art and photography

Hammer and Sickle, Yeah!

August 1, 2017 Leave a Comment

Max Oettli

Seen in China 1956 by Tom Hutchins, edited by John B. Turner (Turner Photo Books in collaboration with Photo Forum as Photoforum issue 86, 2016), 124 pp., $25; The Shops by Steve Braunias and Peter Black (Luncheon Sausage Press Books/Photo Forum, 2016), 62 pp., $40

What did I know about China in 1956? I was nine at the time, a smart-arsed Swiss-German kid, the runt in a family of four. We had a German Jugend book I’d devoured, as I devoured everything readable in our house, a kind of companion volume to Harrer’s Seven Years in Tibet I suppose, of a German’s experience of living in China for 30 years. The book was probably from a time when Germany was a somewhat tarnished currency (as was Harrer’s Tibet book, incidentally), but this did not stop me reading it avidly. There were countless millions of Chinese, apparently; they drank tea, did gruesome things to women’s feet and had rather fixed dietary habits and somewhat rudimentary plumbing, which gave them and their whole country a distinctive smell, to put it mildly. Their governance was based on a very hierarchic Confucian order and their punishment of criminals was gruesome. [Read more…]

Have I Got Time to Look at This?

October 1, 2016 Leave a Comment

Max Oettli

A Beautiful Hesitation by Fiona Pardington, with Kriselle Baker and Aaron Lister and others (Victoria University Press, 2016), 264 pp., $70

Have I got time to look at this? Books of pictures always seem to have a time signature built into them, and from that point of view Fiona Pardington’s A Beautiful Hesitation is a very long book. The ‘score’ is clearly Adagio. You have to give it the time to unfold, to enable you to engage with at least some of the layers of meaning and beauty it contains. A Beautiful Hesitation has, for me, a whole weave of significations; it must be approached slowly and with respect. There is no quick spasm of ecstasy here; we’re in for the long haul.

Peter Ireland remarks in a slightly bitchy review of the accompanying exhibition on the EyeContact website that it is unusual and possibly dangerous to do mid-career survey exhibitions, feeling that they can ‘suddenly clarify nagging doubts about an artist’s general approach, and begin to settle questions about the depth of the philosophic and conceptual claims made for their work’. Seems a good idea to me here, actually, as it does mark a kind of mid-career milestone in this artist’s chequered and varied output. As for the book, sumptuous and well made it certainly is, with immaculate reproductions, good editorial calls, and an important typographic contribution by the artist’s brother (and also a photographer) Neil Pardington. [Read more…]

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…]