Exhibitions Dunedin

JOHN CASELBERG

Some Dunedin and Nelson Exhibitions

Painting which helps in various ways to humanise us was shown in Dunedin and Nelson last winter and spring.

At the Bosshard Galleries, Dunedin, in July, Tony Fomison presented a selection of sombrely-glinting and visionary work. Although living in Auckland now, his landscapes, including Night-time Amuri Bluff, relate to his 'home ground' Canterbury. Seeking profoundly, Fomison expresses some of the spiritual forces that mould Maori and European here and the land they share. His pictures have grown out of an arduous devotion both to painting and to describing truthfully aspects of the human condition.

ANNA CASELBERG
Signal Hill
acrylic 82 x 62.5 cm.

Similarly, Anna Caselberg, in August-September, portrayed Nelson and Otago Landscapes in humanistic and painterly terms, creating a vivid gallery environment. In watercolours and oils, bold hills and Dunedin suburbs stood into or shimmered under a south-Pacific sky, which itself danced above the ever-present sea. A small intense painting was entitled Pacific City.

Gardens, in October, contained earlier work by the 1977 Frances Hodgkins Fellow, Jeffrey Harris, and Philip Trusttum of Christchurch. This recalled Trusttum's very big canvases shown in March, when they made one of the most joyous exhibitions Dunedin has seen. These pictures would seem suitable for public buildings and schools. Jeffrey Harris was represented by three almost-violently impassioned flower-bed paintings and a series of small, glowing, quietly-painted Gardens with people. His full-scale exhibition is to be held early in 1978.

In October-November, with Posies and Conundrums, Joanna Paul proved that her acrylic painting continues to develop. Domestic groups and flower studies were freshly, richly recorded. Colour and emotion fused in the small red Flower Cross. . . 'The life and death of flowers' would describe perhaps the main theme of this display.'

JOANNA PAUL
Sea Rose
acrylic 58 x 78 cm.

In June-July the Nelson Suter Art Gallery, in association with the Peter McLeavey Gallery, mounted the unique Woollaston drawings and watercolours exhibition. As this toured to the Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland Art Galleries, it will be reviewed separately in Art New Zealand. However, it should be noticed here that Woollaston's thirty-eight incomparably-vigorous and flame-like versions of a particular  subject, all executed in Riwaka in the autumn of 1977, demonstrate how the unflagging work of this major painter has grown in assurance and stature with the passing years.

Also in Nelson, in October - November the Suter Art Gallery's John Parker exhibition revealed the benefit he gained from his year as Hodgkins Fellow at Otago University. Clarity of paint and involvement with farmlands, trees, animals and people characterise his recent work. Painting structure and spirit of place have now coalesced. Silver light gleams in the Marlborough sky of several of his large oil paintings. These, with the best of the art outlined above, will persist through the years ahead, helping us to see ourselves and our country with fresh and grateful eyes.