Reading about Contemporary Art

Michael Parekowhai

The first edition of this publication was released mid-July 2007.

Michael Parekowhai
Edited by Michael Lett and Ryan Moore
Text by Justin Paton
ISBN 978-0-9582831-0-6

A limited edition of 100 copies is accompanied by a new photographic edition
by Michael Parekowhai Mare Tranquillitatis: Sea of Tranquillity  (2007).

Pre-order limited artists photographic edition NZ$500.00 (inc GST) + freight

Contact: Michael Lett at michael@michaellett.com

Speculation

Which New Zealand artist now or in the future could be sent to the Venice Biennale and exhibit in
the New Zealand pavilion? Speculation is a powerful thing. Ernest Rutherford, fellow New Zealander
and the father of the nuclear age, speculated on the existence of the neutron in 1920. This book is
based on the speculation of eight New Zealand-based curators. They each nominated a list of artists,
and these are the results, the artists in turn presenting us with pages of work.

Since 2001, New Zealand has had a presence at the Venice Biennale. It began with ‘Bi-polar’,
featuring the work of Jacqueline Fraser and Peter Robinson. 2003 saw Michael Stevenson's
‘This is the Trekka’ and 2005, et al's ‘the fundamental practice’. Government funding for New Zealand
at Venice is presently under review and its future is uncertain. Rather than there be no project from
New Zealand at the 52nd Venice Biennale, we decided to act expediently, producing a book rather
than an exhibition. Packaged in tote bags designed by Little Brother, Workshop Denim and Native Agent,
the book was handed out at the Vernissage at key points of the Giardini.

The artists are: Andrew Barber, Andrew McLeod, Ani O'Neill, Bill Culbert, Bill Hammond, Billy Apple,
Dane Mitchell, Daniel Malone, Eve Armstrong, Fiona Amundsen, Francis Upritchard, Jae Hoon Lee,
Jim Speers, John Reynolds, Judy Darragh, Judy Millar, Julian Dashper, Maddie Leach, Michael Parekowhai,
Mladen Bizumic, Peter Robinson, Rohan Wealleans, Ronnie van Hout, Saskia Leek, Sean Kerr,
Simon Denny, Sriwhana Spong, Stella Brennan, Yuk King Tan, Yvonne Todd.

Edited by Brian Butler Texts by Christina Barton, Emma Bugden, Brian Butler, Natasha Conland,
Heather Galbraith, Danae Mossman, Justin Paton, Mercedes Vicente.

Published by NZ Venice Project and JRP-Ringier
ISBN: 978-3-905770-75-9
Softcover, 170 x 240 mm 224 pages
English

The book is available in New Zealand from 23 July, distributed via Clouds and for sale at ARTSPACE.

www.artspace.org.nz

Adam Art Gallery publications

Ordered at www.vuw.ac.nz/adamartgal/

Four Times Painting

Published 2007, exhibition catalogue, Christina Barton: exhibition curator.

Contributors: Blair French, Natasha Conland, Roger Horrocks, Jan Bryant

Archiving Fever

Published 2006, exhibition curator and essayist: Emily Cormack

Contemporary Art Publications

et al.

Publications listed from Parson Bookshop, Auckland New Zealand

et al. arguments for immortality       

published in conjunction with the exhibition at Govett-Brewster Gallery ‘abnormal mass delusions’ 2003.

Edited by Gregory Burke & Jim Barr & Mary Barr.

Also with essay by Gwynneth Porter, Hanna Scott, Tessa Laird and Ewen McDonald.

et al. the fundamental practice   

Venice Biennale 2005 catalogue

et al. the fundamental practice      

et al. Audio release: the fundamental practice 51st Venice Biennale 2005  

et al. the second of the ordinary practices    

10 June-22 July 2006 at the IMA in Brisbane.

With an essay ‘et al.’s neo-brutalist playground’ by Robert Leonard.

Venice Document et al. the fundamental practice  

Book + Audio CD

With text by Ewen McDonald, Greg Burke and Natasha Conland.

Thanks to:

Helen Parsons, Bookseller,NZ, Maori & Pacific Bookbuyer, Parsons Bookshop in Auckland
books@parsons.co.nz

Aberhart

Greg O'Brien and Justin Paton

(credit for following notes from www.mcnamara.co.nz)

Laurence Aberhart has come to occupy a singular position not only within the world of New Zealand 
photography, but also within the wider visual arts culture. His images—like those of Eugene Atget
and Walker Evans, two presiding spirits in the Russell darkroom—gain resonance with each
passing year. GREGORY O'BRIEN 

A great photogrgaph is like an underground tunnel, linking histories that seemed to be separate.
Aberhart's extraordinary achievement has been to create photographs that carry the intimacy and
urgency we associate with certain scenes from our own family albums. In the last two decades, he
has widened the focus of his art without diminishing its intensity, moving from the rites and intimacies
of his immediate family out into those of the wider culture—an album encompassing, as he put it in an
eight-word manifesto from 1985, ‘My family, my country, my head, my heart.' JUSTIN PATON

LAURENCE ABERHART has been at the forefront of New Zealand photography since the late 1970s, and
is recognised as a major international figure. Like the paintings of Colin McCahon—an artist with whom
Aberhart is frequently paired—his photographs are a sustained meditation on time, place and cultural
history. They are also virtuoso pieces of photographic craft.

This book is a landmark in New Zealand art publishing. In a definitive overview of Laurence Aberhart's
work to date, 235 full-page reproductions of iconic photographs of churches, marae, cemeteries, Masonic
Lodges and other subjects are accompanied by illuminating essays by leading New Zealand art writers
Gregory O'Brien and Justin Paton. O'Brien pursues the motif of the horizon through Aberhart's work,
considering the many journeys that his career encompasses and the shelters and structures seen
along the way, while Paton focuses on the human presences that quietly animate Aberhart's
extraordinary body of work.

Publication date: 12 May 2007

Auckland Art Gallery

Reading Room: Journal of Art and Culture

ISSUE 2
Transcendental Pop

Issue 2 of Reading Room explores a paradox within contemporary art and culture’s absorption of
Pop. While artists continue to utilise Pop’s method, ‘Transcendental Pop’ identifies a current shift
in the infamous fascination with the everyday. Arguably, it is Warhol’s defence of surface, flatness
and blankness, that has been absorbed and referenced by subsequent generations of artists.
These characteristic qualities have become embedded in art’s relationship to the everyday - the ‘real’.
In part, this narrow absorption of Pop’s surface has allowed a paradox to occur when artists reinvest
surface with ‘depth’, the unknown and unquantifiable. We invite an exploration of this apparent contradiction,
something which has the potential to shift the art / life nexus as we know it.

Rather than re-examining the effect of historic Pop, this issue encourages writers to look at the reception
and dilution of Warhol’s own position. Implicit in the topic is ‘the legitimacy’, to use Jeff Wall’s word, of
using art to ‘put one’s finger on what makes society tick’. Relevant too, is the ‘second-hand’ reception of
Warhol’s America outside centres of global capital (as in the case of Takashi Murakami); new uses of the
‘enduring moment’ or choreographed ‘now’ in Warhol’s films (as in the work of Phil Collins); and the
constructed or recycled material world (Thomas Demand or Rachel Harrison). There is scope here to
consider key Warholian devices, but from perspectives not possible for Warhol, to consider artistic
positions beyond cynicism or belief.

Expressions of interest or short abstracts relating to this topic are sought by 15 June 2007.

Reading Room is a refereed journal of art and culture published annually by the E.H. McCormick
Research Library at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. The journal publishes essays of around 5000
words, artists’ projects, and shorter articles of around 1000 words for its archive section. Proposals
outside the topic area will also be considered.

The editors of Reading Room are Christina Barton, Natasha Conland and Wystan Curnow.

Catherine Hammond
Managing Editor, Reading Room
PO Box 5449
Auckland, New Zealand.
Tel +0064 9 307 7714
Fax +0064 9 302 1096
Email catherine.hammond@aucklandcity.govt.nz
Website www.aucklandartgallery.govt.nz/research/journal

Published in 2007 are two catalogues from ARTSPACE, Auckland, New Zealand

New Artists Show 2003
Text by Tobias Berger. Designed by Warren Olds.

New Artists Show 2004
Texts by Tessa Giblin, Nick Austin, Daniel du Bern, Tim Coster,
Averil Foon, Mark Harvey, Daniel Malone, Kate Montgomery,
Tahi Moore, Nick Spratt. Designed by Warren Olds.

Publications available for sale at the ARTSPACE office

ARTSPACE
Level 1, 300 Karangahape Road, Newton
PO Box 68418, Newton, Auckland, 1145 New Zealand
phone +64 9 3034965  fax +64 9 3661842
artspace@artspace.org.nz
http://www.artspace.org.nz

How to Look at a Painting

Justin Paton

The layperson’s guide to art has been described by noted photographer Marti Friedlander as
‘a masterpiece that will set your imagination alight’.

How to Look at a Painting by art curator Justin Paton was published by Awa Press in early December 2005.
It is the seventh in the Wellington publisher’s popular Ginger Series, in which New Zealanders write about
their lifetime passions.

The book takes readers on an enthralling journey through the world of painting, from the 16th century
works of Italy’s Caravaggio to modern New Zealand artists such as Rita Angus, Colin McCahon and
Bill Hammond.

Author Justin Paton, currently curator at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, has gained a reputation for
having a rare ability to demystify art and communicate its ideas to a wider public.

Bill Manhire, director of the International Institute of Modern Letters in Wellington, describes Paton
as perfect company for anyone interested in learning more about art. ‘Wonderfully intelligent and
well-informed, he makes baffling stuff accessible, and shows us how great paintings - big and small - can
make the familiar world astonishing and new.’

And leading artist Michael Smither has praised the book for its absorbing insights. ‘Painting is revealed
as food for the soul, a harbour of memories that sustain us, a connection with deep realities - and a
source of satisfaction and fun for both painter and viewer.’

The Ginger Series began last year with Spiro Zavos’s How to Watch a Game of Rugby and also includes
rock journalist Nick Bollinger on How to Listen to Pop Music, and astronomer Richard Hall on How to Gaze
at the Southern Stars.

For more information on Awa Press, a leading New Zealand publisher of contemporary non-fiction, visit www.awapress.com

Parsons Bookshop in Wellesley Street, Auckland, New Zealand lists these titles as new publications
on New Zealand art.

New New Zealand Art
 
Nerli: An Italian Painter in the South Pacific 

By Michael Dunn   
154 pages. 41 full colour plates with black & white and colour reproductions. First major book on the
Italian painter Girolamo Pieri Nerli. His life and paintings including chronology and bibliography. 
 
Stella Brennan 0------10

Essays by Robert Leonard and Sean Cubitt.
Full colour plates of Brennan's work 1988-2005 and exhibition biography.
 
Derek Henderson: The Terrible Boredom of Paradise HB $79.95
Essays and interviews by Hanna Scott and Magda Keaney.
NZ photographer. Full page colour photographs of NZ landscape. Luscious large format.
 
Sam Durant: Entropy in Reverse
Project curator - Gregory Burke.
L.A. based artist in residence at Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth.
Exhibition 26 July - 20 September 2003. Recent release.
 
Lucinda Birch: You are Here

Wairarapa photographer Birch, Artist in Residence at The Arts Centre of Christchurch
responds to her residence through stories and hand painted photographs.
 
Des Helmore: Random Encounters

Anna Bibby Gallery.Essays by Richard Woolfe, Dick Frizzell and Anna Bibby.

Ralph Hotere
 
Hotere's Lithographs: Empty of Shadows and Making a Shadow
Full-colour images of every lithograph produced by Hotere since 1984. Essays by Jillian Cassidy,
Peter Vangioni and Marion Maguire.
Show at Christchurch Art Gallery from July 2005. Catalogue due end July.
 
Ralph Hotere - Figurative Works, Carnival, Song Cycle and the Woman Series

By Kriselle Baker
100 pages. 120 colour reproductions in black & white and colour. Line drawings and paintings of
women, produced 1959-1990s. Book accompanies an exhibition at Dunedin Public Art Gallery-  
Ralph Hotere - Black Light $59.95
NZ Touring show of 2000. Major works. Still available.

 
Contemporary New Zealand Art 4   
By Elizabeth Caughey and John Gow
Fourth and final book in the Contemporary NZ Art Series.
Artists featured: Don Binney, Denis O'Connor, Ani O'Neill, Ronnie van Hout, Billy Apple, Robert Jahnke,
Para Matchitt amongst other high profile artists.
Due November 05.
Contemporary NZ Art 1,2,3 still available.  
et al. the fundamental  practice
NZ's presentation at the 51st Venice Biennale, 2005.
136 pages, 40 illustrations. Essays by Gregory Burke, Natasha Conland, Chris Kraus,
Mark Kremer, Jim Barr and Mary Barr.
 
Christopher Braddock - Sanitate

Essay by Natasha Conland, Project manager Blair Jackson. Big wall installation at
Dunedin Public Art Gallery June-Sept 2004.
 
Helen Schamroth - Reflective Perspective
Curated by Dr. Carole Shepheard.
Survey and new work 1985-2005, at NorthArt Community Arts Centre 31 March-17 April 2005.
 
Darryn George - Maui Ki Mohi
Essay by Gregory O'Brien.
March - April 2005 at FHE Gallery.
 
Darryn George - Tipuna

Essay by Jonathan Mane-Wheoki.
 
MGM- McCahon Gimblett Motherwell
Essay- Four Notes by Wystan Curnow. Brochure. Exhibition at Gow Langsford July 05.
 
05 Archibald Prize
Australian portraiture art award. Includes NZer Martin Ball. Art Gallery of
New South Wales 2005 Catalogue.
 
 
Michael Lett Yearbook 1/04/2004-1/04/2005
Artists included Steve Carr, Jan van der Ploeg, Anne-Marie May, Lauren Winstone,
Matt Ellwood, Hany Armanious, Michael Parekowhai, Chris Heaphy, Peter Madden,
Ava Seymour, Stephen Birch, Serephine Pick, Billy Apple and Joanna Langsford.
 
IS/NZ - Uber Malerei/ On Painting

Foreword by Leonhard Emmerling and interview by Susanne Kaeppele.
Exhibition catalogue Kunstverein Lundwigsburg. Artists included Stephen Bambury
and Judy Millar from NZ, and Tumi Magnusson and Ingolfur Arnarsson from Iceland.
 
Bill Luff - Watercolourist
Realist watercolours of Papua New Guinea, Singapore and Auckland area landscapes.
 
The Works of Royce McGlashen

2006 mini-standup calendar in CD-Format.
 
Bruno Stevens Israel Palestine Iraq - What you don't see on T.V.
Videography by Daniel Mayo-Turner. 2 disc DVD.
 
Asia- Pacific Triennial of contemporary art 2006

Held at the Queensland Art Gallery. NZ artists include Michael Parekowhai, John Pule,
Michael Stevenson, and Sima Urale. Promotional brochure.
 
Art and Australian Quarterly Journal

Vol.42 (4) Winter 2005. Includes Ricky Swallow at Venice and Daniel von Sturmer.

Gus Fisher publications

Since its opening in 2001, The Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand, has
produced many excellent publications and catalogues along with its exhibitions. 
Below is a list of what they currently have available. (Nov 2004)  These catalogues
contain well researched and informative essays by a wide array of art history scholars. 

Gus Fisher Gallery Publications and Exhibition Catalogues:

Publications:

Walters en Abyme

Book by Dr Francis Pound

Walters en Abyme illuminates our understanding of one of New Zealand’s most important artists. 
Gordon Walters (1919-1995) is best known for his paintings of the koru motif, that at once
abstracted yet nationalist icon.  Walters en Abyme is a study of a significant, if little-known
aspect of his oeuvre, the composition en abyme, or image within an image, which Walters
first observed in the 1950s, and continued to explore for forty years.  Pound lucidly explores
the en abyme as compositional device of geometric abstraction and as a marker of infinity
through its repetition.  Through his thoughtful and imaginative contemplation, en abyme is
likened to the abyss of interiority experienced in the condition of schizophrenia. 
The exhibition that this publication accompanied ran from 12 June - 31 July 2004.

Vuletic and His Circle

Extended essays by Edward Hanfling and Alan Wright.

The exhibition examined the unique role and influence of art dealer Petar Vuletic and the
resulting works of those artists in his stable, including Milan Mrkusich, Gordon Walters,
Richard Killeen, Ian Scott, Geoff Thornley and others.  Vuletic and his Circle was curated by
Edward Hanfling and Alan Wright and exhibited from 10 May - 28 July 2003. 

Exhibition Catalogues:

Undertow by Susan Norrie

Essay by Juliana Engberg

Undertow is simultaneously an overwhelming and deeply meditative video installation,
one of the most ambitious that Susan Norrie has created, and the culmination of several
years of experimentation and development in her art practice. Undertow portrays the world
in a state of both beauty and terror, shuddering with natural and unnatural events which
verge on the catastrophic. The viewer is immersed in images of ominous tempests, delicate
spring blossoms, bubbling mud pools, swirling clouds of dust, and scientific experiments which
manifestly cannot make sense of these phenomena. 
Undertow ran from 29 September - 13 November 2004.

Polar Projects by Phil Dadson

Essay by Andrew Clifford

Antarctica's wide white landscape is revealed as an extraordinary soundscape in this project
by Philip Dadson. Winner of a recent New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate Award for his
work as a sound artist, Dadson is presenting works derived from his 2003 trip to the Dry
Valleys region of Antarctica.  Polar Projects ran from 29 September - 13 November 2004.

Garden City

Essay by Allan Smith

Garden City was a solo exhibition by photographer Lisa Crowley, exploring the idea of sanctuary
as a physical space.  The show included photographs and videos made by the artist on her
numerous trips to Egypt.  Garden City ran from 30 January - 12 March 2004. 

Elsewhere

Essay by Nicholas Alfrey, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art History at the
University of Nottingham

Elsewhere was a solo exhibition by Caroline Rothwell including the site specific works created
for the Gus Fisher Gallery, as well as work created as part of her Universitas 21 residence
at the University of Nottingham.  Elsewhere ran from 28 October - 17 December 2003.

Screen Life

Essay by Stuart Koop and Max Delany

Screen Life presented 12 videos from Australia ranging over 30 years, including early documentary
to high-end digital rendering.  The show, curated by Stuart Koop and Max Delany, was developed
by Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne and the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid,
and ran from 31 January - 8 March 2003.

Dead Ringer

Essays by Robin Stoney and Gwynneth Porter

Dead Ringer was a group show curated by the Gus Fisher Gallery director Robin Stoney and
included photographers Joyce Campbell, Darren Glass and Ann Shelton.  The show considered
the duplicitous nature of photographic images in confounding the viewer’s perception of the ‘real’. 
The exhibition ran from 22 March - 3 May 2003.

Rose Nolan/Marco Fusinato

Essays by Simon Ingram and Allan Smith

Fusinato’s series of monochrome paintings and video projection of an improvisation with
electric guitar present a kind of synaesthetic model for the possibilities of formalist art. 
High energy, no fuss, and no complex subjectivity are markers for a practice that works
across senses and genres and in so doing unpacks the potential of formalist practice. 
Nolan’s practice demonstrates a fascinated conviction of the Russian avant-garde’s continuing
significance and indeterminate promise.  There is a lightness of touch and ironic whimsy in Nolan’s work,
which leavens her historical transpositions of pioneer avant-gardism and aligns with popular culture’s
romance with all things Russian.  The exhibition ran from 25 October - 14 December 2002.

The Colony

Essay by Robert Leonard and Notes by Gavin Hipkins

The Colony was a solo show by Gavin Hipkins.  Photographer Hipkins is fascinated by botched utopias. 
He is known for creating massive works from dozens upon dozens of similar images.  The subject matter
is typically banal, lengths of liquorice, polystyrene balls - but, repeated, massed and marshalled,
the cumulative effect is monumental and pulsing.  The Colony was New Zealand’s contribution to
the 25th Sao Paulo Bienal 2002.  The exhibition ran from 7 September - 18 October 2002.

Anni Albers

Essay by Brenda Danilowitz

The exhibition was comprised of works on paper from the collection of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. 
Anni Albers (1899-1994) is best known as the pioneering textile designer and weaver, who, having trained
at the now famous Bauhaus School of Design in Germany in the early 1920s, transported her art and
her ideas to the USA when she and her husband, the artist Josef Albers, came to teach and work at the
experimental liberal arts school, Black Mountain College, in western North Carolina in 1933. 
Whether weaving, drawing or making prints, Albers was a fearless artist, living and working
according to her own stated tenets: “We learn courage from art work ...  We learn to dare to make a choice,
to be independent.”  This exhibition ran from 18 May - 6 July 2002.

Memos for the New Millennium

Essay by Peter Shand

Memos for a New Millennium was a group show curated by Peter Shand

Artists: Lisa Crowley, Jane Dodd, Rodney Fumpston, Paul Gilbert, Nuala Gregory, Vicki Kerr,
Judy Millar, Caroline Rothwell, Carole Shepheard, Julainne Sumich and Alan Wright.  The brief for the
eleven artists was simple: select and respond to a work from the University Collection, shaping that
response with consideration for a quality either that is evocative of a general value or condition of art
or that is not and you therefore want to critique it.  The resulting “Memos” result in a triangular
relationship of things within the Gallery: an object from the University Collection, something made
for this show and a word. It may be hoped that engaging with these memos engenders a
range of different, not necessarily consistent ways of thinking about, responding to or
otherwise experiencing the works and ideas presented here. 
This exhibition ran from 23 March - 11 May 2002.     

William Kentridge: Stereoscope

Essay by Elizabeth Rankin

The exhibition of works by South African artist, actor, director and filmmaker William Kentridge. 
The medium Kentridge employs is a critical part of his communication.  He has talked of his productions
as ‘stone-age filmmaking’ for they shun the use of teamwork and advanced technology, of dialogue
and the pre-planned storyboard.  His starting point lies in the process of drawing, and his first films
were made to capture the development of drawn images.  These provisional images retain the traces
of their own genesis, ghostly erasures that make manifest the process of their passing. 
Stereoscope ran from 23 January - 16 March 2002.

The Colonial View

Essay by Peter Shaw

The Colonial View was curated by Peter Shaw and was comprised from the selection of the
watercolours from the Fletcher Trust Art Collection.  It can no longer be surprising that an
exhibition of such obviously beautiful paintings should also be controversial.  In today’s climate
the word colonial has negative connotations, associated as it is with suppression of indigenous culture,
alienation of land and loss of sovereignty.  Viewed from this position, these paintings represent
an imposed view, albeit in most cases presented with immense skill. 
The Colonial View ran from 24 October - 15 December 2001.

Displacement and Creativity: Refugees and the Arts in New Zealand

Foreword by Leonard Bell with essays by Aaron Kreisler, Peter Shaw, Tony de Goldi
and Andrew Leach

The exhibition comprised of three shows: Private and Confidential curated by Aaron Kreisler,
Henry Kulka: images by Marti Friedlander and others curated by Peter Shaw and Neumann,
Newman curated by Tony de Goldi and Andrew Leach ran from 4 September - 14 October 2001.     

White Absence: Mladen Stilinovic

Foreword by Wystan Curnow and essay by Branka Stipancic

White Absence was a show by the Croatian artist Mladen Stilinovic.  He titled his cycle of
works White Absence.  What is the colour of pain, the artist asked himself in the early,
war-torn 1990s in Croatia.  ‘White is the colour of silence, very intimate, and pain is an intimate thing’,
says the artist and spreads white across paintings and objects encompassing various concepts;
that of silence, emptiness, absence, pain, poverty and the absurd ... 
This exhibition ran from 14 July - 24 August.

Diversions

Catalogue essay by Michael Dunn

An exhibition of recent acquisitions from the University of Auckland Art Collection.  The art collection
of the University of Auckland has been built up over nearly forty years and includes more than 500 original works. 
The collection is restricted in the main to works by New Zealand artists or artists with close links to Auckland. 
Buying policy has been to purchase contemporary paintings, sculpture, photography and prints rather than
to fill in gaps in the historical coverage of the collection.  It is hoped that this exhibition will makes the works
accessible to a wider public and reveal the extent of the University’s commitment to the visual arts of
New Zealand.  This exhibition ran from 26 May - 6 July 2001.

For further information contact:

The Gus Fisher Gallery

The University of Auckland

74 Shortland Street, Auckland City

Tel: +64 9 373 7599 ext 86646