Category Archives: History

The Weight of the Captain’s Wrist: Paintings from the Cook, Waitangi Wallpaper & related series
Peter Ireland with an introduction by Jane Stafford & Mark Williams and an essay by Gerald Barnett

The first monograph of the New Zealand painter Peter Ireland – this book surveys his practice, on the theme of Captain Cook’s voyages to the Pacific. Ireland’s exquisite, detailed and enigmatic “history painting” is beautifully reproduced in this 100pp., spot varnished, offset reproduction, to reflect the oil on paper originals. Coinciding with the 250th anniversary of the first sustained European contact with Aotearoa New Zealand, this book features … Continue reading →

Elizabeth Lissaman: New Zealand’s Pioneer Studio Potter 
Jane Vial and Steve Austin

With a foreword by Justine Olsen – Curator of Decorative Arts at Te Papa, and an afterword by Rick Rudd – potter and Director of the Quartz Museum.

Elizabeth Lissaman: New Zealand’s Pioneer Studio Potter traces the life and works of New Zealand’s pioneering woman studio potter. It is fully illustrated with over 100 images, especially photographed, of Lissaman’s pottery selected from private and public collections. Illustrations also include images of her designs and historical family photographs. The biography is meticulously researched and written by Jane … Continue reading →

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 →

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 →

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 →

PhotoForum at 40

PHOTOFORUM AT 40
Counterculture, Clusters, and Debate in New Zealand

Nina Seja

In this richly illustrated publication, art historian Nina Seja gives an illuminating account of the communities, relationships, and events that have shaped PhotoForum’s first forty years, and charts the development of photographic art in New Zealand during this time.

PhotoForum Inc. is a not-for-profit Society dedicated to the promotion of photography as a means of communication and expression. Acting as an intellectual and creative meeting place for New Zealand’s photographic community since its inception in 1973, PhotoForum has published, exhibited, and promoted an impressive list of New … Continue reading →

HOLLAND STREET

Sarah Caylor
Ann Shelton

Published on the occasion of the exhibition
Holland Street, by Sarah Caylor and Ann Shelton
Courtenay Place Park Light Boxes
Wellington, New Zealand
15 August – 2 December 2013

Taking as its starting point two nineteenth-century events – London’s cholera outbreak of 1854 and Wellington’s typhoid epidemic of 1890-2 – Holland Street recalls a world where disease was thought to travel through miasma (noxious air) and bacteria were believed to be as real as “Hydras, and Gorgons, and Chimeras Dire”. Holland Street utilises differing visual approaches to map critical sites related to these two … Continue reading →

River-Road, journeys through ecology

RIVER-ROAD
Journeys Through Ecology
David Cook – photographs
Wiremu Puke – text
Jonty Valentine – design

River/Road takes an intimate look at the environmental, cultural, historical and economic factors that shape the ecology of our immediate environment. The narrative explores regional ecology from a bicultural perspective.
The authors trace a journey, following the parallel arteries of the Waikato River and River Road. The emphasis is on being ‘readers’ of the landscape. The authors bring a number of distinct voices to the project

Jonty Valentine the graphic designer, provokes and navigates the reader through a multi-layered account of … Continue reading →

French place in the bay of islands

THE FRENCH PLACE IN THE BAY OF ISLANDS
Essays from Pompallier’s Printery

Edited by Kate Martin and Brad Mercer

The building, known today as Pompallier, is New Zealand’s sole surviving pioneer mission printery of
 any denomination. In 1841 printing presses and plant arrived from France at the Roman Catholic headquarters in Kororareka Russell. This impressive and elegant, two-storied French colonial building was completed in 1842 to house a print workshop and has been a landmark feature of the Bay of Islands ever since.

The seemingly disparate subjects presented in this book 
by authors from such a range … Continue reading →

A Man Walks Out of a Bar, Lucien Rizos

A MAN WALKS OUT OF A BAR…
Lucien Rizos: New Zealand Photographs 1979 –1982
Essays by Damian Skinner and Ian Wedde

‘These photographs come from a very specific time in New Zealand history’, says Rizos. ‘The New Zealand I lived through then may feel like a different planet to a younger generation now, people who did not live through the Muldoon era and the trauma of Rogernomics. But there are themes that bind the different periods together. Even though New Zealand may look very different now, I feel it is still fundamentally the same place that it was … Continue reading →