‘‘Dozen’’, John Z. Robinson
(Moray Gallery)
JOHN Z. ROBINSON’S tongueincheek artist’s statement to his current show is in pictorial form — a selfportrait with a speech bubble saying, ‘‘Mainly I like to draw the familiar places, faces, and things.’’ A simple, but accurate, summation, although it fails to say that he often likes to depict them in surprising ways.
So it is with ‘‘Dozen’’, a satisfying display of 12 Dunedin townscapes and still lifes, each imbued with a woozy sense of the organic. Inspired by a visit by some of the artist’s friends to Ethiopia, a country whose traditional building designs eschew straight lines, Robinson has created a fantasy Dunedin in which — in the artist’s own words — ‘‘horizontals and perpendiculars are laughing at each other’’.
The resulting mixedmedia images, in their washes of cool, muted colours over strong yet unorthodox lines, are appealing explorations of the city. In pieces such as View from Lynn’s
Studio and Hospital and Mount Cargill,
Dunedin remains clearly visible in the drawings, yet in other works such as Looking
Towards Great King Street, the city seems like a churning wave on a stormy sea of buildings.
The works are impressive, and are reminiscent of some of the wonkily attractive yet sinister cityscapes of German expressionists such as Grosz and Beckmann.