Viewshaft Allan MacDonald and essay by Rangihiroa Panoho. Designed by Jonty Valentine
Viewshaft is a geo-linquistic drift, from north to south, through the volcanic fields of Tāmaki Makaurau. It shows mountains still to be seen, and others that are not. Except sometimes through the photographs or words of those who felt a need to describe them at the time. Those words and images come into play here, through the writings of geologists Firth, Searle and Hayward, and also through the influence of two small but notable publications, Auckland’s Unique Heritage: 63 Wonderful Volcanic Cones and Craters. An Appeal to Save Them (1928) and Auckland Volcanic Cones:A Report on Their Condition and a Plea for Their Preservation (1957). Both were attempts to preserve Auckland’s volcanic features at a time when they were being rapidly consumed by twentieth century demands. Viewshaft is accompanied by an essay by Dr. Rangihiroa Panoho, ‘Āku Maunga Haere’ (my travelling mountains).
“Viewshaft is testimony to his continuing gaze at the volcanic maunga that have an iconic presence in Tāmaki Makaurau. Aucklanders live on and in the shadow of these maunga and the recent public debates about how their tihi ‘their sacred high points’ are planted and the replacement of exotic with natives shows just how much passion these natural forms generate. Tāmaki Makaurau is indeed still a land ‘desired by hundreds of lovers'”. Dr. Rangihiroa Panoho
Stopped Short: Writings on Len Lye 1977-2017 Wystan Curnow Published by Bouncy Castle and Govett-Brewster Art Gallery|Len Lye Centre, with generous support from the Len Lye Foundation, Pollen Contemporary Art Foundation, and Grant Kerr.
For five decades, Wystan Curnow has been an advocate for—and authority on—the works of filmmaker and sculptor Len Lye. Alongside his friend and sometime collaborator Roger Horrocks, Curnow has championed the Aotearoa New Zealand–born artist’s work and driven its growing popular and critical recognition. Stopped Short gathers Curnow’s key writings on Lye. The first half centres on his discovery of Lye’s work in New York; the second explores its repatriation to Lye’s homeland where the establishment of the Len Lye Foundation and a dedicated Len Lye Centre in Ngāmotu New Plymouth has cemented Lye’s significance within Aotearoa New Zealand art history. Each half is introduced by Curnow, reflecting back on his earlier writings. In addition to offering a wealth of insights into Lye’s work, Stopped Short is also a study in reception, meditating on Lye’s place in world art, his place in Aotearoa New Zealand art, and the shifting relationship between them.
Len Lye (1901–80) is known for his dazzling experimental films and kinetic sculptures—parallel expressions of his desire to create an art of motion. He also made paintings and photograms (cameraless photographs)—and wrote. Born in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Lye spent time in Australia and Sāmoa in the early 1920s, before working his passage to London in 1926. There he became part of the modern-art scene, exhibiting with the Seven and Five Society and in the 1936 Internationalist Surrealist Exhibition.
He made his first film, Tusalava, in 1929 and went on to make films for the GPO Film Unit and Crown Film Unit utilising a variety of experimental techniques, often painting directly on film. In 1944 Lye moved to New York to work for the newsreel The March of Time. In the 1950s he began making films by scratching directly into black-leader film stock, and, in the late 1950s and 1960s, he developed motorised kinetic works he coined tangible motion sculptures. Examples are held in US collections such as the Whitney Museum of Americal Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Buffalo AKG Art Museum; and Berkeley Art Museum.
Shortly before his death in 1980, Lye and his supporters established the Len Lye Foundation, based at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Ngāmotu New Plymouth, which continues to promote Lye’s work and to realise his kinetic sculptures. The new century has seen a growing international interest in Lye with solo shows at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, in 2000; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, in 2001; Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, in 2009; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, in 2010; The Drawing Centre, New York, in 2014; and Museum Tinguely, Basel, in 2019. The Govett-Brewster opened its dedicated Len Lye Centre in 2015.
•
Wystan Curnow is Aotearoa New Zealand’s most eminent contemporary art critic. His internationalist perspective was shaped by living in the United States in the 1960s, where he was exposed to modernist painting and conceptual art. In the 1970s he became the house critic for the burgeoning post-object art scene centred on Jim Allen’s Sculpture Department at the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland, and began writing extensively on Colin McCahon, Billy Apple and Len Lye. Through his writing and curating, Curnow has raised the global profile of New Zealand artists and local awareness of and interest in expatriate artists, creating a more porous, complex idea of New Zealand art. In addition to being a regular contributor to journals and catalogues, he has written books on Immants Tillers (1998) and Stephen Bambury (2000), and has co-edited several books on Lye, including Figures of Motion (1984), Len Lye (2009), and The Long Dream of Waking (2018). A collection of his writings, The Critic’s Part, was published in 2014, and another of his writings on Billy Apple, Sold on Apple, in 2015. Curnow received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in non-fiction in 2018. He has been a trustee of the Len Lye Foundation since 2003. He lives in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.
Publication date: April, 2024 Flexicover | 180 x 235 x 18mm | 208 pages | ISBN 978-0-473-67853-1
Always song in the water: an ode to Moana Oceania by Gregory O’Brien
Always song in the water is an imaginative exploration of Aotearoa’s oceanic environment. This is the new, expanded edition of the now out-of-print 2019 book of the same title. The new exhibition and its accompanying book celebrates—in images, words and sound—our connectedness with the wider Pacific region, its peoples, flora, fauna and the expansive waters which both inspire and define us.
It is 11 years since the New Zealand Maritime Museum held the ground-breaking exhibition ‘Kermadec—Nine Artists in the South Pacific’, curated and co-ordinated by Gregory O’Brien, with Bronwen Golder of the Pew Environment Group. The new exhibition and this book Always song in the water returns to the themes, ongoing concerns and unresolved issues of the earlier project. In essence, the 2011 Kermadec voyage never ended. O’Brien and the other artists who voyaged to Rangitāhua Raoul Island on HMNZS Otago never really disembarked from the ship that took them north. They think of themselves as still out there, on the ocean, absorbing its energy, listening to its oceanic songs and confronting the environmental issues which have only increased in urgency over the ensuing decade.
Always song in the water— explores such topics as whale surveying, cultural connections across the Pacific, the need for ocean sanctuaries (such as the proposed Kermadec one) and the multi-layered history of Polynesian and European societies in Oceania. As well as including works and words by O’Brien and the other ‘Kermadec’ artists, this expanded edition features many new and commissioned works by leading artists including Chris Charteris, Shona Rapira Davies, Yuki Kihara, John Walsh and others. The book and the new exhibition celebrates Moana Oceania as a site of immense poetic and artistic potential. At the same time, it acknowledges that the region is facing issues of over-fishing, pollution and global warming. It returns to the originating theme of the need for ocean sanctuaries. ‘Always song in the water’ speaks of the need for better understanding, and a closer relationship with the ocean and everything it contains. It reminds us that the imagination and the arts have a crucial role to play in our evolving relationship with Moana Oceania.
Always song in the water – Art inspired by Moana Oceania, an exhibition at the New Zealand Maritime Museum Hui Te Ananui A Tangaroa, curated by Gregory O’Brien and Jaqui Knowles, is on from 24 August – 29 February 2024
Card-cover with flaps, section-sewn PUR glued | 296 pages 240mm x 175mm Portrait, numerous colour illustrations ISBN 978-0-473-68102-9 Published by New Zealand Maritime Museum Hui Te Ananui a Tangaroa
Clinic of Phantasms: Writings 1994-2002 by GiovanniIntra Edited by Robert Leonard Foreword by Chris Kraus and Mark von Schlegell Introduction by Andrew Berardini
“Everything you read about Los Angeles is true. The city adapts to its own mythology. It’s such a ludicrously discussed place that I always feel slightly idiotic in my attempts to produce a serious discourse about it. Raves in the desert, however, are superb. And ecstasy is a great drug. Also, if you hadn’t heard, music sounds better when you’re high. And the desert surrounding LA is wondrous.” — Giovanni Intra, LA Politics
Artist, gallerist, and writer Giovanni Intra’s inventive approach to art writing provides a guide to the New Zealand and Los Angeles art scenes of his era.
Before his early death in 2002, Giovanni Intra enjoyed a rollercoaster ride through the art world. He was an artist and gallerist — cofounding two legendary galleries, the artist-run space Teststrip in Auckland and China Art Objects Galleries in Los Angeles — as well as a writer. Clinic of Phantasms provides a guide to the New Zealand and Los Angeles art scenes of the day, including texts on key artists from New Zealand (John Hurrell, Fiona Pardington, Denise Kum, Ava Seymour, Ann Shelton, Gavin Hipkins, Daniel Malone, and Slave Pianos) and Los Angeles (Charles Ray, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Dave Muller, Evan Holloway, John McCracken, and Julia Scher). What makes Intra’s work of enduring significance is his inventive approach to art writing, which was informed by his interest in punk, surrealism, and Daniel Paul Schreber, the famous case study in paranoia and hallucination. This volume features writing on Intra from Chris Kraus and Mark von Schlegell, Andrew Berardini, Roberta Smith, Tessa Laird, Will Bradley, Joel Mesler, and Robert Leonard.
Clinic of Phantasms is an invaluable compendium of writings, and having an opportunity to read them is a gift. The mad intelligence of Intra, and the love he generated in others, shine through. The volume is a gesture of respect by a group of people joining forces to gather the texts, contribute the introductions and bring the project to life in a beautiful way. —Jennifer Bornstein in Contemporary Hum
Cover: photograph by Monty Adams Allannah wears Studded Suit by Giovanni Intra, 1994. Styled by Kirsty Cameron and Rachel Churchward.
Card-cover with flaps, section-sewn PUR glued | 240 pages 235mm x 182mm Portrait, B&W illustrations ISBN 978-1-63590-165-8 Published by Bouncy Castle and Semiotext(e).
“Everything you read about Los Angeles is true. The city adapts to its own mythology. It’s such a ludicrously discussed place that I always feel slightly idiotic in my attempts to produce a serious discourse about it. Raves in the desert, however, are superb. And ecstasy is a great drug. Also, if you hadn’t heard, music sounds better when you’re high. And the desert surrounding LA is wondrous.” — Giovanni Intra, LA Politics