So, right now there’s a whole lot of really good stuff being exhib­ited in Wel­ling­ton’s gal­ler­ies.

City Gal­lery

After the hugely suc­cess­ful Yayoi Kusama exhib­i­tion turned the gal­lery into a magic­al won­der­land, the main gal­lery space has now been giv­en over to three also won­der­ful artists.

More after the jump. 

Cana­dian artist Janet Cardiff’s work Forty Part Motet fills a room with 40 speak­ers, each with an indi­vidu­al record­ing of a mem­ber of a choir per­form­ing Spem in Ali­um Nun­quam Habui, a 40-part motet com­posed in Renais­sance times. It’s a full-on, immers­ive exper­i­ence.

“Trans-Form: The Abstract Art of Mil­an Mrkusich” looks at the abstract works of Mil­an Mrkusich. He’s a sig­ni­fic­ant New Zea­l­and artist, and the col­lec­tion takes not a ret­ro­spect­ive theme, but looks at the way he’s dealt with abstract art. And he’s dealt with it good and prop­er.

The upstairs space is ded­ic­ated to works by Ser­aph­ine Pick from 1994 to 2009. She paints lovely girls, dreamy scenes, strange worlds, and things that look ordin­ary but reveal twis­ted depths on closer exam­in­a­tion.

The Hirschfeld Gal­lery fea­tures “Fur­thur Con­vic­tions Pending” a col­lec­tion by four Wel­ling­ton artists, Andrew Beck, Sarah Maxey, Douglas Stich­bury and Tim Thatch­er, includ­ing the bold hand-let­ter­ing of Maxey snak­ing across the gal­lery wall, threat­en­ing to start a fight and/or burst into tears.

The New Dowse

Over in the Hutt, Bill Viola’s video work “The Mes­sen­ger” is a mes­mer­ising film of a fel­low sink­ing and rising in a body of water. This is a great work and even bet­ter to exper­i­ence it in the New Dowse, feel­ing almost church-like in its set­ting.

Seung Yul Oh (whose chick­en-eggs were seen last year rock­ing in Te Papa’s sculp­ture ter­race), has “Bogle Bogle”, a full exhib­i­tion of his col­our­ful, shiny play­ful works. They’re beg­ging to be played with, but the New Dowse aren’t hav­ing any of that, thank you.

“Draw­ing Con­clu­sions” is a col­lec­tion of works by New Zea­l­and artists Ral­ph Hotere, Colin McCahon, Don Peebles and Gor­don Wal­ters, show­ing not just the works, but the sketches and ideas that were behind them.

And clos­ing soon but worth a vis­it is “Long Live The Mod­ern”, cel­eb­rat­ing the new archi­tec­ture of the 20th cen­tury – all those con­crete build­ings that we’re slowly com­ing to appre­ci­ate. Wel­ling­ton has its fair share of Mod­ern gems, many of which are fea­tured in the exhib­i­tion.

And jew­eller Lisa Walk­er has “Unwear­able” a col­lec­tion of unwear­able jew­ellery, strangely resem­bling the sort of stuff that’s pro­filed on Regretsy. “I would not wear that,” a small girl com­men­ted to her dad. Well, yeah.

Te Papa

Our nation­al gal­lery fea­tures the New Zea­l­and con­tri­bu­tion to the 2009 Venice Bien­nale – Judy Mil­lar’s Gir­affe-Bottle-Gun and and Fran­cis Upritchard’s Save Your­self.

Mil­lar’s work is giant and bold, huge canvases, laz­ing around in the gal­lery, while Upritchard’s has del­ic­ately sculp­tured but strangely grot­esque fig­ures.

The trav­el­ing Anne Frank bio­graphy exhib­i­tion always seems to have a lar­ger audi­ence than this once, which is a pity because it’s a priv­ilege to have this on our door­step.

Adam Art Gal­lery

And the Adam is ded­ic­ated to “Draw­ing With Light”, cine­mat­ic works by Anthony McCall. He reduces film to its basic ele­ment – light. In rooms filled with the­at­ric­al smoke, films are pro­jec­ted, allow­ing us to see not just the thin white lines pro­jec­ted on to a sur­face, but also the space between, illu­min­ated by the smoky air.

It’s a really fun exper­i­ence, and you can pre­tend you’re in an ’80s night club or maybe you’re trav­el­ling through a vor­tex into anoth­er dimen­sion. Woooo!