Exhibitions Auckland

DENYS TRUSSELL

New Year, New Works
This show exposed a fascination with shibboleths of an avant-garde that has been derivative since the late 'thirties. In striving after novelty, many artists were losing sight of deeper originality.

A few works were based on significant themes. Most were just exercises of fancy, often intellectualised and trivial despite the technical prowess that was at times expended on them.

The outstanding work was Fomison's Omai, showing powers of technique and psychological penetration far in advance of others in the show, though it was a little stagey in its formality. The anti-sculpture, Wall, by Paul Cullen, was the weakest piece: an interrogation of space in which rocks twigs and string signified a self-conscious attempt at informality.

The most vital abstract works were by Dean Buchanan and Rob Taylor. In them at least the colour was exuberant. Hotere's green background with circle produced a rich-textured tranquility.

Apart from Binney's arresting volcanic silhouette, Blue Toka-Toka, little of the work in a more representational style caught the eye. Dick Frizzell's Metaphysical Cheese, undoubtedly mouth-watering, was anything but metaphysical. It was carnal: crudely but effectively painted, signifying little beyond the 'cheese-in-itself'.

There was little recognition of essential experience. Don Peeble's wall hangings, Cullen's Wall, suggest little apart from a feeling by the artist that all serious effort from him in this era is irrelevant. If so, artists should honourably lapse into silence: become gardeners or farmers so that they can at least impart fertility in the physical world, if unable to do so in the world of ideas.