Some New Works by Andrew McLeod
Peter McLeavey Gallery

Michael Harrison, Cascade Effect
Jeffrey Harris, Early Works on Paper
Hamish McKay Gallery

Brett Graham, Searching for Tangaroa
Bartley + Company

Wellington dealer galleries have a number of interesting shows on at the moment with several new ones about to open such as Mark Olsen at Exhibitions Gallery, Anne Noble at Bartley + Company and Julia Morison at the Mark Hutchins Gallery

Andrew McLeod’s work has often involved creating fantastic worlds, elaborate architectural constructions, scenes which combine myth, surreal visions and a collision of symbols and objects.

In his latest show at Peter McLeavey he delves for source material into the nineteenth century and turns the visionary ideas of those artists and designers into elaborate rambling expositions

Some of these are large painted works while others are ink jet digital prints.

“Beginning” ($23,000) is a large painting replicating a grand paintings of a waterfall by the mid nineteenth century American artist Albert Bierstadt. McLeod has overpainted the work with a large snake. This combination of the pristine Eden of America and the darker side of the biblical Eden hints at the underside of the sublime images of Nature.

In other works such as the “Fuseli Diptych” ($15,000 edition of 3) he has assembled a series of reproductions of the artists work. The combination of the supernatural, Shakespearean and Miltonic subjects creates a complex narrative about the edges of another world of ghosts, apparitions, dreams and nightmares.

In “New Arts and Crafts House” ($8000 edition of 3) he has assembled designs, furniture and art works from the late nineteenth century along with a few contemporary objects and abstract shapes. The collection of images looks like a dissertation on the foundations of modern design and the rejection of classical ideas and ideals.

Michael Harrison’s delicate paintings on paper at the Hamish McKay Gallery continue to explore the area of dreams and nightmares with surreal images which often refer Rene Magritte.

“Inside Story” ($2300) features a dark figure framed by a cut out shape of two female figures facing each other, resembling one of the quirky images which highlight the problems of perception.

“Conversation at Night” ($2600) refers back to an earlier work of two cats facing each other atop a chunk of a McCahon-like landscape with a dove hovering above them.

“Novelty” ($2300) with its blue background has a couple of figures enclosed in a Magritte, cloud like shape resembling a girls head

He is also showing a more modernist work “Out The Door” ($2300) with each of the components separated on the page.

The Jeffrey Harris works on show consist of four drawings and a painting which cover the period 1970 – 1975.

“I Came to This Place”, 1973 ($15,000) has a couple of enigmatic subtitles; “Rembrandt 1642” and “da Vinci 1531”. It features a dozen anxious faces while “Figures in Landscape” 1971 $17,500) has a number of symbolic elements such as a bird and ladder.

Brett Graham at Bartley + Company is showing variations on the works he exhibited last year in his Campaign Room exhibition.

“Searching For Tangaroa” combines ancient and contemporary lines of enquiry with the artist employing high-tech underwater scanners in a mythical quest for the location of Hui Te Ananui, the God of the Sea ands the source of carving.

The works become metaphors for the human search for meaning and security

The works he has created are hand carved objects that are part surveillance objects and part military hardware. “Rukuhia 3” ($22,000) has a carved Maori pou with short extensions resembling a torpedo or guided missile.