2016
Dark Matter traces the 20-year career of a leading New Zealand photographer. Ann Shelton’s evolution as a camera artist with a unique, penetrating vision into the culture and history of New Zealand is beautifully illustrated in this book, which includes multiple examples from all her important bodies of work.
22 x 29 x 4cm
Hardback with slipcase
304 pages
Winner - The AAANZ Best Large Exhibition Catalogue Prize
Judges comments: Jaynie Anderson and Rex Butler
“There were many spectacular entries in the AAANZ Large Catalogue Prize. There were 13 entries in all from nearly all of the major art institutions in Australia (although we would have liked to have seen an entry from MONA in Tasmania).[…].
And our winner – in a good year for its publisher Auckland Art Gallery and its curator Zara Stanhope, is Ann Shelton: Dark Matter. Sometimes “creatively” laid- out catalogues that understand themselves as not merely accompanying the show but as works of art in their own right lose their reader and end up not saying much about the work. But that is absolutely not the case here. Although the catalogue is studded with in-your-face full-page reproductions whose exact relation to the show is at first a little unclear, the catalogue remains entirely true to Shelton’s aesthetic. There are brilliant essays by Abigail Solomon-Godeau (of course) and New York-based German and Comparative Literature Professor Ulrich Baer. The production values of this hard-backed, cardboard-boxed and authoritatively thick catalogue are out of this world. A worthy winner!
Congratulations to all those who entered.
Extraordinary care, attention and resources are poured into art publishing in Australasia and we want to recognise and commend this here.”
The AAANZ Best Large Exhibition Catalogue Prize honours originality and intellectual rigour, as well as excellence in the quality of the catalogue design, layout and reproduction of high-quality images. This prize is awarded annually and exhibition catalogues (from monographic surveys to broad thematic publications) issued by major Australian and New Zealand art museums, and those published by art institutions across the South Pacific are eligible.
