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Landfall Review Online

New Zealand books in review

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…]

Filed Under: art and photography, arts and culture

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…]

Filed Under: arts and culture, literature, reviews and essays

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…]

Filed Under: arts and culture, history, literature

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…]

Filed Under: arts and culture, biography

Engaging Photography

December 1, 2018 Leave a Comment

Jodie Dalgleish

Gavin Hipkins: The Domain (Victoria University Press, 2017), 240 pp., $70

The monograph Gavin Hipkins: The Domain, released in November 2017 to mark the opening of the Dowse Art Museum’s largest-ever survey exhibition of the same name, is a beautifully produced, super-illustrated tome. It begins with three ‘meaty’ essays, ends with a plethora of historic texts, and contains 147 pages of colour plates (over half the book) in between. Significantly, it provides an opportunity to more singularly study the richly proliferative, multi-threaded and motif-circling practice of a senior New Zealand artist working across still and moving image in both gallery and cinema contexts. However, the non-indexed, non-thematic (and non-chronological) ordering of its wedge of colour plates might hamper that study at times. [Read more…]

Filed Under: art and photography, arts and culture

Having a WORD With You

October 2, 2018 Leave a Comment

WORD Christchurch Festival, 29 August to 2 September 2018

Giovanni Tiso 

I used to be a writers’ festival sceptic. Aside from attending the odd book launch growing up, I never felt a great need to listen to my favourite writers present or discuss their work, let alone many writers at the same time. It struck me as an odd idea: surely this was something they all would be better suited to doing in writing, if they absolutely had to?  [Read more…]

Filed Under: arts and culture

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