Always song in the water

Always song in the water: an ode to Moana Oceania
by Gregory O’Brien

Always song in the water is an imaginative exploration of Aotearoa’s oceanic environment. This is the new, expanded edition of the now out-of-print 2019 book of the same title. The new exhibition and its accompanying book celebrates—in images, words and sound—our connectedness with the wider Pacific region, its peoples, flora, fauna and the expansive waters which both inspire and define us.

It is 11 years since the New Zealand Maritime Museum held the ground-breaking exhibition ‘Kermadec—Nine Artists in the South Pacific’, curated and co-ordinated by Gregory O’Brien, with Bronwen Golder of the Pew Environment Group. The new exhibition and this book Always song in the water returns to the themes, ongoing concerns and unresolved issues of the earlier project. In essence, the 2011 Kermadec voyage never ended. O’Brien and the other artists who voyaged to Rangitāhua Raoul Island on HMNZS Otago never really disembarked from the ship that took them north. They think of themselves as still out there, on the ocean, absorbing its energy, listening to its oceanic songs and confronting the environmental issues which have only increased in urgency over the ensuing decade.

Always song in the water— explores such topics as whale surveying, cultural connections across the Pacific, the need for ocean sanctuaries (such as the proposed Kermadec one) and the multi-layered history of Polynesian and European societies in Oceania. As well as including works and words by O’Brien and the other ‘Kermadec’ artists, this expanded edition features many new and commissioned works by leading artists including Chris Charteris, Shona Rapira Davies, Yuki Kihara, John Walsh and others. The book and the new exhibition celebrates Moana Oceania as a site of immense poetic and artistic potential. At the same time, it acknowledges that the region is facing issues of over-fishing, pollution and global warming. It returns to the originating theme of the need for ocean sanctuaries. ‘Always song in the water’ speaks of the need for better understanding, and a closer relationship with the ocean and everything it contains. It reminds us that the imagination and the arts have a crucial role to play in our evolving relationship with Moana Oceania.

Always song in the water – Art inspired by Moana Oceania, an exhibition at the New Zealand Maritime Museum Hui Te Ananui A Tangaroa, curated by Gregory O’Brien and Jaqui Knowles, is on from 24 August – 29 February 2024

Card-cover with flaps, section-sewn PUR glued | 296 pages  240mm x 175mm Portrait, numerous colour illustrations
ISBN 978-0-473-68102-9
Published by New Zealand Maritime Museum Hui Te Ananui a Tangaroa

RRP $40

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Quiet Chaos

Quiet Chaos
Tony Nyberg

A collection of images taken while travelling through Japan in 2017. Published by Back Space Books.

Uncannily intimate observation by the traveller photographer in Japan, where the noisome mysteries of old and new are transformed into the contemplative visual harmony of B&W and colour photographs. A little gem, a book as a loveletter to getting lost in Tokyo, Kyoto and Naoshima.








$40

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softback saddle-stiched | 56 pages
148 x 210 mm
2018 Back Space Books

Garden of Memories: Extending quilt making traditions from around the Pacific Rim
Giles Peterson with Shona Pitt, Sheena Tavairanga, Lisa Reihana, Vea Mafile’o, Reina Sutton, Lina Pavaha Marsh, and Ken Khun.

Garden of Memories, curated by Giles Peterson, brings together heirloom and contemporary Pacific quilts from Peterson’s collection and uses these precious objects as the starting point for exploring contemporary craft and object-making by extending this traditional form into creative interpretations and new works by artists from across Asia and the Pacific.

Six quilts from Aotearoa and the Pacific are at the centre of the exhibition and this complementing publication.  Peterson’s personal connection … Continue reading