Poor art

This year's Arts Festival Fine Arts Exhibition was held in the Canterbury University Students Common Room at 11am and contained 100 works representing student artists from Auckland, Canterbury. Massey and Otago.

No apparent effort in this field was made by our new Cultural Affairs Officer and hence the lack of any Victoria contributions (folk singing no doubt made up for it).

The standard achieved by the paintings was very amateur and nowhere near those of the last two Arts Festivals.

There were, however, one or two works which stood far above the others: for example, the one awarded first prize—an untitled work by Leonard Tippet (I think— the 15 cent catalogue and numbering were often at variance or hard to deciphers). It consisted of a pale opaque green back with chalky-white abstract forms in the right half.

Two other notable paintings, also from Canterbury, were abstracts by Margaret Crane (Painting) and J. K. Reed (Landscape). Painting was a central, circular, light red and earthy red-browns on a grey background of impastoed oils. Bold forms and bold colours—blues, reds, browns and off-whites—on a large canvas made up Landscape.

The Auckland painting contribution was surprising and represented two extremesridiculous Pop to conservative exercises. Examples were Gavin Bishop's Molly and Ted About to be Wed, a brightly-coloured canvas depicting an Asian-wards continental drift of the African Continent, on one hand, and, on the other, many studies of nudes and still lifes.

The Graphic Section was not very inspiring, the standard again very amateur. The Sculpture section, on the other hand, may well have been good, but it was extremely difficult to see the exhibits due to the rubbish, such as empty cigarette packets, piled up around them 'and this is no exaggeration!.

One work which, mounted on a higher stand, was able to be viewed—Insectiscope, by Murray Bloxham. It was a pleasant aluminium work in a form its title suggests.

M. J. B. Gaffikn.