arts and culture

A History of Historicisation

August 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

Caitlin Lynch

Filming the Colonial Past: The New Zealand wars on screen by Annabel Cooper (Otago University Press, 2018), 322 pp., $49.95

Over the past few years in Aotearoa New Zealand there has been increasing demand from high-school students, iwi representatives, academics and musicians alike for a more nuanced, meaningful acknowledgement of the colonial conflicts of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and their legacies. Annabel Cooper’s Filming the Colonial Past: The New Zealand wars on screen is part of the answer to that demand. Cooper’s book is not a war history; aside from a succinct, three-page overview of the New Zealand Wars in the introduction, the book’s focus begins in 1925, nearly a decade after their (debatably) final conflict. Instead, and equally as important, the book is a history of historicisation: of how the New Zealand Wars have been remembered, negotiated, re-enacted, represented, viewed, taught and mythologised through film and television over the last century – and by whom. [Read more…]

Impure First

July 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

Robyn Maree Pickens

Gretchen Albrecht: Between gesture and geometry by Luke Smythe (Massey University Press, 2019), 303pp., $80

Gretchen Albrecht: Between gesture and geometry has the heft and appearance of a monograph accompanying a major retrospective exhibition by an important senior artist. If such a retrospective at one of the country’s major public galleries is not in the planning stages, then this publication surely serves as a timely reminder of Albrecht’s significance as a New Zealand artist. [Read more…]

The Grit that Makes the Pearl

May 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

Tasha Haines

The Writing Life: Twelve New Zealand authors by Deborah Shepard (Massey University Press, 2018), 463 pp., $49.99

In her introduction to The Writing Life, Deborah Shepard highlights the determination and passion of the twelve writers she interviews and curates into this collection. Shepard has selected a diverse group covering many genres: from writing for children, to many approaches to the novel, poetry and non-fiction. The writers are Joy Cowley, Marilyn Duckworth, Tessa Duder, Chris Else, Patricia Grace, David Hill, Witi Ihimaera, Fiona Kidman, Owen Marshall, Vincent O’Sullivan, Philip Temple and Albert Wendt. [Read more…]

Rootful Cosmopolitans

February 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

Lucy Sussex

The Expatriate Myth: New Zealand writers and the colonial world by Helen Bones (Otago University Press, 2018), 248pp., $35

In New Zealand it is common to talk about ‘OE’: Overseas Experience. Living in what is termed the antipodes, far from the centres of finance, population and power, fosters an attitude where travel is a rite of passage for the young. For those working in the arts it has been presented as imperative: how else would the aspiring find an audience and sufficient remuneration to survive while pursuing their calling? The siren call of London, Paris etc. began with white settlement, and it has persisted ever since. [Read more…]

In Vivid Colour

February 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

Robyn Maree Pickens

Colours of a Life: The life and times of Douglas MacDiarmid by Anna Cahill (Mary Egan Publishing in association with MacDiarmid Arts Trust, 2018), 444 pp., $80

Before I settle in to a book I like to examine its paratextual material: features such as foreword, acknowledgments and endorsements. By examining the way in which a book is framed I get a sense of how its author, subject and producers would like the book to be received. Every book embodies an agenda, and I like to see how this intersects with my reading experience. With this in mind it is worth noting that the artist Douglas MacDiarmid – the subject of Colours of a Life – is Anna Cahill’s uncle. This familial investment is underscored by the publishing relationship between Mary Egan Publishing ‘in association with MacDiarmid Arts Trust’. In other words, the book is not an independent or disinterested production. It is undoubtedly a tribute to kin by kin. This bond between subject and author has the distinct advantage of providing Cahill exceptional closeness to her subject, and has resulted in a highly detailed, intimate and warm biography of MacDiarmid. After a brief glimpse of MacDiarmid as a struggling artist in an actual garret (!) in Paris, 1953, the book assumes a chronological trajectory from the artist’s birth in Taihape, 1922, to the recent present of his long-lived life in Paris, 2017. (At the time of writing this review MacDiarmid is approaching his 96th birthday.) [Read more…]