Legacy – Portraits of the Greats by Jon Carapiet AI photographs of contemporary and historical figures
This book comprises still images captured from AI reanimation of pictures of the living and dead.
It includes iconic contemporary portraits of today’s most rich and powerful people which were first exhibited as large-scale prints and now, as pop up on-line.
Also included are classical portraits of historical figures long dead.
These anti-AI photographs represent the eternal moment and serve as memento mori in a new age.
Whether you like it or not, the age of AI is here.
In his latest exhibition Legacy, photographer Jon Carapiet uses AI technology to reanimate current well known and powerful figures, creating the sense of a time machine.
“AI has often been used to bring back to life images of the deceased, but Legacy takes this concept to propel audiences to a hypothetical future; encouraging contemplation and meditation on the current state of the world, as if it were the past.” From Culture 101, RNZ, 12:45 pm on 26 November 2023.
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.
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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
Dad, Pete, Opa. Tim J. Veling XYZ book (Lisbon) edition
“I have been admitted to hospital. Please don’t worry, but call me when you can. Lots of love, D,P,O.”
It was always how he signed off; shorthand for Dad, Pete, Opa. Tim J. Veling would soon learn his father had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer with an estimated three months to live. The rug was suddenly pulled out from under his feet.
D,P,O is a record of those last, precious months. The photographs are testament to not only the grief that father and son worked through together, but more importantly the love and admiration they shared; an account of the inevitable slowing of one life set to a backdrop of a new life and relationships thriving. Intensely moving in its unflinching intimacy and honesty, D,P,O reminds us that while death comes to us all, we must live in the present and treasure deeply the company of people we hold dear. For within those that remain, love and life endure. Tim J. Veling, Dad, Pete, Opa.
Original project outline in website Place in Time: The Christchurch Documentary Project.
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).
Return to Monte Cassino: The 2nd NZEF War Veterans Remember Italy Maree Frewen-Wilks, with an introduction by Peter Arnett and an essay by Matthew Wright
This book was conceived and produced by a Southland photojournalist Maree Frewyn-Wilks when she accompanied the New Zealand veterans attending the official functions in Italy in 2004 during the 60th Anniversary of the Battle of Monte Cassino. Her photographic essay features as a diary of the travel, visits to cemeteries, social and official events.
What makes this book a unique contribution to New Zealand war histories is the inclusion of veterans’ personal accounts, together with their thoughts and poems about Cassino and accompanied by portraits and profiles. These are complemented by previously unpublished photographs of Monte Cassino and surrounds, from their albums 1943–1945.
“These wonderful images depict the soldiers’ life with civilians, during battle and barren scenery spotlighting bomb craters, ammunition identifying tons of rubble. The images provide proof that life away from home was in fact – War.”
Maree Frewyn-Wilks
Weaved through the New Zealand veterans’ stories from 1944 and 2004 are:
Matthew Wright, one of New Zealand’s most published historians, has written a chapter on the battle of Monte Cassino, which provides a wider context of the New Zealand involvement, the battle and the bravery of all soldiers including the Germans and our own 28th Maori Battalion.
A German Paratrooper Bob Frettlohr has written his memories of the Battle of Monte Cassino and his thoughts about Cassino now. Hans Fredrick Meyer tells how the next generations see the Commemorations of the 60th Anniversary of the Battle of Monte Cassino.
The New Zealand burials in Cassino Commonwealth Cemetery are documented, with the list of the Soldier’s rank, army number, family, age, date of death and from what town in New Zealand he came. The members of the Southland contingent found fellow Southland soldiers who became casualties during the Battle of Cassino. The ode was recited, a poppy was placed and a Spirit of Southland Flag was placed on the headstone. Some of the graves visited are at the rear of the book.
The photographs in this book were compiled as Monte Cassino Exhibition, and Maree was the guest artist for the 70th Anniversary of the Battle of Monte Cassino in 2014. The exhibition was displayed at the Cassino Military Museum and was donated to the people of Cassino. Record of these events appears towards the rear of the book.
Hard-cover, section-sewn | 336 pages 300mm x 265mm landscape B&W reproduction ISBN 978-0-473-36878-4 Self published: 2017
RRP $70 (NB. Over 2 kg and shipped from Invercargill)
Kowhai first appeared from the golden glow of a beautiful flower… and her voice was the rain and the sea and the cry of a bird.’ Follow Kowhai as she discovers a tiny seed’s hope to build a great forest.
Debut children’s author Kate Parker is a visual artist and theatre maker who is inspired to support positive environmental change on our planet. Here she creatively shares her vision of reforesting Aotearoa, one seedling at a time.
Kowhai and the Giants is a bitter/sweet story about the decimation of Aotearoa’s mighty forests following human habitation. But it is also a story of hope. While Kowhai may be small and alone, her actions will bring about change and soon, she will be joined by others.
“When you go to nature and you take care, you will be reimbursed with energy. I always felt the presence of beings in the forests where I grew up. Kowhai represents these beings in some way, committed to the preservation of the natural world. We are all a part of this. We can all be kaitiaki, it is in fact our responsibility (to be caretakers for our natural surroundings) and when we take this on in any way we can, positive change happens. Even in a city you can support environmental projects. If we can support Aotearoa’s native plant diversity to flourish, then we are supporting so many native birds, insects and fish. This diversity feeds the land and cleanses its waters. It sustains us.” — Kate Parker
Kowhai and the Giants asks the reader to listen with all their senses to their natural surroundings and to discover Kowhai’s call for themselves. A wise and beautifully told fable, its compelling narrative will kindle a desire to spend time in nature, search for seeds and to grow native plants and trees – a hopeful picture of the future for children aged four to ten and their caregivers.
In the resources section at the back of Kowhai and the Giants, Parker encourages children to plant native seeds. She includes a link to Forest & Bird’s Kiwi Conservation Club – Hakuturi Toa website www.kcc.org.nz for inspiring tips.
Kowhai and the Giants is “Like the shadows of memory on a landscape, caught between lightness and darkness, the past and future, a beautifully cast tale of hope and resilience,” says acclaimed artist Shaun Tan.
The unique and intriguing artwork for Kowhai and the Giants was created from hand-cut paper, placed in a plywood box and lit from behind. It was first exhibited in 2016, at the Arataki Visitor Centre, following Parker’s Auckland Council artist’s residency at Anawhata. There was an exhibition of the light boxes in the window of Auckland store Smith and Caughey from 17 to 21 March, as part of the Auckland Arts Festival – Aroha 2021.
ISBN 978-0-4735289-0-4 36pp 270 x 190 mm Mary Egan Publishing
Paula Morris and Haru Sameshima Published by Massey University Press
Shining Land: Looking for Robin Hyde brings together award-winning novelist Paula Morris and seasoned photographer Haru Sameshima. It is the second in the kōrero series of picture books edited by Lloyd Jones, written and made for grown-ups, and designed to showcase leading New Zealand writers and artists working together in a collaborative and dynamic way.
In Shining Land Morris and Sameshima focus on the New Zealand journalist, poet, fiction writer and war correspondent Robin Hyde, exploring three locations important to her difficult life and ground-breaking work. This beautifully considered small book richly rewards the reader and stretches the notion of what the book can do.
‘Like the best picture books, Shining Land is short and physically beautiful; the narrative and the images are inseparable and entirely complementary; it’s a book to read in a single sitting, and return to. And, like the best picture books, it opens up vistas well beyond its relatively modest scale.’ — Sarah Shieff, Academy of New Zealand Literature
“As I try to write about Shining Land my words keep breaking its incandescent magic (shining), its accumulating moods. The photographs are uncanny, eerie, both empty and full, empty of human presence because Robin is missing and missed. The storm chasers outside the frame. I keep imagining Robin entering the scene. I like that. When I look at the shot of Rangitoto ki te Tonga D’Urville Island and Te Aumiti French Pass from French Pass Road with gloomy skies and greys I become grey state. I like this so much. How can I speak? This is where pregnant Robin posed as a married woman, before moving to Picton and then back to Wellington with her secret baby and and her secret heartache. I am on the pass looking down at the grey isolation. I will never know Robin, I will never be in Robin’s shoes, but I feel. And that is what Paula and Haru do. They feel Robin in the depths of their looking and their making. It is contagious.”–– Paula Green, NZ Poetry Shelf
ISBN: 9780995131828 Massey University Press 12/11/2020 96pp 257 x 200 mm Hard cover
Monograph of the Artist’s camera work provides an overview of his career with special attention to his photographs from the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Tritone prints were made directly from the originals held at Te Papa.
Eric Albert Lee-Johnson (1908–1993) was a prominent New Zealand artist and photographer. Lee-Johnson was born in Suva, Fiji and moved to New Zealand in 1912 with his parents. As a child he showed an unusual gift for drawing and he entered Auckland’s Elam School of Art where he remained from 1923-1926. At 18 he joined newspaper publishers Wilson & Horton’s printing department and within a year was in charge of the studio and working a lithograph artist and illustrator. In 1930 he sailed for London, England. He spent eight years in London, from the age of 21 working as designer and typographer with the large advertising agency S.H. Benson. He studied lithography at Camberwell School of Art and Crafts and attended Charles Porter life classes at the Central School of Art and Design in London. His work from 1931-36 was influenced by contemporary German typography, graphics and poster design in Europe In 1938 he accepted a contract from Illott’s Advertising Agency in Wellington and returned to New Zealand. He immediately rejoined the art scene and, in 1939, he was elected a member of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts serving a term on the Committee of Management, National Art Gallery. His health broke down and after more than two years in Pukeora sanatorium he left the commercial world and with his wife and son went to live the simple life at Piha and become a full-time painter. Lee-Johnson lived in various parts of New Zealand from 1942 to 1960 including Coromandel and the Hokianga, and his non-figurative abstract paintings date from this time. In the 1950s a series of his North New Zealand paintings and topographical drawings recording the architecture of some surviving early wooden buildings, set off a whole romantic movement in New Zealand art. In 1956 he became the first New Zealand painter of his generation to have a monograph published on his work. Public awareness of his painting was further increased in 1956 and 1957, when a short documentary film about his work was seen in public theatres throughout the country. Changes in the landscape, pacific images and the inclusion of found objects such as shells and stones were themes running through his work throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Lee-Johnson is represented in all major collections throughout the country, including the national art collection at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, all public galleries and the Hocken Library and Alexander Turnbull Library. A retrospective exhibition of his paintings and drawings toured New Zealand in 1981-82. In addition to his painting Eric Lee-Johnson was also a freelance photographer who documented the daily life of New Zealanders from the early 1950s through to the 1970s. His photographs were as widely known as his paintings – including images of Opo the Dolphin, and scenes of New Zealand life. Lee-Johnson had intended his photography to form a picture library the use of which would finance his art. The collection of tens of thousands of negatives and the copyright was purchased by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in 1997 – four years after his death.
PhotoForum 64/65: Eric Lee-Johnson – Artist with a Camera. John B. Turner
Published by PhotoForum, 1999
ISBN 0959781854
295 x 235mm, 111 pages, tri-tone illustrations, softcover.
A Sun Dance in Sandringham: 43 Photographs Solomon Mortimer
“In December of 1991, I was born in what would be my bedroom for the following two decades. It was a solid brick and timber 1940’s state house with only one previous owner, a couple called Alf and May Coppell.
My parents had purchased the house in 1989 after May had passed away. Years later while studying photography I discovered the classic Marti Friedlander image of ‘Alf and May Coppell, 1969,’ standing in front of my bedroom to be, and it is firmly located in the heart of Sandringham.
By 2011, so much had changed in the 20 years I had lived on Kiwitea Street. Many houses had undergone renovation and the shops had mostly changed owners two or three times. Each time shifting the cultural landscape of the neighbourhood, from predominantly English, to Chinese and Korean, to inarguably Indian.
I remember on the way home from primary school I would get a custard square at the Pidgeon Bakery and look into the mechanics workshop across the road, wondering at the way the light would get stuck on the greasy bench that followed the back wall under a bank of windows.
Then I would finish the walk home with tacky fingers, gummed up from excess icing and wash them under the garden tap before going inside to greet my parents.
The 43 plates on the following pages were all recorded on the streets of Sandringham in 2011 – 2012 while I went for my afternoon skateboard around the block. Covering the network of roads from Fowlds Avenue over to Dominion Road and Mount Albert Road up to Balmoral / Saint Lukes Road”. Solomon Mortimer, 2019
Published by Solomon Mortimer with the support of PhotoForum, February 2019 Designed by Solomon Mortimer Designated as PhotoForum #90 Printed by Momento Pro 210 x 150 mm First edition of 200 ISS 0111-0411
“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
