Category: Reviews, News and Commentary

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Artists in Antarctica

Edited by Patrick Shepherd

Massey University Press

RRP $80.00

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Most people have a vision of Antarctica. It is huge, bleak, cold and white – just white snow and white  ice – and penguins. But that is a superficial view because  the area has many dimensions and holds secrets which explorers and  scientists have been searching for and uncovering for more than a century.

Also, for more than half a century, artists have been looking at the continent and seeing the landscape and its history through new lenses. They have been helped by Antarctica New Zealand’s Community Engagement Programme, originally called Artists to Antarctica and Invited Artists Programme along with assistance from  Creative New Zealand.

Over 100 artists, writers, dancers, designers and composers have travelled to Scott Base with the programme since 1957. They have returned  home and through exhibitions, performances and publications have brought their experiences to the wider public. Their work has played a crucial part in informing and influencing the public’s understanding of Antarctica. 

A new book “Artists in Antarctica” edited by Patrick Shepherd has brought together the work of thirty-seven of these artists with images of their work along with their experience of being on the ice.

The list of artist incudes: Photographers Laurence Aberhart and Anne Noble, Sound Artists Phil Dadson and Chris Cree Brown, Painters Nigel Brown and John Walsh, Choreographers Corey Baker and Bronwyn Jones  Poets Chris Orsman and Bill Manhire, Writes Lloyd Jones and Owen Marshall, Sculptors Virginia King and Martin Hill & Phillipa Jones

Each of these artists has  brought a different vision to bear on the landscape, ecology and history of place. Some emphasise the mystery and vastness such as  Stuart Robertson while Anne Noble has looked at the everyday business of maintaining Scott Base with her portraits of trucks.

A lot of the works, particularly the landscape images are very white such as the photographs of Grahame Sydney and  Jae Hoon Lee which capture the immensity of the place.

On the other hand, the interiors of Shackleton’s Hut  by Dick Frizzel, Sean Garwood and Jonathan White are dark, highlighting the bleakness  of the confined space.

Nigel Brown’s paintings include a self-portrait along with fellow  artists Chris Orsman and Bill Manhire as well as an  historical portrait study of the early explorers, Ponting and Oates.

Several artists have included the few human constructions on the ice such as the various monuments – the cross on Observation Hill, the Memorial Cross at Cape Evans and Vinces Cross on Hutt Point. Other artists have taken  inspiration from the rocks and core sample of the area (Raewyn Atkinson), electron microscope images (Virginia King) and hydroponics. (Chris Cree Brown).

The paintings of John Walsh allude to the underlying spiritual nature of the place with his mythological or spiritual figures while Margaret Elliot’s Pyramid paintings hint at a parallel landscape.

Also included in the introductory chapters  along with background information are some of the earlier depictions of the Antacticac by William Hodges (1777), John Wilson Carmichael ($1847) and Peter McIntyre (1957)

The various writers have provided different perspectives on their experience with Lloyd Jones capturing a sense of passing through the empty land .

“Here it is so white. It is so still and silent. Why, it is beautiful>

We move on, and before long stop again to admire the view.

It does not appear to have changed. It is still white. It is

Astonishingly white. It is so still, so still.”

While Bernadett Hill provides a slightly surreal take

“A woman is standing under Erebus.

She has wrapped all her gifts around her,

Including caritas.”

Collectively the thirty-seven artists contribute to a jigsaw-like portrait of the Antarctica with each artist providing a different piece of the environment. Along  with the images and writing about the area the book also  offers insights into the many dimensions of the Antarctic, the people who work there and the range of scientific enquiry undertaken.

Reviewed by Malcolm Calder

The Art of Black Grace 2/5

A Black Grace digital experience

Mixed Media on canvas

Double-sided, 8m x2.6m LED

Atrium on Takutai Square, Britomart

Running continuously until Sunday 3 December 2023

Director and Executive Producer Neil Ieremia

With Demi-Jo Manolo, Rodney Tyrell, Faith Schuster and Shane Fataua

Post / VFX Delainy Kennedy (Artificial Imagination)

Director of Photography Duncan Cole

1st Assistant Camera Kirsten Green

Lighting Gaffer Fraser McKay

Original Music Anonymouz, Manuel Bundy and Submarine

Review by Malcolm Calder

27 November 2023

It was a late Monday afternoon in the Atrium on Takutai Square at Britomart and the rush hour was just starting.  A young bloke walked briskly through, shoulder bag dangling and footy boots casually slung around his neck with laces tied.  Clearly he was a Britomart regular and knew the environment well.

His quick glance to the right on passing an 8m long LED wall probably only registered subconsciously that it wasn’t there yesterday.  Perhaps more advertising, he may have thought.

But then his brisk walk missed a couple of beats.  Suddenly he did a tiny skip and shuffle, paused for a moment, snuck a longer glance and half-turned towards the wall as his initial scan revealed humans in motion. He took two more steps, glanced quickly at his watch, but took a longer stare as the images on the wall scrolling through their cycle.  Then, with a flicker of a smile, he hastened on his way no doubt approaching footy practice with a slightly different frame of mind.

His interest was brief, and he may never return for a longer look, but his passing interest summed up what the second room of Neil Ieremia’s 5-part  The Art of Black Grace is all about.  It follows the first room at Wynyard last year, where viewers were encased inside a large digitally-lined vertical tube

Yes, the location here helps, but the content is what reaches out and touches people.  Put very simply, Neil Ieremia is putting his private mind on public display – in all its guises.  Whereas the interior of my own mind mostly resembles a blank white room, his is one of constant three-dimensional movement and memory, colour and music.

As soon becomes clear, his single wavy blue line represents that movement.  Then other shapes, lines and colours impinge, spin off and interact until they begin to form an integrated, moving whole.  The influences are largely cultural ones – hibiscus and frangipani blend with water and waves.  Memory introduces mu’umu’u, the shape of shirts and traditional tatau patterning.  Underpinning everything is a non-synched soundtrack sourced from the 1970s and 1980s, each track timed to precisely 33.3 minutes acknowledging their origins on vinyl spinning at 33 rpm – another inspirational source.

In one sense The Art of Black Grace 2/5 is a choreographic script – reinforced and clearly stated – when excerpted overlays of the Black Grace dancers are added as a final touch.

The technique and the technology may be somewhat leading edge, yet the content of this work is surprisingly reflective.  And that is perhaps appropriate. Ieremia’s body of work is considerable and his achievements are many.

Yes, it is contemporary and can be found in a contemporary part of the city, but it is also traditional.  And it is saying look at me.

So, a success?  Yes, for exploring a new medium.  Yes, for exhibiting his mind to new audiences.  Yes, for creating something new and different.  It is well worth a wander past.

I wonder what Parts 3, 4 and 5 will bring.

Running 24/7 daily until 6pm, Sunday 3 December.

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra

Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1
Respighi Trittico Botticelliano
Haydn Symphony No.103 ‘Drumroll’

Auckland Town Hall

November 17

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 is one of the top ten pianio concertos and the sold-out audience for the recent APO concert attested to the fact that the work is  crowd pleaser.

It is the last great Romantic piano concerto of the nineteenth century, full of lyricism as well as many dramatic moments. The pianist has to be capable of producing the most poignant of sounds as well  as the most intense.

The Ukrainian-born Australian pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk was able to deliver both these qualities of the work as  he ranged from the pensive  to the flamboyant.

From the opening where he responded to the brash horns and  sharp flourish from the orchestra Gavrylyuk  dominated the stage with some dazzling displays. There were times as he finished a particularly energetic passage when he raised his hands seemingly having plucked the notes he had just finished playing out of the air to then be picked up by the orchestra.

Several times during his playing his hands again  were like those of a magician catching hold of musical phrases with a sleight of hand and delivering them to the audience.

His expression when playing changed continuously and he took on various poses from rapture to steely focus. At times there was a tenderness to his playing while at others he displayed a rawness as he focussed on the lower range of the piano

His rapport with the orchestra was constantly changing as well. Battling with the orchestra, chasing the dramatic themes conjured up by the orchestra and then the dynamics would change and the orchestra would attempt to match his feverish playing.

There were several monuments of musical poetry with  Gavrylyuk  having interchanges with the flutes, the violins playing a pizzicato as well as a pairing with the clarinets.

After the frenetic finale  the audience responded with a huge ovation and a up in the circle a group unfurled a large Ukrainian flag which elicited further applause.

After interval the orchestra played Respighi’s Trittico Botticelliano, a three-movement work inspired by three of Botticelli paintings – Le Primavera, The Adoration of the Magi and The Birth of Venus.

Respighi is a great composer of evocative symphonic poems and the three works in his Trittico Botticelliano all deal with the concept of birth or awakening.

Two of the movements are based around subjects from classical mythology and one from Christian mythology. This combination of the classical and religious was typical of the Platonic ideas of the Renaissance which saw parallels between the ideas of the ancients and those of Christian thought.

The first of these depicted Le Primavera in which the  sprightly strings captured the notion of Spring with the figure of Flora scattering the myriad flowers, heralding the start of the new season. The horns also herald this new awakening while the  clarinets and flutes give a sense of the interchanges which might pass between the various figures – Mercury, Venus Flora. Zephyrus. Chloris, the Three Graces and Cupid.

With the depiction of the Adoration of the Magi features the music has an exotic Eastern quality   to refer to the travellers from the east along with some fragments from the Latin Mass to capture the ideas around the birth of Jesus. In the final section a wistful bassoon probably refers to the figure of Botticelli himself contemplating the viewer.

The third part depicting the Birth of Venus has shimmering strings conveying the sense of the welling up of natural forces and the rising up of Venus from the waters.

The final work on the programme was Haydn’s Symphony No 103 (The Drumroll). This was his second to last symphony and shows the composer aware of his skills, showing off his abilities to create new dynamics and display his ingenuities.

Deploying the drums to open the work was a novelty and a show of playfulness to entertain his audience. This playfulness extended to conductor Bellincampi who swayed to the music as through doing a gavotte on the podium and there were times when timpanist Steven Logan performed as though he were the drummer in a rock band.

Gavrylyuk Plays Tchaikovsky

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra

Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1
Respighi Trittico Botticelliano
Haydn Symphony No.103 ‘Drumroll’

Auckland Town Hall

November 17

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 is one of the top ten pianio concertos and the sold-out audience for the recent APO concert attested to the fact that the work is  crowd pleaser.

It is the last great Romantic piano concerto of the nineteenth century, full of lyricism as well as many dramatic moments. The pianist has to be capable of producing the most poignant of sounds as well  as the most intense.

The Ukrainian-born Australian pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk was able to deliver both these qualities of the work as  he ranged from the pensive  to the flamboyant.

From the opening where he responded to the brash horns and  sharp flourish from the orchestra Gavrylyuk  dominated the stage with some dazzling displays. There were times as he finished a particularly energetic passage when he raised his hands seemingly having plucked the notes he had just finished playing out of the air to then be picked up by the orchestra.

Several times during his playing his hands again  were like those of a magician catching hold of musical phrases with a sleight of hand and delivering them to the audience.

His expression when playing changed continuously and he took on various poses from rapture to steely focus. At times there was a tenderness to his playing while at others he displayed a rawness as he focussed on the lower range of the piano

His rapport with the orchestra was constantly changing as well. Battling with the orchestra, chasing the dramatic themes conjured up by the orchestra and then the dynamics would change and the orchestra would attempt to match his feverish playing.

There were several monuments of musical poetry with  Gavrylyuk  having interchanges with the flutes, the violins playing a pizzicato as well as a pairing with the clarinets.

After the frenetic finale  the audience responded with a huge ovation and a up in the circle a group unfurled a large Ukrainian flag which elicited further applause.

After interval the orchestra played Respighi’s Trittico Botticelliano, a three-movement work inspired by three of Botticelli paintings – Le Primavera, The Adoration of the Magi and The Birth of Venus.

Respighi is a great composer of evocative symphonic poems and the three works in his Trittico Botticelliano all deal with the concept of birth or awakening.

Two of the movements are based around subjects from classical mythology and one from Christian mythology. This combination of the classical and religious was typical of the Platonic ideas of the Renaissance which saw parallels between the ideas of the ancients and those of Christian thought.

The first of these depicted Le Primavera in which the  sprightly strings captured the notion of Spring with the figure of Flora scattering the myriad flowers, heralding the start of the new season. The horns also herald this new awakening while the  clarinets and flutes give a sense of the interchanges which might pass between the various figures – Mercury, Venus Flora. Zephyrus. Chloris, the Three Graces and Cupid.

With the depiction of the Adoration of the Magi features the music has an exotic Eastern quality   to refer to the travellers from the east along with some fragments from the Latin Mass to capture the ideas around the birth of Jesus. In the final section a wistful bassoon probably refers to the figure of Botticelli himself contemplating the viewer.

The third part depicting the Birth of Venus has shimmering strings conveying the sense of the welling up of natural forces and the rising up of Venus from the waters.

The final work on the programme was Haydn’s Symphony No 103 (The Drumroll). This was his second to last symphony and shows the composer aware of his skills, showing off his abilities to create new dynamics and display his ingenuities.

Deploying the drums to open the work was a novelty and a show of playfulness to entertain his audience. This playfulness extended to conductor Bellincampi who swayed to the music as through doing a gavotte on the podium and there were times when timpanist Steven Logan performed as though he were the drummer in a rock band.

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Gretchen Albrecht

between gesture and geometry

Luke Smythe

Massey University Press

RRP $85.00

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

The hemisphere works of Gretchen Albrecht which she has developed since the 1980’s have become the stylist  hallmark of the artist, its shape referencing the curved lunette window, the architectural arch and the dome of heaven.

The evolution of these works has been over many years and it is interesting and rewarding to look back at her progress as an artist and see the various threads which led to these major works.

“Gretchen Albrecht, between gesture and geometry” by Luke Smythe  first published in 2019 and now republished with extended writing provides a detailed examination of the artists life and
work and the various catalysts; art historical, art history, landscape, natural forces and a range of other sources which have had an impact on her work,  creating vivid, intellectually persuasive and deeply affecting paintings.

Albrecht is one of the country’s most significant  painters whose work is to be found in all the
major private and public collections in New Zealand.

She has had over 50 solo exhibitions in New Zealand and internationally as well as being  included in numerous group exhibitions including the New Zealand exhibition Distance looks our way: 10
artists from NZ that was displayed at the 1992 Seville Expo

Albrecht graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts with a Diploma in Fine Arts with Honours in 1963.  She established herself and was seen as a leading artist in New Zealand with her first solo
exhibition being opened by Colin McCahon.

She is most well known as an abstractionist and  colourist  who  uses intense colours applied with dramatic gestural strokes on a range of shaped canvasses including the hemisphere and
ovals. Her work over the years has also included  watercolours, figurative paintings, prints and
sculptures.

Her first major survey exhibition was AFTERnature: a survey of 23 years at the Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui in 1986.  She was also part of the important before being toured throughout New Zealand.  The retrospective exhibition Illuminations, that investigated two decades of Albrecht’s hemisphere and oval paintings, was held at the Auckland Art Gallery in 2002.

Other work has encompassed large-scale, stainless steel sculpture, multi-panelled rectangular paintings featuring a rectangular ‘threshold’ motif that has also been a key presence in
recent oval works.

Her development as an artist is also carefully outlined including the influence s on her work by local artists  and more importantly international artists such as Morris Louis and Helen  Frankenthaler.

Smythe provides ways of looking at the artist’s work notably with the earlier stained canvas paintings seeing the connections to the natural forms of nature – clouds, water, the various states
of the sky,

In her later work there is also the more cerebral influences of the Italian Renaissance and artists such as Piero Della Francesca. With these paintings there was an evolving interest in geometry
which manifests itself not only in the shaped canvasses but also the subject matter.

A number of her works have also drawn inspiration from artists such as Goya and his female portraits. More recently there have been a series based on the Cistercian liturgy and the  concepts of The Hours where the days are divided into seven traditional periods. Produced during the pandemic they reference notions of time and reflection.

As she has said of her work ‘I think I paint to still the anguish I feel in my heart, to order the chaos I sense is just outside the magic circle I draw around me with my painting.’

The hemisphere shapes she uses have provided a consistent physical template, a standard shape with which to survey the world. On this shape she is able to apply her dramatic painted gestures
which themselves are influenced by the artists experience of the world.

She employs a rigorous abstraction to achieve this, but her works have a basis in the world around her referring to landscapes, art history, the natural world  and her personal encounters with events and emotional reactions.

The book is illustrated with 260 images which provide  visual survey of the artists evolving  work as it has been created, developed and transformed. These illustrations also make one aware of the
artist great sense of colour which she uses as a means of  subtly exploring the boundary between chaos and control.

Smythe’s text is clear and perceptive combining aspects of the artist life, the influence son her work and the evolving emotional and intellectual approach of the artist.

Gretchen Albrecht’s current exhibition “Lighting the Path” will be exhibited at Two Rooms Gallery November 17 until December 22.

To subscribe or follow New Zealand Arts Review site – www.nzartsreview.org.

The “Follow button” at the bottom right will appear and clicking on that button  will allow you to followthat blog and all future posts will arrive on your email.

Or go to https://nzartsreview.org/blog/, Scroll down and click “Subscribe”

Gretchen Albrecht

between gesture and geometry

Luke Smythe

Massey University Press

RRP $85.00

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

The hemisphere works of Gretchen Albrecht which she has developed since the 1980’s have become the stylist  hallmark of the artist, its shape referencing the curved lunette window, the architectural arch and the dome of heaven.

The evolution of these works has been over many years and it is interesting and rewarding to look back at her progress as an artist and see the various threads which led to these major works.

“Gretchen Albrecht, between gesture and geometry” by Luke Smythe  first published in 2019 and now republished with extended writing provides a detailed examination of the artists life and
work and the various catalysts; art historical, art history, landscape, natural forces and a range of other sources which have had an impact on her work,  creating vivid, intellectually persuasive and deeply affecting paintings.

Albrecht is one of the country’s most significant  painters whose work is to be found in all the
major private and public collections in New Zealand.

She has had over 50 solo exhibitions in New Zealand and internationally as well as being  included in numerous group exhibitions including the New Zealand exhibition Distance looks our way: 10
artists from NZ that was displayed at the 1992 Seville Expo

Albrecht graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts with a Diploma in Fine Arts with Honours in 1963.  She established herself and was seen as a leading artist in New Zealand with her first solo
exhibition being opened by Colin McCahon.

She is most well known as an abstractionist and  colourist  who  uses intense colours applied with dramatic gestural strokes on a range of shaped canvasses including the hemisphere and
ovals. Her work over the years has also included  watercolours, figurative paintings, prints and
sculptures.

Her first major survey exhibition was AFTERnature: a survey of 23 years at the Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui in 1986.  She was also part of the important before being toured throughout New Zealand.  The retrospective exhibition Illuminations, that investigated two decades of Albrecht’s hemisphere and oval paintings, was held at the Auckland Art Gallery in 2002.

Other work has encompassed large-scale, stainless steel sculpture, multi-panelled rectangular paintings featuring a rectangular ‘threshold’ motif that has also been a key presence in
recent oval works.

Her development as an artist is also carefully outlined including the influence s on her work by local artists  and more importantly international artists such as Morris Louis and Helen  Frankenthaler.

Smythe provides ways of looking at the artist’s work notably with the earlier stained canvas paintings seeing the connections to the natural forms of nature – clouds, water, the various states
of the sky,

In her later work there is also the more cerebral influences of the Italian Renaissance and artists such as Piero Della Francesca. With these paintings there was an evolving interest in geometry
which manifests itself not only in the shaped canvasses but also the subject matter.

A number of her works have also drawn inspiration from artists such as Goya and his female portraits. More recently there have been a series based on the Cistercian liturgy and the  concepts of The Hours where the days are divided into seven traditional periods. Produced during the pandemic they reference notions of time and reflection.

As she has said of her work ‘I think I paint to still the anguish I feel in my heart, to order the chaos I sense is just outside the magic circle I draw around me with my painting.’

The hemisphere shapes she uses have provided a consistent physical template, a standard shape with which to survey the world. On this shape she is able to apply her dramatic painted gestures
which themselves are influenced by the artists experience of the world.

She employs a rigorous abstraction to achieve this, but her works have a basis in the world around her referring to landscapes, art history, the natural world  and her personal encounters with events and emotional reactions.

The book is illustrated with 260 images which provide  visual survey of the artists evolving  work as it has been created, developed and transformed. These illustrations also make one aware of the
artist great sense of colour which she uses as a means of  subtly exploring the boundary between chaos and control.

Smythe’s text is clear and perceptive combining aspects of the artist life, the influence son her work and the evolving emotional and intellectual approach of the artist.

Gretchen Albrecht’s current exhibition “Lighting the Path” will be exhibited at Two Rooms Gallery November 17 until December 22.

To subscribe or follow New Zealand Arts Review site – www.nzartsreview.org.

The “Follow button” at the bottom right will appear and clicking on that button  will allow you to followthat blog and all future posts will arrive on your email.

Or go to https://nzartsreview.org/blog/, Scroll down and click “Subscribe”

Gretchen Albrecht

between gesture and geometry

Luke Smythe

Massey University Press

RRP $85.00

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

The hemisphere works of Gretchen Albrecht which she has developed since the 1980’s have become the stylist  hallmark of the artist, its shape referencing the curved lunette window, the architectural arch and the dome of heaven.

The evolution of these works has been over many years and it is interesting and rewarding to look back at her progress as an artist and see the various threads which led to these major works.

“Gretchen Albrecht, between gesture and geometry” by Luke Smythe  first published in 2019 and now republished with extended writing provides a detailed examination of the artists life and
work and the various catalysts; art historical, art history, landscape, natural forces and a range of other sources which have had an impact on her work,  creating vivid, intellectually persuasive and deeply affecting paintings.

Albrecht is one of the country’s most significant  painters whose work is to be found in all the
major private and public collections in New Zealand.

She has had over 50 solo exhibitions in New Zealand and internationally as well as being  included in numerous group exhibitions including the New Zealand exhibition Distance looks our way: 10
artists from NZ that was displayed at the 1992 Seville Expo

Albrecht graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts with a Diploma in Fine Arts with Honours in 1963.  She established herself and was seen as a leading artist in New Zealand with her first solo
exhibition being opened by Colin McCahon.

She is most well known as an abstractionist and  colourist  who  uses intense colours applied with dramatic gestural strokes on a range of shaped canvasses including the hemisphere and
ovals. Her work over the years has also included  watercolours, figurative paintings, prints and
sculptures.

Her first major survey exhibition was AFTERnature: a survey of 23 years at the Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui in 1986.  She was also part of the important before being toured throughout New Zealand.  The retrospective exhibition Illuminations, that investigated two decades of Albrecht’s hemisphere and oval paintings, was held at the Auckland Art Gallery in 2002.

Other work has encompassed large-scale, stainless steel sculpture, multi-panelled rectangular paintings featuring a rectangular ‘threshold’ motif that has also been a key presence in
recent oval works.

Her development as an artist is also carefully outlined including the influence s on her work by local artists  and more importantly international artists such as Morris Louis and Helen  Frankenthaler.

Smythe provides ways of looking at the artist’s work notably with the earlier stained canvas paintings seeing the connections to the natural forms of nature – clouds, water, the various states
of the sky,

In her later work there is also the more cerebral influences of the Italian Renaissance and artists such as Piero Della Francesca. With these paintings there was an evolving interest in geometry
which manifests itself not only in the shaped canvasses but also the subject matter.

A number of her works have also drawn inspiration from artists such as Goya and his female portraits. More recently there have been a series based on the Cistercian liturgy and the  concepts of The Hours where the days are divided into seven traditional periods. Produced during the pandemic they reference notions of time and reflection.

As she has said of her work ‘I think I paint to still the anguish I feel in my heart, to order the chaos I sense is just outside the magic circle I draw around me with my painting.’

The hemisphere shapes she uses have provided a consistent physical template, a standard shape with which to survey the world. On this shape she is able to apply her dramatic painted gestures
which themselves are influenced by the artists experience of the world.

She employs a rigorous abstraction to achieve this, but her works have a basis in the world around her referring to landscapes, art history, the natural world  and her personal encounters with events and emotional reactions.

The book is illustrated with 260 images which provide  visual survey of the artists evolving  work as it has been created, developed and transformed. These illustrations also make one aware of the
artist great sense of colour which she uses as a means of  subtly exploring the boundary between chaos and control.

Smythe’s text is clear and perceptive combining aspects of the artist life, the influence son her work and the evolving emotional and intellectual approach of the artist.

Gretchen Albrecht’s current exhibition “Lighting the Path” will be exhibited at Two Rooms Gallery November 17 until December 22.

To subscribe or follow New Zealand Arts Review site – www.nzartsreview.org.

The “Follow button” at the bottom right will appear and clicking on that button  will allow you to followthat blog and all future posts will arrive on your email.

Or go to https://nzartsreview.org/blog/, Scroll down and click “Subscribe”

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra

Mahler 5

Auckland Town Hall

November 11

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

One of the impressive things about Mahler’s music is that the man looms out of the music. He is present at these performances not only in the music , but also with the conductor becoming his alter ego. We are presented with the man and his struggle to express himself through his music in a way few other composers manage to achieve.

Later in life Mahler had a relationship with Sigmund Freud both as a client as well as friend but his relationships, family tragedies and psychological issues associated with these had disturbed him for most of his life. In many of his symphonies and particularly in his Symphony No 5  the music is an attempt to understand and explore his inner psychological struggles.

While it is an autobiographical work exploring the composer’s personality, there are parallel themes as he depicts narratives, landscapes and explores emotion states.

The measure of a great performance is the way in which these twin aspects of the composer’s life is realized by the conductor and the orchestra. Conductor Giordano Bellincampi and the APO certainly achieved it with an intelligent and emotional performance.

Bellincampi was firmly in control of the orchestra, understanding the drama, inventions and contrasts of the music. Subtle nuances were made evident and individual instruments were allowed to shine. Even the long silences between the movements became part of the music, allowing the audience to reflect on each of the previous movements.

Bellincampi managed to give the blaring, brass opening funereal march a sense of desolation while the singing strings provided a sense of optimism. This  romantic reflective mood depicted the man trapped between despair and hope.

In the second movement Bellincampi seemed to be battling the ferocious sounds of the orchestra and the nightmarish, reckless drama of the music before it morphed into quiet reverie, bringing out nuances and subtleties that seemed to explore the tragedy and triumphs of human and personal history and he allowed the interweaving of the solo violin, the brass and the strings to give the work an intense melancholy.

The final two movements, which included the famous adagio for strings which is considered to be something of a love letter to his wife Alma Schindler, were delivered perfectly filled with an aching sense of love and loss.

The finale was filled with changing moods, alive with bight woodwinds and brass. Bellincampi led the orchestra  in a brilliantly controlled finale where the doors of perception open and the funeral tones of much of the work are replaced by more exultant sounds offering hope and renewal.

The first half of the concert featured Richard Wagner’s work from two of his operas; the overture to Rienzi and Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde.

Wagner’s music had a major influence on Mahler with Mahler’s work reflecting a Wagnerian aesthetic. Their music was dramatic and their  orchestras were correspondingly  large and often made use of massed  brass instruments. Both composers  liked big contrasts, periods of silence as well as extended  melodies.

The two works showed these Wagner / Mahler characteristics although where Wagner conveyed the Nietzschean idea of the Super Man, Mahler was more focused on the flawed Common Man.

The major haunting theme from Tristan which has had a more recent exposure in “Melencholia”, the brooding apocalyptic film by von Trier with its notions of end-time and renewal.

To subscribe or follow New Zealand Arts Review site – www.nzartsreview.org.

The “Follow button” at the bottom right will appear and clicking on that button  will allow you to follow that blog and all future posts will arrive on your email.

Or go to https://nzartsreview.org/blog/, Scroll down and click “Subscribe”

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Pamela Wolfe, The Entangled Bank
Artis Gallery
Until November 27

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

In the catalogue accompanying her recent exhibition The Entangled bank Pamela Wolfe quotes from Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,

“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.”

Later in life when Darwin retired to the country where he took an intense interest in botany acquiring specimens and corresponding with other botanists. He was particularly interested in the question of why flowers had developed their many shapes, sizes and colours.

The plants depicted in Wolfe’s exhibition could well have been ones which Darwin might have grown and examined in his gardens.

Wolfe  has a similar enquiring mind about the plants she paints and there is a Romantic quality to them. In her introduction to the works, she mentions her early encounters with plants – “I recall walking through a tangled mass of wildflowers and towering weeds that bordered a large meadow near a small English village in spring”. It’s a  description which was similar to the lines of  Wordsworth.

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Entangled ($24,000) is  a reference to Wolfe’s quote from The Origin of Species  with the dark centre to the work giving a sense of damp earth.

Other works have references to Darwin’s interest in tropical plants which he raised in his hothouse at Down House such as Tropical 1 ($19,500)  and Tropical 2 ($22,000) with bright amaryllis and other exotic plants.

Dark Orchid ($24,000) is also an acknowledgement of Darwin’s work in collecting these exotic plants.

While the plants in Variation ($19.500) are clearly arranged in a vase, the other works present the plants as though they are specimens arranged for study.

With most of the paintings the plants are carefully modelled emphasising contrasts in colour, shapes and texture. Wolfe has depicted the voluptuous petals of the blooming flowers and buds in tightly cropped masses almost filling  the frame as with Entangled and  Late Summer Echinacea and Zinnias ($19,500).

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