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!