"Art crime is soaring. Every year as much as $10 billion worth of artworks are stolen. Many more are vandalised, damaged or destroyed. Added to this is a flourishing world of fakes and forgeries, often sold for millions of dollars and hanging in the world's most prestigious galleries. If you think this is happening only in Paris, London and New York, prepare to be surprised as art curator Penelope Jackson reveals the underbelly of the New Zealand art world"--Back cover.

Current: Contemporary Art From Australia and New Zealand is the first comprehensive survey of all that is cutting edge in Australian and New Zealand contemporary practice. In a landmark publication, the book features eighty artists, carefully chosen to best reflect the vibrancy of art of the moment. While Current could be seen as a hot list of contemporary taste in the tradition of Taschen's Art Now, inclusivity is the book's abiding theme. Current is also underpinned by scholarship with commissioned essays by the region's leading writers and curators. Current's beautifully designed pages are filled with many names familiar to followers of contemporary art - including Paddy Bedford, Simryn Gill, Ah Xian, Tracey Moffatt, Shaun Gladwell and Del Kathryn Barton - along with some of the region's freshest new talents, such as Benjamin Armstrong, Monica Tichacek, Rohan Wealleans, Francis Upritchard and Sean Cordeiro & Claire Healy, whose photograph of the contents of a German apartment wrapped in orange twine graces the book's front cover. Current captures the unique essence of contemporary practice in Australia and New Zealand, charged with the dynamic between Indigenous, western and Asian cultures. The eighty selected artists encompass a diversity of culture and subject and employ every available medium, from painting, photography and performance to installation and video art. Current's contextual essays are written by leading authorities in their fields, including Robert Leonard, Victoria Lynn, Justin Paton, Rachel Kent, Nick Waterlow and Brenda L. Croft, who has convened an important roundtable of Indigenous curators to explore the question of the contemporary within Aboriginal art.

Summary: "The Invention of New Zealand is an important study of nationalism in twentieth-century New Zealand art. From the 1930s onwards, artists, writers and critics such as Toss Woollaston, Allen Curnow, Colin McCahon, Rita Angus, A R D Fairburn, Doris Lusk and Monte Holcroft deployed art, literature and theory in the construction of a national identity, the search for the essence of New Zealand and the invention of a specifically New Zealand high culture. Francis Pound ponders, decodes, memorialises and celebrates this project from its starting moment when painters and poets became newly self-conscious about New Zealand art. He argues that in the early 1970s the framework was largely dismantled and the discourse abandoned by a new generation of artists and critics, such as Richard Killeen, Ian Scott and Petar Vuletic. Over ten fascinating chapters, Pound covers the Nationalistsʼ major concerns, their problems with antecedents, the formulation of their canon and their various co-option, adoption and rejection of Regionalism, Cubism, Modernism and Primitivism in their quest for invention. The Invention of New Zealand is a well-illustrated and engagingly written narrative by one of our most brilliant and original art historians.'--Publisher description.

Jill Trevelyan won the Non Fiction Award at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards in 2009 for this magnificent biography of one of New Zealand's leading 20th century artists. Now back in print, this revised edition brings the book up to date with new assessments of Angus and in the context of the Rita Angus exhibition to be held at Te Papa late in 2021. Rita Angus was a pioneer of modern painting during the 1930s and 1940s. More than 100 years after her birth, works such as Rutu (1951), Central Otago (1940), and Portrait of Betty Curnow (1941-1942) are national icons. While Angus is perhaps New Zealand's best-loved painter, the story of her life remained little known and poorly understood before this acclaimed and revelatory book. Jill Trevelyan traces Angus's life, from her childhood in Napier and Palmerston North to her death in Wellington in 1970. Drawing on a wealth of archives and letters, she brings to life Rita Angus the person: highly articulate and full of zest, intellectually curious and forthright in her attitudes and emotions, powerfully committed to her pacifist and feminist beliefs and dedicated, above all, to life as an artist. Rita Angus: An Artist's Life is generousl

Chris Hoult immersed himself in the Kiwi tattoo scene from 2011 and 2012, and brought writer musician Steve Forbes along for the ride. This is a view from the studios of NZ now with profiles of leading tattooists. Includes three rich traditions - Ta moko, Maori tattoo; Tatau, Pacific tattoo and tattoo of Europe and Asia.

Te Papa holds New Zealands national art collection, whose origins date back to 1865 and the establishment of the then Colonial Museum (later the Dominion and then the National Museum). Built up over the years by a succession of directors and curators, the collections 40,000 works track New Zealand history and the art movements within it. In this generous book, Te Papas curators and a wide range of other expert art writers showcase the strengths of the New Zealand art collection by discussing around 270 works. From very early colonial work through to recent acquisitions, and including photography, their essays offer insights into the art, the artists and the context and issues that drove them. The book is complemented by biographies of all the featured artists, making it a valuable resource.

The evolution of New Zealand's national art collection is closely linked with the story of Aotearoa New Zealand itself--its places, its people, and its developing sense of identity. Art at Te Papa spans the Museum's collection from superb early European prints to exciting contemporary acquisitions. Te Papa's curators have selected more than 400 artworks, each one beautifully reproduced and accompanied by an engaging mini essay. Works by international artists--from Rembrandt to Mapplethorpe--feature alongside iconic New Zealand art by Charles Goldie, Rita Angus, Bill Hammond, and many more. Lesser-known artworks will also surprise and delight. This special deluxe edition of Art at Te Papa is a treasure to inform, inspire, and delight all New Zealanders and lovers of art.