Peter Dornauf – 29 June, 2011

Of the three artists currently showing at the Wallace Gallery, Morrinsville, the Mary McIntyre mini retrospective takes centre stage. Her work long ago fell under the radar and for a while she was ploughing a lonely furrow in the New Zealand art scene, often the only one incorporating elements of the surreal into her paintings. These began way back in early the nineteen seventies. The works in this show span forty years, beginning with early pencil portraits in the late seventies, the subjects for the most part being various noteworthy figures from the New Zealand art world, among them Hamish Keith as the Hulk and Peter McLeavey dressed as a nun. James Wallace himself is included, although wisely perhaps, he’s played straight.

McIntyre is undoubtedly a fine draftsperson but her landscape constructions can come across at times a little wooden and contrived. An example is Angel of Life and Death over Mt. Eden, 1990, where the imagery of seven angels flying skyward, appear incongruous and awkward as if stuck onto the painting like a child’s cheap stickers. Her most accomplished and satisfying work here is the portrait of artist Louise Henderson, capturing both the intensity and fragility of the individual, superbly set off as it is against a primitive statue perfectly rendered in the lower half of the work. At her best, McIntyre can be challenging and disturbing at the same time. This show of upward of forty works, demonstrates clearly the artist’s eclectic mix of the macabre, the witty and the erotic.

In an adjacent gallery is the work of two local artists, Gay Jurisich and Sarah Anderson. Jurisich has made a name for herself in and around the Waikato as a prolific sculptor, specializing in large installation pieces, some of which have antecedents that reach back to Dada. Hamilton City Council recently commissioned her to create a work to celebrate the V8 event and the resultant two hundred metre long red tubular piping construction, configured in the style of those 1950’s electric racing car sets, made a bold statement.

Her work is often constructed from found objects and the piece in the show is of that category. Suspended from the ceiling on long white cords (hundreds of them arranged in parallel grids) are small delicate twigs and branches that hover about a metre above the floor like some levitating underbrush. The work is titled Fell, conjuring associations with winter, hibernation, nature in her quieter moods, caught in a stasis between life and death. It’s an arresting piece whose stillness projects an aura of calm and contemplation.

Across on the other side of the gallery space hangs a large series of paintings created by Sarah Anderson, (formerly of Christchurch, now domiciled in the Waikato). Her ten canvases, butted together to form one long panel, mural in size, called Stonescape, depicts a series of jewel-like rock formations of varying colours shapes and sizes. Each of these stone images is set loosely atop one another recalling the sculptural forms of artist Chris Booth. Both Booth and Anderson traverse the same themes that have environmental issues at their core. The painterly work is finely done, capturing the myriad facets of rock face planes in modulations of bright as well as muted colours though a triptych arrangement might have provided a better viewing experience.

Peter Dornauf

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