Category Archives: History

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 →

The Passing world, the passage of life

THE PASSING WORLD
THE PASSAGE OF LIFE: John Hovell and the Art of Kowhaiwhai
Damian Skinner


Winner Illustrated Non Fiction – NZ Post Book Award 2011

Kōwhaiwhai, argues John Hovell, is about process, a shorthand summary of the passage of life, and a space within the whare whakairo (decorated meeting house) for the Māori artist to express his wry and droll view of human nature. It is, for coastal Ngāti Porou, an expression of an intimate relationship with the coastal environment and its resources, a lexicon of patterns created in the nineteenth century from close observation of … Continue reading →

Bold Centuries, Haruhiko Sameshima

BOLD CENTURIES
PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY ALBUM
Haruhiko Sameshima

With essays by: Kyra Macfarlane, Ingrid Horrocks, John Wilson, Tim Corbalis, Aaron Lister, Damian Skinner, Fiona Amundsen and Claudia Bell

Bold Centuries is an artist’s book by Haruhiko Sameshima – artist/photographer based in Auckland. This collage-like book is made-up of his original photographs together with found historical images and texts, both commissioned and found in history books and the Internet. It serves as an engaging and poetic introduction to Sameshima’s longstanding exploration of photography as myth – a skewed tour guide and time machine, taking the reader on a … Continue reading →