Jodie Dalgleish

The Long View: Auckland photographs 2014–2017 by Mary Macpherson with an essay by Gregory O’Brien (Mary Macpherson and PhotoForum Inc., 2018), 44 pp, $35

Designated as PhotoForum 89. Published to accompany the exhibition of the same name at Pah Homestead, TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre, Auckland, 29 May to 22 July 2018 as part of the Auckland Festival of Photography.

 

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

Dorothea Lange’s famous quote comes to mind as I open the pages of Mary Macpherson’s new photographic book, The Long View: Auckland photographs 2014–2017.¹ Modestly sized, it presents 25 superbly coloured photographs of the city, and an essay by Gregory O’Brien.  [Read more…]

Max Oettli

Aberhart Starts Here by Lara Strongman with Laurence Aberhart (Christchurch Art Gallery, 2018), 136 pp., $39.99

This catalogue is based on the Christchurch Art Gallery show of Aberhart’s early work (1975 to 1983 with one picture from 1986), from when he was living in Lyttelton and later working as an instructor at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Art at Ilam.

My initial thought was to wonder: have we got to a point when everything that can be written about Laurence Aberhart has been written? Can we squeeze one more review out of this gigantic stack of beautiful work that he has shored up against the crumbling ruins of our civilisation? [Read more…]

Andrew Paul Wood

Undreamed Of … 50 years of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship by Priscilla Pitts and Andrea Hotere (Otago University Press, 2017), 224 pp., $59.95

It’s tough being an artist in Aotearoa – it doesn’t exactly come with the flotilla of perks and acknowledgements one might find in countries less suspicious of culture. Even so, there is a lot more in the way of laurels available now than there was back when the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship was the only one. Established at the University of Otago in 1966 through the efforts of Charles Brasch (1909–1973), and named after the nation’s most famous expatriate artist, it has long been one of the most prestigious awards for a New Zealand artist, with the financial freedom of a lecturer’s salary, a studio to work in, and some of the most extraordinary cultural resources in the country. Unlike its sister fellowships, the Burns (writing) and the Mozart (music), the Hodgkins is something of an outlier in that the university has no art school; that’s the province of Otago Polytechnic – ‘Olam’ to Elam and Ilam – and a very fine producer of talent. [Read more…]