An exhibition of the work of any large, loose group of artists Is inevitably lopsided and the autumn collection from the N.Z. Academy of Fine Arts now showing at the Art Gallery is no exception. There is much that is competently stereotyped and a little that is experimentally exciting. When so many artists in the group are exclusively doing watercolours it is a pity that more or them do not exploit the cheapness and accessibility of the medium by being a little less precise and a little more stimulating. Many of the paintings hung this year could have been painted twenty years ago and will probably still be seen cluttering the gallery twenty years hence. Too many flower studies are a loose mass of colour, lacking any point of tension. Odd petals lie on a water-marked table and a curtain makes the background. A book or ornament completes the tableau. This style of thing may make a good art-class lesson In technique, but the results are more happily hung in a bedroom than in an art exhibition. E. V. Pope's "Kowhai" is good for arrangement and colour and lack of fussiness, but the inevitable curtain blurs the pattern of black stems, and W. S. Wauchop's picture, "Hydrangeas," is also a study of green apples, a Buddha and a pawa shell.