Art seen: May 1

Otago Daily Times

30-04-2025

"Easter Exhibition", group show
(Gallery Thirty Three, Wanaka)
Gallery Thirty Three's "Easter Exhibition" is a gem, featuring intricate sculpture, quirky still life, and profoundly impactful landscapes, showcasing the new works of six artists in multiple media.
In Peter Miller's oil paintings, vintage toys are depicted against cloudy, neutral backgrounds, as if emerging from the depths of our memories. With their flaked paint and the solemn composition, they could feel like the silent, abandoned relics of a long-ago childhood; but instead, the toys seem to be captured in action, forever at play, the tractor leaving the fields after a long day, the race car heading for victory.
Miller perfectly captures the power of imagination that's hopefully never lost.
Caroline Bellamy's gorgeous landscapes are stylised and just slightly abstracted, with sharply sketched-out planes and lines. With bold, dynamic brushstrokes and dramatic use of shadow, her rolling mountains seem to shatter into geometric fragments from one angle, then piece smoothly together from another.
Stephen Howard skilfully blends out edges and texture in his Fiordland Rain Cloud paintings to create an intense sense of atmosphere. The clouds are closing in, the light is focused and resilient; you can imagine the clean, renewing smell of rain in the air and the first touch of mist. Fiordland Rain Cloud #3 has a minimal palette and a hazy simplicity of form, but it resonates with emotional power—the light in the dark, the moment of realisation during the storm.
"Treasures", Group Show
(Milford Galleries, Queenstown)
Celebrating the opening of their new gallery site in Queenstown's Gorge Rd, Milford Galleries has curated a visual journey through some of the peaks, highlights, and seminal moments in New Zealand's art history. "Treasures" is a showcase of culturally significant and beautiful works, spanning decades of artistic innovation and exploration, from the expressive sense of place and connection in the 1970s modernism of Toss Woollaston to the striking imagery and immersive narratives of Lisa Reihana.
Alongside his iconic beehive paintings, Michael Hight's Paterson Inlet and the recent Arrow Junction blend still life, landscape, and elements of the Wunderkammer, the cabinets of curiosity, creating the impression of stepping into the "storeroom" of our minds, with objects, locations, and emotions being inextricably entwined in our memories.
Among the paintings, it's also a treat to see Gretchen Albrecht's 1978 Illumination (3) again, a work of abstraction that always reminded me of an open book and quill, the knowledge and imagination within the pages surging upwards like fire.
The expansive, airy space of the new gallery is perfectly suited for sculptural displays—and sculpture is arguably the star of the show here, with Neil Dawson's expert manipulation of architectural angles, light and shadow in Vanishing Point 6 and Reflections — Clouds , the pared-back avian imagery and sleek lines of Mike Crawford's cast glass, and Paul Dibble's majestic bronze bird forms in The Lost Garden and the unexpectedly tense-feeling Flock .
"Purely Pastel 2025", PANZ (Pastel Artists of New Zealand)
(Central Stories Museum and Gallery, Alexandra)
The Pastel Artists of New Zealand are holding their national exhibition at Alexandra's Central Stories, and it was a privilege to see the works of "Purely Pastel 2025".
From sun-drenched hills to blue-tinged icy plains and chaotic, dangerous seas, the landscapes are evocative and atmospheric, in some cases almost vibrating with the harnessed power of the elements. The still life works are intricately detailed and playful in their choice of subject, and the portraits — of both people and animals — so lifelike and life-filled that a personality seems to reach out through the canvas. The sheer range of subjects, technique, and application is striking, and viewers could spend hours examining every inch of each canvas for surprising and clever details.
In works like Jackie Krzyzewski's Grapes on the Vine , the almost translucent bloom on the grapes is touched by the light, with both a richness of colour and delicacy of detail; like the glittering icy sheen of Olga Parr's Silver Blue , the parched, deserted land in Michael Freeman's Petrified , and the thoughtful regard and suppressed humour of Anne Berry's portrait Red Nails , it's a piece where people will look closely to see exactly how many different tones and layers created the illusion of realism. Some works are photorealistic and others more stylised and impressionistic; all are impactful and often extremely emotive.
Visitors can vote for the piece to which they're most drawn, but this isn't a show of one or two standouts—every work is worth seeing, and I suspect there'll be a wide range of favourites.