Aotearoa Books at the 18th Biennale of Lyon
To accompany the significant presence of artists from Aotearoa New Zealand in the 18th Lyon Biennale, OCAA has brought together a collection of books and publications that offer further insight into their practices, ideas and wider contexts.
The collection provides audiences, curators, writers and other arts professionals with an opportunity to encounter the artists’ work beyond the exhibition itself, and to explore the histories, conversations and artistic practices that inform it. Many of these publications are not normally available in Europe and, for the duration of the Biennale, will be available through the Biennale bookshop in Lyon. The books can also be purchased in Aotearoa New Zealand, with details provided below.
Te Hei Tiki:An Enduring Treasure in a Cultural Continuum
Of all Māori personal adornments, the human figure pendants known as hei tiki are the most famous, highly prized and culturally iconic. This book celebrates the long history of hei tiki and the enduring cultural potency of these taonga. Te Hei Tiki showcases stunning photographs of a large selection of hei tiki, most from the taonga Māori collections of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and provides fascinating details of the history and culture behind them.
Read more and purchase here
Author: Dougal Austin
Published by Te Papa Press, 2019
228 pages, hardback
ISBN: 978-0-9951031-4-6
Price: $65
Out of the Blue Essays on Artists from Aotearoa New Zealand 1985-2021
In a collection spanning her career, highly regarded art historian and curator Christina Barton reminds readers of the art writer’s essential quandary: how to put the visual, material, sensory and temporal into words. ‘The project of art writing is at once argumentative and invested,’ she writes, ‘self-doubting and ambitious, flawed yet with its own beauty (at its best). ’Published in partnership with Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery,Out of the Blue gathers 37 essays devoted to artists from Aotearoa New Zealand. These are artists whom Barton – entering the art-writing fray in the1980s, a time of widespread intellectual upheaval – has thought about, worked with and written for, from her first piece on artist and filmmaker Claudia Pond Eyley, published in 1985, to a foreword written in 2021 about sculptor Paul Cullen. They form a small but telling subset of her work, and provide readings that not only anatomise the nature of each artist’s work but also demonstrate the ideas that have been in play as art has unfolded in Aotearoa.
Read more and purchase here
Author: Christina Barton
Published by: Te Herenga Waka University Press in partnership with Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery
400 pages, softback
ISBN: 9781776922956
Price: $50
Fiona Clark Living with AIDS 1988
The suite of threebooks are a facsimile of seminal photo albums produced by Fiona Clark in 1988.They were first exhibited at the Dowse Art Museum and are now in the collectionof Te Papa Tongarewa. The publication includes an essay by David Herkt (“Plague Years”), and a conversation between the artist and Ron Brownson.
Read more and purchase here
Published by Michael Lett, 2018
with assistance from Creative New Zealand
Edition of 500
Hardcover: three books + one slipcase
ISBN: 978-0-9582647-2-3
Price: $85
Whenua
The relationship between tākata and whenua—people and land—is a long thread that weaves through the art history of Aotearoa New Zealand. This major new book explores themes of identity and belonging, colonisation, land use and migration through more than 170 paintings, sculptures, weaving, carving, ceramics, photography and moving image artworks. Wide-ranging and engaging texts, artist interviews and perspectives provide insight into the many ways that whenua is fundamental to the visual language and identity of the arts.
Read more and purchase here
Editors: Chloe Cull, Felicity Milburn, MelanieOliver
Publisher: Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū
392 pages, hardback
ISBN: 9781877375842
Price $70
.jpeg)
Hīkoi: Forty Years of Māori Protest
What have Māori been protesting about? What has been achieved? This book provides an overview of the contemporary Māori protest movement, a summary of the rationale behind the actions, and a wonderful collection of photographs of the action – the protests, the marches and the work behind the scenes. And it provides a glimpse of the fruits of that protest – the Waitangi Tribunal and the opportunity to prepare, present and negotiate Treaty settlements; Māori language made an official language; Māori-medium education; Māori health providers; iwi radio and, in 2004, Māori television.
Read more and purchase here
Author: Aroha Harris
Published by Huia Press, 2004
164 pages, softback
ISBN: 9781869691011
Price $45
This initiative has been made possible with the support of the New Zealand Cultural Diplomacy International Programme, and through the generous assistance of Te Papa Press, Huia Publishers, Christchurch Art Gallery, Lett Thomas, Te Herenga Waka University Press, Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery, Perimeter Editions, Monash University and others.