art and photography

Awa, Maunga, Iwi, Waka

September 1, 2016 1 Comment

David Eggleton

Māori Art: History, architecture, landscape and theory by Rangīhiroa Panoho (Bateman, 2015), 352 pp., $89.99

Māori Art: History, architecture, landscape and theory is, as the book’s convoluted subtitle might suggest, a somewhat lumpy assemblage: an idiosyncratic if entertaining gathering of themes and examples lashed together raft-like in support of its aim, which is to construct a Māori-centric art history. A book long in the gestation – it was originally commissioned in 1993 – and then, it seems, almost as long in finding a sympathetic publisher, it has an undeniably epic quality, a grandeur of conception, supported by high production values. It’s a solid, substantial volume. [Read more…]

Kinetic Experience

May 1, 2016 2 Comments

Andrew Paul Wood

Zizz! The life and art of Len Lye, in His Own Words, by Len Lye with Roger Horrocks (Awa Press, 2015), 208 pp., $30

The Len Lye phenomenon has become almost cult-like in recent years, culminating in July 2015 with the launch of the mirror-finish, fingerprint-prone $11.5 million Len Lye Centre in New Plymouth (and entered through the gift shop). There have been documentaries, even an opera, and from the official mythology you could be forgiven for failing to grasp that with the exception of a handful of believers – Hamish Keith, Peter Tomory and Bob Ballard, the sometime director of the Govett-Brewster – in the 1960s and 1970s Lye was largely ignored. [Read more…]

Clarity, the Sky Says

May 1, 2016 Leave a Comment

Jenny Powell

Boundaries, People and Places of Central Otago, by Brian Turner (Penguin Random House NZ, 2015), 351 pp., $45

Travelling into Turner territory is invariably breath-taking and thought-provoking. This new collection of prose, poetry and Steve Calveley’s photography does not disappoint, but these qualities are merely the surface shimmer on the long reach of a Central Otago river. Boundaries is an intense focus on the essence of place. In his introduction Turner raises considerations about how and why we end up in certain places and how we ‘look after’ them. While our sense of identity and belonging is frequently connected to ‘our place’, we don’t all have the freedom to choose where we want to be. This book, as Turner advises, is about making the best of what we’re faced with. [Read more…]

Blood and Guts in Wartime

April 14, 2016 Leave a Comment

David Eggleton

The Penguin Book of New Zealand War Writing, edited by Harry Ricketts and Gavin McLean (Penguin Random House, 2015), 602 pp., $65; Calls to Arms: New Zealand society and commitment to the Great War by Steven Loveridge (Victoria University Press, 2014), 336 pp., $40; How We Remember: New Zealanders and the First World War, edited by Charles Ferrall and Harry Ricketts (Victoria University Press, 2014), 289 pp., $40; The Anzacs: An inside view of New Zealanders at Gallipoli: Photographs from the Auckland War Museum, with essays by Damien Fenton and Shaun Higgins (Penguin Random House, 2015), 244 pp., $45; The Prison Diary of A.C. Barrington: Dissent and conformity in Wartime New Zealand by John Pratt (Otago University Press, 2016), 204 pp., $39.95

Our overfamiliarity with the bromides – war is futile, war is hell, every war is like every other war, no soldier returns the same from the battlefield – means it’s difficult for the genre of war literature to make it new, or to be pertinent as literature to anyone beyond the specialist or the obsessive. The Penguin Book of New Zealand War Writing is an anthology that gets around this to a certain extent by concentrating on one particular truism and using that as a thematic thread: namely, war is the forge of national identity. The selections, chosen by literary historian Harry Ricketts and cultural historian Gavin McLean, are mostly crisply edited and tightly focused. Theirs is a hefty tome: a semi-chronological echo chamber of war stories, reportage, reminiscences, documentation and latter-day analysis covering nearly 400 years. It is a book aimed at the general reader, with brief endnotes, a basic bibliography and a serviceable index. [Read more…]

Flows of Energy

March 1, 2016 Leave a Comment

Melinda Johnston

The Dharma Punks by Ant Sang (Earth’s End Publishing, 2014) 424 pp., $39.99; Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen by Dylan Horrocks (Victoria University Press, 2014) 208 pp., $35

Collectively, the publication in late 2014 of Dylan Horrocks’ latest graphic novel Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen and the re-publication of Ant Sang’s Dharma Punks signalled a key moment for cartooning in this country. To be fair, neither publication equals the breakthrough previously achieved when Hicksville received global acclaim and put New Zealand cartooning on the map, or when Dharma Punks, a modest local comic series, originally achieved its unlikely cult best-seller status. Nonetheless, these publications are indicative of the recent mainstreaming of the New Zealand comics industry, where glossier, slicker publications are now considered viable and are even taken ‘seriously’. [Read more…]