Art seen: July 24

Otago Daily Times

2 days ago

"Ecology", group show
(Milford Galleries, Queenstown)
Opening on Saturday at Queenstown's Milford Galleries, "Ecology" weaves a narrative of the world we inhabit, with all its interconnected facets.
With her abstract, geometric landscapes, Laurelee Walmsley creates order from the chaos of an ever-changing environment. There's a fascinating journey between the crisp precision of her diagonal angles and colour theory, and the way in which the viewers' imaginations then take over, with squares, rectangles, and solid blocks of colour mentally expanding and rounding to form misty mountain tops, wintry plains, and summer skies. In an effective juxtaposition, Neil Frazer's landscapes are more figurative in style, but emotion-driven in the application, with energetic strokes of paint splashing into crashing waves, swirling into clouds, and smoothing out into calm skies and seas.
Glass artist Galia Amsel's gorgeous pieces also reflect a seamless blend between the natural elements, with dynamic curves suggesting the movements of clouds and flourishing plant life; while Hannah Kidd's spectacular steel and corrugated iron sculptures highlight the beauty and vulnerability of the land and wildlife, as birds perch on rocks and seaweed-draped branches. Each sculpture is comprised of myriad pieces, with Kidd's striking visible joins in the metal — a pertinent reminder that in our delicate ecosystems, too, every individual element is vital to the whole.
Tying together the physical and the intangible, Ed Cruikshank's sculptural installations use intricate patterns of LED lights, glowing like a mysterious code — as if they're alight with secrets, untold stories, and unfolding connections, waiting for us to look deeper, explore, and find our own path.
"Plantology", Michael McHugh
(Milford Galleries, Queenstown)
Also opening at Queenstown's Milford Galleries on Saturday is Michael McHugh's new solo show "Plantology".
With an almost luminescent sense of light and texture, McHugh's paintings reveal new levels of detail at every glance, with an incredible variation of pattern, depth and tone, even within a single canvas. His work plunges the viewer into new worlds, where vivid plant life seems to burst out from the picture plane, twining around those who venture close and drawing them in.
With a mix of the familiar and the fantastical, the imagery somehow feels all the more alien for those occasional glimpses of a recognisable botanical form or biological pattern — it's as if you've woken up in a jungle on a different planet or are trapped within a dream, with that slightly eerie feeling of possible danger, but a fascinated urge to explore further.
Each piece can be simultaneously reminiscent of phosphorescent aquatic life, a vivid, otherworldly forest, insects, fruit, a star-drenched galaxy, or textiles and maximalist design. The colour palette shifts — at times dramatically, and in other works quite subtly — from the bold to the more desaturated, but the consistent factor is a sense of teeming life.
The works feel like living, breathing scenes, with a certain tense feeling of imminent action, as if you might blink and the blooms and creatures within will have shifted, the vines twining further around a branch, the organisms moving with a passing current of air or water.
"Lost & Found", Jay Hutchinson, Devyn Ormsby, Mark Rayner and Stephen Martyn Welch
(Gallery Thirty Three, Wānaka)
Faces and hands continually press against the windows of Wanaka's Gallery Thirty Three, drawn by the distinctive ceramic creatures of Mark Rayner. From the curious, wide-eyed stares of the long-nosed Schmoos to a smoking snail and glittering devils, Rayner's colourful sculptures fill the gallery, opening up a visual storybook, the whimsical and quirky mingling with the comedic and the grotesque.
On the nearby walls, Stephen Martyn Welch's masterfully executed oil portraits capture not only the physical likenesses of the subjects, but a palpable sense of emotion and character; while multidisciplinary artist Jay Hutchinson demonstrates that — if we're truly looking — art and beauty can be found in even the most mundane surroundings. After collecting discarded food wrappers and pavement rubbish, Hutchinson photographs and studies them with the care and interest of a palaeontologist uncovering a fossil, before recreating them as striking textile art. Using cotton drill to simulate crinkled paper bags, crumpled milkshake cups and empty matchboxes, he embroiders labels and slogans, with incredible attention to detail and a level of intricacy in the thousands of tiny stitches that elevates each piece to an artistic treasure.
Devyn Ormsby's stunning cast-glass fruit sculptures, reminiscent of the popular glass fruit of the 1960s, are glorious under the light, seeming to both absorb and reflect a glowing sheen. The sculptural works move seamlessly into the selection of her abstract paintings, reflecting on the balance, rhythms and routines of daily life and the emotional importance and individual interpretations of "home".
By Laura Elliott