Author Archives: Rim Books

DESIGN GENERATION: How Peter Haythornthwaite shaped New Zealand’s design-led enterprise
Michael Smythe
With an introduction and interview by Michael Barrett

This book tells the story of one of New Zealand’s most influential industrial designers. Spanning five decades, Design Generation documents Haythornthwaite’s career through childhood influences, education in Auckland and Illinois, work experience in California and New York, and teaching and consultant practice back in New Zealand. It chronicles his many roles as a design leader: as innovator of design, employer in private practices and his notable contribution to the wider field of design.  Vivid case studies of Haythornthwaite’s work illustrate … Continue reading →

CARBON EMPIRE
Allan McDonald

Winner New Zealand Photobook of the year award 2017.

Carbon Empire works in the space between art and documentary photography.

It combines a short series of staged photographs of a ‘man in the street’ made in 1997 with images of closed petrol stations photographed between 2003 and 2017.

Carbon Empire is a juxtaposition of these two series of photographs and a single image, made by chance in 2002.

The closed petrol stations reflect the effects of petroleum law changes across New Zealand. In 1988, the petroleum sector became deregulated, with the large international wholesalers able … Continue reading →

DYNAMO HUM

Denys Watkins
Foreword by Matt Blomeley
Essays by Anna Miles and Francis McWhannell
Conversation with Allan Smith and Denys Watkins

Published by Rim Books in association with Bath Street Arts TrustDesign by Index – Jonty Valentine

DYNAMO HUM is an artist book by Denys Watkins, featuring his paintings from 2004 to 2016.

Denys is a highly respected New Zealand contemporary artist. A long serving teacher of thirty-one years at Elam School of Fine Arts that, in 2011, he left to pursue full-time studio art practice.

Here he turns his multifaceted interests to creating a … Continue reading →

WHENUA FONUA ‘ENUA

Benjamin Work with photographs by Brendan Kitto
Interview with Benjamin Work by Giles Peterson

Published by Rim Books in association with Uxbridge Art & Culture.

Early Polynesian navigators gave names to the places they encountered as a reminder of the spiritual threshold between creation and reality. This was because they regarded the ideas of geographic and spiritual origin as mutually similar. Whenua Fonua ‘Enua explores the significance of name and place and the importance of these indicators that connect us to our past and highlight the characteristics of our present. Through new paintings and this companion publication in … Continue reading →

BARRY BRICKELL READER: SELECTED ‘WRERTINGS’, MEDITATIONS, OUTBURSTS, DECREES AND DIVERSIONS

Edited by Gregory O’Brien
Photographs by Haruhiko Sameshima
Afterword by David Craig

Published by Steele Roberts Aotearoa in association with Rim Books.

Rim Books is absolutely ecstatic to be associated with publishing this book of ‘wrertings’ by the maverick New Zealand artist Barry Brickell.

Known for his decades of pottery making and mountain railway in Coromandel, he has dedicated his life to ceaseless art-making of all kinds. Less known but perhaps more revealing of his inner workings, are his passions for writing and reading, and his life long … Continue reading →

TOM HUTCHINS: SEEN IN CHINA 1956
Edited by John B. Turner. Chinese translation by Han Niu.

Published by Turner PhotoBooks, Auckland/Beijing in collaboration with PhotoForum Inc, Auckland, NZ, 2016 as Photoforum issue 86.

English and Chinese text

This bi-lingual book was produced to coincide with the debut exhibition of photographs made in China 60 years ago by the pioneering New Zealand photojournalist and photographic educator, Tom Hutchins (1921-2007), presented at the 2016 Pingyao International Photography Festival.

‘On the platform there are many people waiting to cross the other way, waiting for the train back to Hong Kong. . . … Continue reading →

Stomp book cover

STOMP
Jon Carapiet

STOMP explores themes of photographic portraiture and ‘the gaze’ in the context of destruction, questioning how we connect and identify with the other.

The images were made in Europe, India and Egypt since 2014 and began as a personal response to the destruction in Bamiyan and Timbuktu, Palmyra and Aleppo. Such recent manifestations of fascism have 20th Century antecedents in the Holocaust and Armenian genocide, but trace even further back in human consciousness. There is a long history of attempting to erase people from memory.

Stomp seeks to reach beyond a sense of despair and … Continue reading →

BRAINWASH-INGTON DC: A 1982 PHOTOGRAPHIC ‘ON THE ROAD’
Stuart Page


It features photographs Page took on a 6 month journey around USA that he made soon after his graduation from Ilam School of Fine Arts, where Shustak taught. It was an ambitious undertaking, funded by the NZ government arts council, and a rare opportunity for him to take his learning from the school into practice on the streets of where the art came from. Page says, in his introduction to the original exhibition of the resulting photographs in 1984:

“The most exciting and relative communication seemed … Continue reading →

AMERICAN LANDSCAPE: SHUSTAK USA 1960–1971

This publication showcases photographs made by Larence Shustak before he left USA in 1973 to establish the photography department at the School of Fine Arts in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Shustak was part of an early ferment on the East Coast of the emerging awareness of photography as an independent tool of art, self-expression and social engagement, existing outside of the mainstream picture magazines and commercial studios. American Landscape samples Shustak’s early experiments, commissions and personal projects that reflect an evolving sense of a time in transition, seen through the artist’s eyes. … Continue reading →

BETWEEN THE SILENCE AND THE FLAME
Allan McDonald

“The Silent Generation is defined by people born between 1925 and 1945, who had come to maturity as I was growing up. Raised under the dictum of being seen but not heard, and affected by war and economic depression, they have been described as focused on financial security and more politically compliant than other generations. Putting aside the problematics of generational stereotyping, by the time I reached the age of 18 the silence was not so loud and multiple voices of diversity and dissent were becoming more audible. These … Continue reading →