Blog Archives

Art about sadness, Dylan Horrocks

Out of the Woods: A Journey Through Depression and Anxiety Brent Williams (Korkut Öztekin illus) Educational Resources, $40.00, ISBN 9780473390068 American cartoonist Keiler Roberts, whose comics have eloquently documented her own struggles with mental illness, recently wondered on Facebook about…
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Posted in Art, Memoir, Non-fiction, Review

Connecting kindred tribes, David Eggleton

Black Marks on the White Page Witi Ihimaera and Tina Makereti (eds) Penguin Random House, $40.00, ISBN 9780143770299 Billed as a guidebook to the contemporary literature of Oceania, Black Marks on the White Page is not quite that; it’s too…
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Posted in Art, Literature, Māori, Non-fiction, Pacific, Short stories

A most “vigorous afterlife”, Roger Blackley

Gottfried Lindauer’s New Zealand: The  Māori Portraits Ngahiraka Mason and Zara Stanhope (eds) Auckland University Press and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, $75.00, ISBN 9781869408565 This extremely elegant book, with its unusual, tall-and-thin “hyper-portrait” format, brings the artist Gottfried…
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Posted in Art, Māori, Non-fiction, Review

Imaging war, Stella Ramage

Behind the Twisted Wire: New Zealand Artists in World War I Jennifer Haworth Wily Publications, $50.00, ISBN 9781927167212 Recently, I had the privilege of watching the magnificently restored WWI propaganda film, Battle of the Somme (1916). Shot by official cinematographers…
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Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Review, War

Christchurch circles and cliques, Helen Watson White

Bloomsbury South: The Arts in Christchurch 1933-1953 Peter Simpson Auckland University Press, $70.00, ISBN 9781869408480 When Christchurch poet and printer Denis Glover travelled to Britain in 1941 to serve in the Royal Navy, he left behind one literary circle and…
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Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Review

Rethinking the past, Melissa Laing

Re-inventing New Zealand: Essays on the Arts and the Media  Roger Horrocks Atuanui Press, $45.00, ISBN 9780992245382 As I opened a blank document to begin this review, a tweet popped up in my feed from Morgan Godfery: “Sure,” Godfery writes…
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Posted in Art, Essays, Media, Non-fiction, Review

Dazzling, dizzying cornucopias Stella Ramage

Marcus King: Painting New Zealand for the World Peter Alsop and Warren Feeney Potton & Burton, $80.00, ISBN 9781927213704 Vivid: The Paul Hartigan Story Don Abbott RF Books, $65.00, ISBN 9780473337117 Marcus King and Paul Hartigan belong to that interesting…
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Posted in Art, Biography, Non-fiction, Review

“A most entertaining little man”, Chris Szekely

Hocken: Prince of Collectors Donald Jackson Kerr Otago University Press, $60.00, ISBN 9781877578 663 Dry bread and milk for breakfast. Dry bread and milk for supper. Not much chop for a boy of eight at Woodhouse Grove in 1844, but…
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Posted in Art, Biography, Non-fiction, Review

Fizz with zip, Wystan Curnow

Zizz! The Life and Art of Len Lye In his own words with Roger Horrocks Awa Press, $30.00, ISBN 9781927249215 Back in 1965, aged 26, I walked into the Howard Wise Gallery in New York and saw the best kinetic…
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Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Review

Not just bits of cloth, Jennifer Shennan

New Zealand’s Historic Samplers – Our Stitched Stories Vivien Caughley David Bateman, $50.00 ISBN 9781869538668 Vivien Caughley’s opening definition of a sampler is “an embroidered cloth which records a stitched pattern, often the alphabet and numerals, sometimes pictures, and stitch…
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Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Review
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