallery website

Mrkusich @ McKay's

Make sure you drop by Hamish McKay's new space on Ghuznee Street before September 8, to see the current show 'Milan Mrkusich: Four Paintings'.

With just four paintings (spanning 40 years), Hamish has magicked up an overview of Mrkusich's work. There's the brushy Painting No 7 (1960), and elegant 'Segmented Arc' from 1982, the recent Painting III Red (2000) and the somewhat odd but also quite entrancing Four Zones (1966), shown above.

Don't forget the office space, where there are further smaller works, including a very beautiful diptych in white, black and blue - my personal favourite.

Meanwhile, the 'miss' of a weekend's gallery-going was City Gallery Wellington's current array of shows. A more generous person might call this 'something for everyone' programming - I'm going to go with 'inchoate'.

Wait instead for the next season (starting 17 November), and two big touring exhibitions: 'Reboot', from the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, and the Bill Hammond survey 'Jingle Jangle Morning' from Christchurch Art Gallery.

Image: Milan Mrkusich, Four Zones, 1966. Oil on canvas, 34.5 x 54 inches. From the Hamish McKay Gallery website.

No art was harmed in the making of this video

From Over the net: the video of Hamish McKay completing Julian Dashper's drum kit work at the Auckland Art Fair.

Not to be missed

Maybe the best thing I've seen in Wellington this year: Ronnie van Hout's utterly repellent, totally cool mash-ups of Christmas statuettes. At Hamish McKay Gallery, Willis Street, until 23 December.

Hamish McKay Gallery