Scott Hamilton Re-inventing New Zealand: Essays on the arts and media by Roger Horrocks (Atuanui Books, 2016), 444 pp, $45 Re-inventing New Zealand is a big, rich, provocative book. Roger Horrocks has collected 21 of his essays, reviews and talks, and given each a short introduction. Horrocks is a veteran and versatile part of New Zealand […]
Otara Millionaires Club and the Flying Nun Sound
James Dignan How Bizarre: Pauly Fuemana and the song that stormed the world by Simon Grigg (Awa Press, 2015), 255 pp., $38; In Love with These Times: My life with Flying Nun Records by Roger Shepherd (Harper Collins, 2016), 295 pp., $36.99 Two fine new books from insiders at the heart of two important chapters in the […]
Judge Time
Denis Harold Shelf Life: Reviews, replies and reminiscences by C.K. Stead (Auckland University Press, 2016), 452 pp., $45 C.K. Stead’s latest collection of ruminations, Shelf Life, is illuminating about what has driven and drives this venerable, multi-award-winning author. He states in an interview that what is important to him is observation: ‘It’s the escape – […]
Kinetic Experience
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 […]
Connecting Places, Ancestors, Gods with the Present
Edmund Bohan The Lives of Colonial Objects, edited by Annabel Cooper, Lachy Paterson and Angela Wanhalla (Otago University Press, 2015), 368 pp., $50 The inspiration for this beautifully produced and sumptuously illustrated essay collection, described by its three editors as one ‘in which objects serve as pathways into New Zealand’s colonial history’, comes originally from […]
Hornby, Dinky, Tonka and Torro
Nicholas Reid Hello Girls and Boys! A New Zealand Toy Story, by David Veart (Auckland University Press, 2014), 314 pp., $65 When I was a kid I lived next door to a boy who loved trolleys. He did not have just one homemade trolley, but a small fleet of them. Because he lived on a […]
Ice Cream Dreams
Max Oettli F4: In the Interval by Susan Jowsey, Marcus Williams, Jesse Williams & Mercy Williams (Rim Books, 2014), 96 pp., $25; An Urban Quest for Chlorophyll by Jennifer Gilliam & Dieneke Jansen (Rim Books, 2013), 80 pp., $30 Seldom have I received a parcel with more disparate contents than that containing the two books […]
The Beaut, the Orsum, the Fugly and the Blah
David Eggleton Shigeru Ban: Cardboard Cathedral by Andrew Barrie, photographs by Bridgit Anderson and Stephen Goodenough (Auckland University Press, 2014), 252 pp., $59.99; Vertical Living: The architectural centre and the remaking of Wellington by Julia Gately and Paul Walker (Auckland University Press, 2014), 232 pp., $59.99; Bungalow: From heritage to contemporary edited by Nicole Stock, […]
Small Worlds
Jonathan W. Marshall Jim Allen: The skin of years, by Philip Dadson & Tony Green with Jim Allen; forewords by Wystan Curnow & Blair French (Clouds and Michael Lett, 2014), 340 pp., $49.95 Notwithstanding illustrious New Zealand contemporaries such as Colin McCahon, Wystan Curnow convincingly argues that ‘Jim Allen is … our first contemporary artist’ […]
The Tovey Generation and After
Damian Skinner Fred Graham: Creator of forms – Te Tohunga Auaha, by Maria de Jong and others, (Huia Publishers, 2014), 200 pp., $49.99 Thanks to books like Fred Graham: Creator of forms, we are beginning to know so much more about the kaumātua of contemporary Māori art. A generation of artists who emerged in the […]
Labour Intensive
Peter Vangioni The Holloway Press, 1994–2013: A checklist of publications, edited by Francis McWhannell (Holloway Press, Auckland, 2014). Published on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Dark Arts: Twenty years of the Holloway Press’, Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland (4 July to 31 August 2014); 16 pp., $30 2014 saw the unfortunate sudden demise of New Zealand’s […]
Fragments from Ritual Recitations
William Direen The Gold Leaves (being an account and translation from the Ancient Greek of the so-called ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets), by Edward Jenner (Atuanui Press, 2014), 162 pp., $35 Jenner begins by situating himself among the group that sees these gold leaves as signs of ‘experimental speculations’ (a term used by the late Walter Burkert), […]
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