Crafting Aotearoa: A Cultural History of Making in New Zealand and the Wider Moana Oceania
Crafting Aotearoa: A Cultural History of Making in New Zealand and the Wider Moana Oceania is a major new history of craft that spans three centuries of making and thinking in Aotearoa New Zealand and the wider Moana (Pacific). Paying attention to Pākehā, Māori, and island nations of the wider Moana, and old and new migrant makers and their works, this book is a history of craft understood as an idea that shifts and changes over time.
- Edited by Kolokesa U Māhina-Tuai, Karl Chitham and Damian Skinner
- The heart of this book lies in the relationships between Pākehā, Māori and wider Moana artistic practices that, at different times and for different reasons, have been described by the term craft.
- Hardback book
Kolokesa U Māhina-Tuai has a background in art history, social anthropology and museum and heritage studies. She has been a guest curator and consultant for Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, and a consultant for Alt Group and the Government of Tonga’s Culture Division, Ministry of Tourism.
Karl Chitham (Ngā Puhi) is Director of the Dowse Art Museum and was formerly the Director and Curator of Tauranga Art Gallery. He has been involved in the arts in Aotearoa in a variety of roles for over fifteen years. Karl has had a long association with craft practice, holding a Bachelor of Visual Arts in Jewellery, as well as being a curator and a commentator.
Damian Skinner is a Pākehā art historian and curator who lives in Gisborne. He received his PhD in art history from Victoria University of Wellington in 2006, for a thesis exploring the dynamic relationship between customary and modern Māori art in the twentieth century.
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