Out of the Blue: Essays on Artists from Aotearoa New Zealand 1985–2021

In a collection spanning her career, highly regarded art historian and curator Christina Barton reminds readers of the art writer’s essential quandary: how to put the visual, material, sensory and temporal into words. ‘The project of art writing is at once argumentative and invested,’ she writes, ‘self-doubting and ambitious, flawed yet with its own beauty (at its best).’

Published in partnership with Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery, Out of the Blue gathers 37 essays devoted to artists from Aotearoa New Zealand. These are artists whom Barton – entering the art-writing fray in the 1980s, a time of widespread intellectual upheaval – has thought about, worked with and written for, from her first piece on artist and filmmaker Claudia Pond Eyley, published in 1985, to a foreword written in 2021 about sculptor Paul Cullen. They form a small but telling subset of her work, and provide readings that not only anatomise the nature of each artist’s work but also demonstrate the ideas that have been in play as art has unfolded here in Aotearoa.

Artists discussed include Jim Allen, Edith Amituanai, Billy Apple, Bruce Barber, Shane Cotton, Bill Culbert, Pip Culbert, Julian Dashper, Bill Hammond, Louise Henderson, Frances Hodgkins, Zac Langdon-Pole, Maddie Leach, Vivian Lynn, Julia Morison, Kate Newby, Pauline Rhodes, Marie Shannon, Shannon Te Ao and Ans Westra.

Introduction by Elizabeth Eastmond and afterword by Maddie Leach.

‘Out of the Blue offers readers generous insight into the evolution of one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most respected art writers. What comes through for me – with unequivocal consistency – across the arc of time we travel in these essays, is Barton’s sheer love of art. This book stands as a testament to her enduring commitment to thinking and writing about art, and the complex nature of its entanglement with the world.’ —Kirsty Baker, author of Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa

‘If art history in Aotearoa New Zealand continues, people will be reading Barton. Indeed, it is because they read Barton that art history in Aotearoa New Zealand will continue.’ —Rex Butler, Monash University

‘These essays set a very high bar for this country’s art writing practice.’
—Elizabeth Eastmond

Christina Barton MNZM is an art historian, curator, art writer, editor and educator. She was director of Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery from 2007 to 2023 and taught art history at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington from 1995 to 2007. She has curated numerous exhibitions, including the major Billy Apple retrospective at Auckland Art Gallery in 2015. Her writing has been published widely, and she has contributed as an editor of journals Antic and Reading Room, and volumes including the collected art writings of Wystan Curnow. Her major monograph, Billy Apple® Life/Work, was published in 2020.

Cover image: Maddie Leach, video still from The Lilac Ship, 2002, single-channel video, looped, collection of Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand (2009-0005-3), purchased 2009, courtesy of the artist
Cover design: Alice Bonifant