Alice Miller Science on Ice: Discovering the Secrets of Antarctica, by Veronika Meduna (Auckland University Press, 2012), 225 pp., $59.99; These Rough Notes, by Bill Manhire, Anne Noble, Norman Meehan, and Hannah Griffin (Victoria University Press, 2012), 64 pp., $40.< A Canadian band I once loved sang an unlikely song about an Antarctic explorer meeting Foucault […]
False Light
Hanna Scott The Evening Hours: Ben Cauchi, edited by Aaron Lister (Victoria University Press, with City Gallery Wellington, 2013), 125 pp., $60. Ben Cauchi’s images are like a series of unanswered questions. That means that this monograph The Evening Hours: Ben Cauchi is perfectly timed. The exhibition at City Gallery, and the publication that coincides […]
The Transparent Eyeball
Max Oettli Laurence Aberhart: Recent Taranaki Photographs, by Laurence Aberhart, with essays by Paul Brobbel, Peter Ireland and others, (Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 2012), 69 pp., $33. Flying up to Auckland from the South you can often see Mount Taranaki, and if it’s clear you see the amazing radial land-use pattern around it especially to the […]
Subjective, Not Comprehensive
Aindriu MacFehin Artspace 25 : Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining, edited by Caterina Riva, with texts by Tobias Berger, Chris Kraus and others, (Artspace Auckland, 2012), 160 pp., $ 40. Art books are a mystery. Art itself is mysterious, not just because it is often better understood in retrospect but more because in […]
Time-bound Status of Desire
David Herkt Manly Affections: The Photographs of Robert Gant 1885–1915, Chris Brickell, (Genre Books, 2012), 208 pp. $50. Time is the final mystery. Although space has been repeatedly reconceived over the last millennia by physics, technology, and culture, our concept of the one-way flow of time has remained relatively consistent and undisturbed. We exist […]
Wanderlust
David Eggleton Selling the Dream: the Art of Early New Zealand Tourism, edited by Peter Alsop, Dave Bamford and Gary Stewart (Craig Potton Publishing, 2012) 408 pp., $79.99. The days when glamour and romance were still attached to travel are well and truly over. Now economy travel by air is referred to colloquially as […]
Precarious Looking
Kathryn Mitchell Van der Velden: Otira, by Peter Vangioni and Dieuwertje Dekkers (Christchurch Art Gallery, 2011), 96 pp. $49.99. Serendipitously, shortly after receiving the review copy of the Christchurch Art Gallery’s Van der Velden Otira catalogue (authored by Peter Vangioni and Dieuwertje Dekkers), I made the trip from Christchurch through Otira to Greymouth on the […]
The Anthropocene Era
David Eggleton Kermadec, edited by Bronwyn Golder and Gregory O’Brien, (PEW Environment Group/Tauranga Art Gallery, 2011) , 176 pp., $79.99; River-Road: Journeys through Ecology, by David Cook, Wiremu Puke and Jony Valentine (Rim Books, 2011), 92 pp., $40; Old New World: Photographs by Mary Macpherson, (Lopdell House), 96 pp. $50; Ice Blink: An Antarctic Imaginary, […]
Brandishing a Paintbrush
Raewyn Alexander Before I Forget, by Jacqueline Fahey (Auckland University Press, 2012), 192 pp, $45 . Venturing into often extremely private territory with honesty and insight, this memoir’s a remarkable read. Fahey’s stunning cover is a painting that suggests the older artist looking back: her younger self’s presented in a little black dress with high […]
Victoriana
David Eggleton Early New Zealand Photography: Images and Essays, edited by Angela Wanhalla and Erika Wolf (Otago University Press, 2011), 208 pp., $50. Susan Sontag characterised photographs as ‘invitations to deduction, speculation and fantasy’, while Roland Barthes asserted that the photograph was ‘a transparent envelope’ — that is, a paradoxical object at once visible […]
Against Fear of the New
Nick Laird New Zealand by Design: a History of New Zealand Product Design, by Michael Smythe (Godwit, 2011), 511 pp., $65. ‘Design’ is a mercurial, not to say deceptive, term. Used as a verb to refer to a process, and used as a noun to the product of that process, it has become amongst […]
Objects Material and Dematerial
Andrew Paul Wood Lalique Vases, edited by Damian Skinner (David Bateman Auckland, 2011) 176 pp., $69.99; Affirmation Dungeon, by Dan Arps (Clouds/Michael Lett, Auckland 2011) 318 pp, $69.95. Lalique Vases, edited by freelance art historian Damian Skinner, is about a New Zealand-based private collection of glassware by the celebrated Art Nouveau and Art Deco […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- Next Page »