A Vocabulary
Bruce Connew
Vapour Momenta Books
English
Hardcover
604 pages
155 × 215 mm
2021
ISBN 9780473545437
‘A Vocabulary’, Bruce Connew, is a 604-page, cloth, case-bound artist book in an edition of 325 (Vapour Momenta Books, 2021): 306 works, an introduction, ‘A vocabulary of colonisation’, with He Mōteatea The Lament, and essay The Sandfly Nips…The Conversation Continues by Rangihīroa Panoho. After three years research, fieldwork, edit, research, more research, Covid-19, research, design, print and bind, the artist book and accompanying exhibition are here, the exhibition previewed 16.00 – 18.00h, Saturday, 12 December 2020, Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery, Titirangi, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.
“I step mindfully onto the farmland to photograph a panorama of the battle site from both Māori and Pākehā points of view. After several footsteps, and with some bafflement, I stop dead in my tracks at a strange sensation deep inside my belly, which today I’m still unable clearly to throw light on. History was here, I grasp that, but this was out of that range. Does earth hold memory, and deliver that memory when the gravity is ripe? I quietly push forward. It was not the only occasion this phenomenon manifested while roaming the battles of Aotearoa’s reprehensible colonial wars. The memory of that memory has not grown pale. Over several recent years, not the least abstractedly, I’ve roamed more, this time after the many memorials and gravestones for the dead of these wars, or more specifically, the texts on these testaments to folly. A vocabulary of colonisation.” Bruce Connew
(Source: https://bruceconnew.com/books/a-vocabulary)
About the Artist
Bruce Connew is an artist and photographer. He lives in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, and sometimes Paris. Apart from an early skirmish with the Guildford School of Art, West Surrey College of Art and Design, Bruce is an autodidact. His central projects have shown as solo exhibitions in most public art galleries in Aotearoa New Zealand. A number of these projects are published as artist books and variations on the photobook. Since I Saw You (2007), his artist books have reflected a protracted review of his practice. A Vocabulary (2021), folded eggs (2018) and Body of Work (2015) acknowledge this ongoing review. ‘My work does not come from orderly research. An idea emerges from an assortment of simmering propositions, components of things yet to be fashioned. With these elements in hand, I set off in pursuit of other evidence from which to construct meaning.’ His work, both prints and artist books, is in public and private collections in Aotearoa New Zealand and elsewhere (see permanent collections).
https://bruceconnew.com
(Source: https://bruceconnew.com/about)
About the Publisher
Vapour Momenta Books, the pocket-sized publishing arm of Bruce Connew and Catherine Griffiths.
https://www.instagram.com/vapourmomentabooks
(Source: https://bruceconnew.com/books)
