The famous statue of Kamehameha I in downtown Honolulu is one of the state's most popular landmarks. Many tourists and residents however, are unaware that the statue is a replica; the original, cast in Paris in the 1880s and the first statue in the Islands, stands before the old courthouse in rural Kapa`au, North Kohala, the legendary birthplace of Kamehameha I. In 1996 conservator Glenn Wharton was sent by public arts administrators to assess the statue's condition, and what he found startled h...
Te Maori came out of exhibition of the same name which took New York by storm during the late 1980s. The historic artefacts in this book demonstrate the power and the beauty of Maori art and include canoe prows, doorways, clubs, tiki, pendants, masks, amulets and boxes. This book has been out of print for four years; it contains 37 taonga Maori of importance, beauty and mana.
Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen
by Erik Jensen
Varua Tupu: New Writing and Art from French Polynesia strengthens the ancient ties between Hawai'i and the islands of French Polynesia by translating the voices of an emerging Ma'ohi (Polynesian) literary community into English and show-casing the cultural arts of the region in general. This volume features translations of a variety of locally celebrated genres, including poetry, memoir, and fiction. Though this work is focused on the current moment, it includes fresh translations of poet Henri...
"Color Dreams for To Find the Girl from Perth" is a series of vivid illustrations for David Chadwick's novel set in Western Australia. Accompanying these images are quotes from the book, a caper in 34 chapters divided into two parts: Wandering Around and The Treasure Hunt.
The Gerd and Helga Plewig Collection of Bark Paintings from Northern Australia with works mainly from the 1950s to 1970s is presently considered the best collection of its kind outside of Australia. It includes works from the Kimberley, Wadeye, the Tiwi Islands, Arnhem Land and Groote Eylandt by artists like Yirawala, Mawalan Marika and Mungurrawuy Yunupingu. Painting on bark is part of a continuing artistic tradition of Australian Aboriginal people intimately related to long-established pract...
At the heart of Michael Leunig's work lies the idea of the holy fool - a character who does not conform to social norms of behaviour because of mental disability or as a deliberate choice, but is regarded as having a compensating divine blessing or inspiration. The holy fool is the protagonist in most of Michael's paintings and cartoons. He is, in short, that strange person with the big nose, Mr Curly, and Vasco Pyjama. In Holy Fool over 240 of Michael Leunig's artworks are collected together f...
Between the Lives: Partners in Art is a fascinating book about artists who are also intimate partners. It takes nine well-known New Zealand couples and explores many aspects of their lives but particularly how the partnership affects the art they produce. Written by perceptive and knowledgeable writers but never narrowly academic, it combines the pleasures of gossip with illuminating information about how these artists have conducted their lives. In presenting the work in this unusual context th...
A simple and elegant book of around 100 pages on the line drawings and paintings of women which Hotere has produced from 1959 through to the late 1990s. The works fall into three groups, the largest of which is from the Woman series, sensual, beautiful images, mostly nudes, making superb use of line. Carnival is a small group of works on paper depicting the annual carnival in Avignon and Nice and conveying, in line and rich colour, a sense of the grotesque and the frenetic; the Song Cycle works...
The Canterbury Society of Arts (CSA) dominated the cultural life of Canterbury for nearly a century, playing a vital role in the development of New Zealand art, and this book presents both the society’s history its contributions to the art world. Where art societies are often assumed to be conservative and reactionary institutions that failed to nurture the work of younger or more radical artists, this fascinating history reveals a different story. Formed in 1880 by European settlers, the CSA em...
In May 2006 some fifteen artists from New Zealand took over the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge (UK) as part of Pasifika Styles, a groundbreaking experiment in the display of contemporary Pacific art. Installing their works in cases next to Taonga or treasures collected on the voyages of Cook and Vancouver, the artists flung open the stores of the museum to bring more of the museums unparalleled Oceanic collections to light. At the opening of the exhibtion, the song of ancien...