The Grid

Artwork by ten New Zealand artists. As a defining form, no-one should find the grid unfamiliar. Most pictures, prints and photographs we see are rectangular or square and therefore defined by the basic unit of a grid: the rectangle. That in itself is distinctly 'abstract', since our eyes don't actually give what we look at a neat rectangular frame at all. So between what we see and the conventions of Western pictorial art there is a conceptual leap - namely that it 'makes sense' to depict what we see within a rectangular frame, which if extended inwards or outwards becomes part of a grid. The grid as a device for framing, organising, delimiting, is thus of natural interest to artists.Not that this observation is intended to justify 'grid' paintings - it merely shows how natural and obvious they are. Yet, as Cheryll Sotheran, Wystan Curnow and others are keen on pointing out, abstract art is still not well received in New Zealand - generally being regarded as alien, impersonal, 'difficult'. So the Auckland City Gallery's exhibition entitled Tbe Grid: Lattice & Network, which is the second in its series Aspects of Recent New Zealand Art, is especially welcome - not only for the quality of the works but also as an act of historical identification (all exhibits fall within a fifteen-year span, 1967-82) and as a demonstration of the actual accomplishments of abstract art. Many viewers will be surprised at how popular grids were with artists in the 'seventies, and at how they elicited such various and imaginative responses. For, rather than mathematical or visual banality, most works in this show offer ingenious and subtle variations on the grid form; and certainly justify its recognition as a significant 'Aspect' of recent New Zealand Art.