B.
Heck yeah, that happened!
Note
Our very own Art-tastic by our very own Sarah Pepperle won TWO awards at last night's New Zealand Book Awards for Children & Young Adults at Te Papa!!!
Here' what the judges said:
BEST FIRST BOOK AWARD
Art-tastic makes learning about art effortless – and celebrates the creative potential in everyone, so that you are left feeling that you too can be an artist. Even in a less visually stunning setting, the writing here would shine. The author has an out-of-this-world talent for presenting information – both factual and abstract – in a digestible, hilarious, approachable way. She’s ticking all the boxes for non-fiction writing and breaking all the rules at the same time – there’s a rare instinct on show here for how children work. This writing is addictive and the judges can’t wait to read more work from this highly talented writer.
ELSIE LOCKE AWARD FOR NON-FICTION
This is a rare book that makes art – in this case the iconic works in the Christchurch Art Gallery – accessible and fun for young readers and shows how it can touch all aspects of our lives. It has so many wonderful design features: generous format and layout, bold images, and funky graphics. And the writing is outstanding: instantly engaging, slyly educational, and peppered with a sense of humour that sometimes (to quote one of the judges) “just goes full dork”. It’s a wonderful hands-on book which will inspire self-expression for all ages. Art-tastic is a work of art.
Check out the book in action, then go full dork on your own copy. Buy it here for $29.99.
Related reading: Publishing, Art-tastic
Notes
This is ART-TASTIC!!
Our ART-TASTIC art activity book for kids has been nominated for the New Zealand Book Awards for Children & Young Adults! Ka rawe, nice one us! #NZCYA
Notes
Christchurch Art Gallery scoops major Australasian design awards
Congrats to our publishing team of David Simpson and Sarah Pepperle for a night of bests at the Museums Australasia Publication Design Awards at a gala event in Alice Springs last night. The Gallery won best magazine (Bulletin), best book (Us v Them: Tony de Lautour), best children's book (ART-TASTIC) and best in show (Us v Them)!
Notes
Bishopdale School Rulez
These Year 6 students at Bishopdale Primary School have knocked it out of the park with their AMAZING glitter artworks from our new ART-TASTIC activity book.
Article
Tomorrow, Book, Caxton Press, Landfall
In the decades before and after the Second World War, Christchurch experienced a remarkable artistic efflorescence that encompassed the visual arts, literature, music, theatre and the publishing of books and journals. And the phenomenon was noticed beyond these islands. For instance, in his 1955 autobiography, English publisher and editor of Penguin New Writing and London Magazine, John Lehmann, wrote (with a measure of exaggeration, perhaps) that of all the world’s cities only Christchurch at that time acted ‘as a focus of creative literature of more than local significance’.
Article
An invitation to participate
You might be well aware of fanzines as a form of analogue self-publishing in and around your own arts community. Or they might be somewhat peripheral to the particularity of your engagement with the arts.
For the uninitiated, the word fanzine is often shortened to zine, and is pronounced 'zeen', as in 'magazine'. This abbreviation doesn't merely signal a growing ubiquity, or an economy of syllables for those (like myself) who say or write the word a lot, it also speaks to the shift away from fandom to a growing eclecticism – bringing the lie to anyone attempting to describe zines as a genre.
Article
The book as alternative economy and alternative space
In Printed Matter's 1981 mail-order catalogue, artist Edit deAk enthusiastically described the 'many hands at work in the process of making and marketing the book'. Turning the spotlight on individuals and groups involved in the production, distribution and sale of books by artists, deAk likened independent art publishing to activities 'like filmmaking or rock 'n' roll music.' While such comparisons with filmmaking have been relatively scarce over the past few decades, artists, publishers, designers and critics have continued to draw parallels between art publishing and independent music.
Article
Going online
I’ve never actually seen the Mona Lisa, and it’s a fair bet that most people reading this article haven’t either. Yet, according to Wikipedia, the painting is ‘the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world’. So how to account for the fame of an artwork we haven’t seen? And what have reproductions of Da Vinci’s sixteenth-century portrait got to teach us about time-based art and the online environment in 2015?
