Visual Arts / Harp Frequency, Ham Darroch. At Civic Art Bureau, until May 31. Reviewed by KERRY-ANNE COUSINS.

Ham Darroch’s exhibition in the Civic Art Bureau provides a mesmerising dance of colour across the gallery’s white walls.

Darroch is known for his large wall paintings. His work Tonic has recently been installed at the temporary entrance to the National Gallery of Australia.

Darroch has engaged with gallery’s small space even actually painting one work on the gallery wall. The work called Accord at 240cm x 250cm is modest in scale. It is an arresting image of intersecting circles suggesting perhaps the deep rhythms of the universe in shifting blue tonal shapes intersecting with a pink rhomboid. The effect is surprisingly calming.

Another painting Sideline 4 references Darroch’s art practice of making art from recycled materials. In this work Darroch paints a version of a colour wheel on a salvaged hospital stretcher. The stretcher with its attached cords may suggest drawn window blinds – a reference perhaps to the artist’s added title in parenthesis  (tomorrow night I’m going to bed early).

This latter work is a rather uneasy alliance of stained recycled canvas, rusted metal parts and streaky oil crayon surfaces.

Uccello ( Bird 1440) is a colourful composition where the geometric shapes dissected by linear rhythmic designs suggest not only the musical vibrations of bird songs but the rhythmic patterns of flight. Musicality is also suggested by the work Harp Frequency where the artist is inspired by the plucked notes of harp strings as they vibrate and dissipate into space. This is evoked by the fluidity of the shapes of the circles and triangles that intersect across the work’s surface – the composition modulated by the orange bars at the side of the composition.

Darroch’s interest in the forms and shapes of recycled tools is found in two works Mantis 5 and Mantis 8. The serrated two-toned blades of saws intersect and divide the shallow surface space in cutting motions that provide visual pathways as the shapes change tonal colour and directions.

These abstract works are successful in their ability to communicate through rhythm, shape and colour, the artist’s pictorial vision and its genesis in his poetic imagination.