By Mark Amery Courtesy of The Dominion Post 12/12/07

While the last year or two have seen the established galleries hustle closer together in the CBD, new galleries have been popping up in the upwardly mobile suburbs. Suite is an interesting new example. Set in a renovated corner store on Newtown's Owen and Constable Streets, it comes with the unusual tagline of '19th-21st Century Fine Art'. By Mark Amery Courtesy of The Dominion Post 12/12/07

While the last year or two have seen the established galleries hustle closer together in the CBD, new galleries have been popping up in the upwardly mobile suburbs. Suite is an interesting new example. Set in a renovated corner store on Newtown's Owen and Constable Streets, it comes with the unusual tagline of '19th-21st Century Fine Art'.That is to say, it is both a contemporary gallery and a dealer in so-called historical art.

In the Aro Valley, artists' space DAF106 Gallery has been joined next door by jewellery gallery Vilders, works on paper gallery Solander is just down from The Warehouse out the back of the airport, on the Island Bay waterfront is South Coast Gallery, and just opened in Moncrieff Street Mount Victoria is Nel Fine Arts.

This rash of galleries may in part reflect increasing rental in the central city but it's also all about the gentrification of the surrounding suburbs. Renovated villas need renovated interiors. These are galleries with limited opening hours that can expect a lot of Saturday trade between sportsground and megastore. It's also the reality of private gallery visiting in many larger cities. To get around the dealers (in Sydney for example) you spend a lot of time traveling in-between, hoping to catch them before they close, and never quite sure if what you'll see will have been worth the effort.

Suite stocks a range of accomplished if not earth-shattering still lives and other domestic paintings from the late 19th and early 20th century Netherlands, and already has a host of interesting looking contemporary Dutch and New Zealand artists lined up (their website makes good viewing). Suite's first exhibition was of an acclaimed contemporary Dutch photographer Desiree Dolron, and their current is of the mid 20th century watercolours and prints of our own E. Mervyn Taylor.

An odder mix is hard to imagine, yet this postmodern mix up of time and geography actually feels refreshing and timely. Taylor is a case in point. The sort of mid century regionalist who until recently was deeply unfashionable, we're just starting to feel free enough of modernism's push forward to start liking him all over again.

Returning to New Zealand after five years in the Netherlands, owners David Alsop and Susannah Shaw are clearly having a bob a few different ways commercially, but their programme also reflects the friendships they have made. Suite is an extension of the personal medley of art you expect to find in most homes. What they lack currently in reputation and focus they make up for in letting fresh air in.

A case in point was the Dolron exhibition. Dolron is unknown on this side of the world, yet the show was close to a sellout. It was not hard to see why; the images are gorgeous. The work of a master of atmospheric storytelling with well-loved objects in moments of stillness (a kind of unpeopled Vermeer), her subject is that world we hold today most full of romance, residential Havana Cuba. A world suspended beyond the present, it's a contemporary take on the still life and our love of a melange of domestic rustic. These images of Dolron's are safe in playing up to every image we have in our heads of this place, yet there's no denying their quiet magisterial power. Furniture and objects talk together animatedly of time past through their wear and arrangement as Castro and Guevara look down like benign hosts.

Taylor represents an older brand of comfort food: images of rural Maori, driftwood, native birds and Maoriland mythology. Yet Taylor demonstrates an extraordinary daring with line, from the ripple of a crescent wave at Te Kaha in a watercolour to a pulsating study of fungi in a woodcut. My favourite is Dark Valley, an early print full of high keyed dramatics where the whole composition rolls like a romantic symphony with a complex confluence of line. Even the fenceposts rattle like timpani. Out the back meanwhile are charming watercolour beach scenes by father of Yves Klein, Frits Klein. His is a sunny subject a world away from that of Mervyn Taylor and his British influenced nationbuilding peers.

Suite will probably in good time evolve into yet another dealer gallery attempting to represent the best of contemporary art. In the meantime catch it while it's still all mixed up timeless fun.

E Mervyn Taylor: From the TMT Archives, Suite, until December 22