Five New Books at the E H McCormick Research Library 2024

The E H McCormick Research Library is a hub for creative curiosity, research, discovery and access, specialising in Aotearoa New Zealand and Pasifika art. We look after approximately 30,000 books, periodicals and exhibition catalogues, and over 4,000 artist files and artists’ books.  

We acquire books which relate to exhibitions at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and other art galleries across Aotearoa New Zealand, artworks in the Gallery’s collections, or topics related to art, design and history to keep the Library relevant, up-to-date and diverse.

Librarian Melanie Kung shares her top five picks of our recent acquisitions, which have been published in the last year and profile art from Aotearoa New Zealand. You can read these at the Libary between 1–5pm from Wednesday to Friday. Haere mai, we'd love to see you. 

Pacific Arts Aotearoa (2023), Penguin 

‘When you look at this book, you know that it relates to the Moana. That’s quite a powerful thing.’ – Book designer Shaun Naufahu.  

Pacific Arts Aotearoa (2023) is weighty and bright. A different colour adorns each face of the 544-page hardcover book, with the yellow lei-like text block highlighting the colourful manulua (Tongan bark cloth pattern) detailing on the edge of each page. Incredible stories from six decades of multidisciplinary Pacific creative practice are held within this beautiful book, edited by the inimitable Lana Lopesi, who herself has had an impressive trajectory as artist, scholar and author. The book is full of dynamism and vitality, testament to the tenacity and breadth of Moana practitioners working within the arts. In 2019, when Lopesi was working with curator Ioana Gordon-Smith on the precursor to Marinade: Aotearoa Journal of Moana Art, they noted the wealth of Moana arts being practised and exhibited yet a lack in writing and publishing about it , which makes ‘those histories susceptible to disappearing along with those who made them’. Pacific Arts Aotearoa grew from the Pacific Arts Legacy Project – a living history of Pacific arts in Aotearoa as told from the perspective of Pacific artists, presented on the Pantograph Punch. The book is a beautiful, celebratory and scholarly work

Ngā Kaihanga Uku Māori Clay Artists (2023), Te Papa Press

Published by Te Papa Press, this book is a rich account of the history and legacy of Ngā Kaihanga Uku (dubbed ‘The Muddies’ by Sandy Adsett), a group of Māori clay artists who ‘continue to work together to shape and define a Māori approach to clay and ceramics’. 

Baye Riddell, Paerau Corneal, Colleen Waata Urlich, Wi Taepa and Manos Nathan are the five founding members of Ngā Kaihanga Uku who came together in 1987 through Ngā Puna Waihanga, the New Zealand Māori Artists and Writers Society. Their stories are accompanied by a wealth of archival materials – posters for exhibitions, workshop fliers, and extensive photographs of firings, meetings, exhibition openings and exchanges with an international community of Indigenous clay artists. The book is illustrated with stunning photographs of their work, as well as portrait and studio views. With a timeline and detailed chapters about each of the Ngā Kaihanga Uku founders, the publication serves as the foundation for a new generation of Māori uku artists, who are also featured.

The spirit of whanaungatanga, kinship, and manaakitanga, care, is palpable and beautifully articulated by Paerau Corneal with poet Roma Potiki: ‘When we get together as Ngā Kaihanga Uku we share a really close time, reinforcing why we’re doing uku, and those spiritual, practical connections all come into play in a very natural, unlaboured way.’

sis Pacific Art 1980–2023 (2023), Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art

sis Pacific Art 1980–2023, a publication accompanying the exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, honours and celebrates women artists from across the Pacific as shown through work from the gallery’s extensive collection. The book showcases both contemporary and customary art and craft practices, with a wealth of photos documenting the different processes and contexts of the practitioners.

Images of materials sourced directly from nature, such as roots of the red noni plant, pandanus leaves, intricately beaded shells and fine mosikaka weaving of coconut fibres, are placed side by side with paintings, sculptures and documentation of performances within white-walled galleries.

Many Aotearoa artists, including Edith Amituanai, Lisa Reihana, Christine Pataialii, Yuki Kihara and Fiona Pardington are featured alongside wāhine from throughout the Pacific. Several artists, including Latai Taumoepeau, Jasmine Togo-Brisby, Lonnie Hutchinson and writers Teresia Teaiwa and Emalani Case, featured in the exhibition Declaration: A Pacific Feminist Agenda at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in 2022. In her essay, ‘Diasporic Sisterhoods and the “Always Already” Feminist’, Lana Lopesi quotes Declaration curator Ane Tonga to note that Pacific feminisms have always existed despite not being described as such. This book beautifully brings together the strength of sisterhood throughout the Pacific diaspora.

Reuben Paterson (2023), City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi

Visitors to Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki between July 2021 and August 2023 will be familiar with Reuben Paterson’s Guide Kaiārahi, 2021, the shimmering, 10-metre-high waka which rose from the forecourt pool. Published by City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi to accompany the exhibition Reuben Paterson: The Only Dream Left, this book lavishly shows the breadth of Paterson’s practice.

An embossed, black cloth cover contrasts with the iridescent shimmer of text– a detail made visible when the book is handled or seen off the shelf. Designed by Extended Whānau, who created the award-winning branding and design for the landmark exhibition Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art (2020) and its associated catalogue, there are essays from matua Witi Ihimaera, Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow and curators Karl Chitham and Aaron Lister printed in luminous silver text on a matte black ground which contrasted with the glossy white image pages. The book is full of over 100 stunning photographs of Paterson’s works from across his 30-year-practice, bringing together his iconic wall-based glitter works on canvas; the contemplative shadows cast by Guide Kaiārahi in all its glimmering detail; his design for a GAYTM – Freedom Flowers, 2015 – commissioned by ANZ Bank with the Pride Festival for Ponsonby Road; the glittering pants and blazers from his collaboration with Worldman, I don’t like sport but I can high jump, 2003, worn by bare-chested models; and his numerous public sculptures. The book superbly presents the intensity and scope of his nuanced practice – magically dazzling yet hinting at the complex histories beneath every surface.

Hongerwinter (2024), Envy + Mokopōpaki

Hongerwinter is a stapled, A5-sized publication accompanying the exhibition at Envy gallery, Wellington. Organised by Mokopōpaki, the exhibition featured sculptural work by Yllwbro, A.A.M. Bos, Dr P and Te Maari.

Since 2017, the Auckland-based Mokopōpaki has variously operated as a dealer gallery, exhibition committee and publisher: ‘We are a critical collective or whānau who want to make “art for people” accessible. We apply Māori approaches to exhibition-making and the production of artwork. We work together to encourage and support emergent and established artists from across the generations.’

Their exhibition catalogues are often self-published and limited-edition booklets in various formats which elucidate and expand on the practices of represented artists. 

Hongerwinter is presented in a plastic slip that has been screen-printed to look like a Vogel’s mixed grain bag, with Dr P’s Very Thin Vogels, 2024 seemingly stamped on top.

The introductory text expresses artist A.A.M. Bos’s appreciation for sparrows – their ubiquity and tenacity, and as a symbol of peace and plenty for the artist’s mother who lived through devastation and famine during World War II in the Netherlands. The nursery rhyme ‘Mary, Mary Quite Contrary’ is broken down line by line as an apparently innocuous verse containing layers of disturbing historical fact and imagery relating to Mary Tudor (1516–1558). Yllwbro authors a conversation between siblings Kōkako and Miss Wētā, observing the dust-bathing habits of the migrant sparrows.

Reading this little publication is like being thrown from a garden into the bush then back onto the lawn, with a dizzying array of references seamlessly woven through its otherwise modest pages.