The light fantastic

If you get round the dealer galleries and keep an eye on what’s going on, it’s hard for the public museums to surprise you with a collection show. But that is exactly what happened when we went to For Keeps the Auckland Art Gallery’s latest slice from the Chartwell Collection augmented by some of their own purchases. The lightness of touch, of physicality, of colour, of display stops you in your tracks. From the first room that includes et al.’s bleached canopy work and some fragile-looking pastels of socks by Nick Austin you can feel there is a new sensibility at work. In fact the only time it falters is in a room of suffocatingly dark images by Australian photographer Bill Henson. On the other hand, it’s kind of entertaining to have so much New Zealand work floating on through while the central Australian contribution feels stuck in angst. The exhibition is a shock in the best sense of the word, and sets up a great argument with Sam Neill’s 1995 documentary Cinema of unease and its belief in the essential darkness of the New Zealand soul.
Image: From the Estate of L Budd (Thanks to Michael Lett Gallery for pic)