{"id":4068,"date":"2025-05-26T11:06:42","date_gmt":"2025-05-25T23:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/?p=4068"},"modified":"2026-04-05T11:20:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T23:20:44","slug":"subject-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/subject-failure","title":{"rendered":"Subject Failure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Subject Failure<\/strong>
Shaun Waugh
with essays by Emma Ng, Marcus Moore, and Matt Plummer
& Alice Tappenden.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Shaun Waugh is a New Zealand-based artist who lives and works in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. His work centres on the material culture of photographic history, critically
examining the complex relationship between images and the realities they aim to depict.
Waugh highlights how photography can deceive, reduce, and seduce, to question the authenticity of photographic representations.

Working primarily with the complexities of colour control in photographic printing processes, Waugh explores and expands the artistic and technical potentials of the medium.
Avoiding arbitrary definitions in favour of interdisciplinary tendencies, his practice exploits the tension between image and object-making \u2014 pitching his chromatically driven work into an uncertain terrain between photography, painting, and sculpture.
In this first monograph on Waugh\u2019s work, Subject Failure is constructed chromatically, arranging elements from a variety of projects spanning the last 15 years. The essence of photographic colour \u2014 red, green, blue, greyscale, yellow \u2014
become the building blocks of the book.

\u201cWhen a child wriggles or a leaf moves in the wind and the camera does not manage to still the blur, photographers call it \u2018subject failure.\u2019\u201d Waugh has co-opted this term as the title of this artist book to ask one of photography\u2019s deepest questions: Can we trust the medium to capture what we see, and what does this reveal about our relationship with reality? Not just a photographer, Waugh is a historian, philosopher, and trickster \u2014 inviting viewers to ponder the past, present, and future of the technologies we use to reproduce our world.

Richly illustrated with over 80 images arranged to emphasise Waugh\u2019s reflexive use of colour, Subject Failure features new essays by Emma Ng, Marcus Moore, and Matt Plummer & Alice Tappenden, who each offer insights into Waugh\u2019s
engaging conceptual practice.<\/p>\n\n\n

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May 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ISBN: 978-1-99-116525-1<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Designed by Anna Brown
Hard cover with exposed quarter cloth spine | 144 pages
325 x 240 x 14mm | colour illustrations
RRP $60.00<\/p>\n\n\n

Add to cart<\/a>\t\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For all wholesale orders and requests info@rimbooks.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

His work centres on the material culture of photographic history, critically examining the complex relationship between images and the realities they aim to depict. Waugh highlights how photography can deceive, reduce, and seduce, to question the authenticity of photographic representations. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4069,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,14,77,31,11],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-4068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-contemporary-art","category-design","category-installation-art","category-new-zealand-art","category-photography","tag-publication-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4068"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4412,"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4068\/revisions\/4412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}