Author: Kirstie Baxter

 

Art-writer, poet, anthologist and essayist, Gregory O’Brien has been awarded the 2015 Stout Memorial Fellowship for 2015. Greg has spent much of the past three decades exploring the adjacent territories of imagination and research, of inspiration and scholarship. The Fellowship will allow him to complete a book on art, literature and the environment – passions that have inspired his prolific output, and themes which he drew on in presenting the FoTL Founder Lecture, “Imagination and Research”, in 2013. Greg’s recent books include a collection of poems, Beauties of the Octagonal Pool (2012) as well as monographic publications on artists including Euan Macleod, Pat Hanly and Graham Percy. He has also written two books introducing New Zealand art to young people: Welcome to the South Seas (2004) and Back and Beyond (2008).

An extraordinary history, six years in the planning, was published by Bridget Williams Books in November. Tangata Whenua: An Illustrated History, written by Professor Atholl Anderson, Dame Judith Binney (who died before the project was completed) and Dr Aroha Harris, charts the sweep of Māori history from ancient origins to the 21^st century. Lively, lucid and lavishly illustrated, it combines archaeology, anthropology, linguistics and oral traditions (Anderson) with colonial history (Binney) and ever-changing post-colonial developments (Harris). This is a rich and authoritative book that provides valuable insights for the future.

Atholl Anderson and Aroha Harris – distinguished researchers and eloquent speakers – spoke to the Friends on Wednesday 4 February about their roles in this huge project. Atholl is Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University, Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Canterbury and Honorary Professor of Anthropology at the University of Otago. Aroha lectures in History at the University of Auckland and is a member of the Waitangi Tribunal.

A research project into the childhood and early life of Katherine Mansfield has won the 2015 Friends of the Turnbull Library (FoTL) Research Grant of $10,000.

 Dr Gerri Kimber (pictured below right) is a leading UK authority on Katherine Mansfield. She has been working on a new biography of Katherine Mansfield’s early years and has already located previously unpublished material relating to her first 19 years in New Zealand. Dr Kimber will use the FoTL Research Grant to explore the collections of Wellington’s Alexander Turnbull Library, which is renowned for its substantial archives concerning Mansfield. This material includes the recently acquired literary and personal papers from the estate of John Middleton Murry, Mansfield’s husband.

 Dr Kimber expects to complete the biography in 2015, and her book is to be published by the Edinburgh University Press.

 ‘Gerri Kimber’s work will shed new light on Mansfield’s early life and the significant influence of her New Zealand childhood on her writing.’ said Rachel Underwood, President of the Friends of the Turnbull Library. ‘This research project will enrich our understanding of KM and reinforce the immense value of the archives of the Turnbull Library.’

 

Rolf Brednich, who has been researching a biography of the German-born New Zealander Augustus Koch (1834-1901), spoke about his life and work at a meeting of the Friends of the Turnbull Library on Tuesday 21 October.

Koch first visited New Zealand as a seaman on a sailing ship in 1855. He returned in 1858, bringing a printing press so that he could produce prints of his own artwork, and settled in Auckland with his bride. Within a few months he became known to other European New Zealanders – Dr Karl Fisher, Dr Ferdinand Hochstetter and Julius Haast – and subsequently joined the Austrian Novara Expedition as meteorological observer and later mapmaker.

Rolf Brednich retired from a long involvement in ethnology and folklore, and turned his attention to Koch’s remarkable immigrant career. Realising that this story needed to be documented, he has spent several years working on the biography which is to be published soon by Steele Roberts. It will include many of Koch’s sketches held in the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library.