The fifth in the ground-breaking kōrero series conceived and edited by Lloyd Jones, Little Doomsdays is another rich collaboration between an artist and a writer. This time legendary musician and painter Phil Dadson responds to a wildly innovative text that’s steeped in te ao Māori by Ngāi Tahu writer Nic Low. A small, striking work that’s part art book, part speculative journey. Framed around the idea of “arks” as vessels of memory and survival, it’s a haunting meditation on time, loss, and legacy.
"It is said that the Ark of Arks was once carefully catalogued but became scrambled when we scribes began fighting over what should be preserved. Now it is a collection of fragments making only passing sense."
-
Pages: 96
-
Width: 20 cm
-
Height: 25.5 cm
Meet Phil Dadson:
Phil Dadson is a seminal figure in New Zealand’s art history, both for pushing the boundaries of sound and intermedia art since the 70s with the internationally renowned From Scratch, the subject of two survey exhibitions in 2018, and marking its 50th anniversary in 2024; and for his influence on a generation of now leading senior and mid-career artists through his position as Head of Intermedia/Time-based arts at Auckland University’s Elam School of Fine Arts from 1986 – 2001. Dadson continues to exhibit and perform regularly in New Zealand and internationally, and his films have been selected for International Film Festivals. He has received several major awards and commissions including a Fulbright travel award to the USA, residencies in Antarctica, Delhi, Venice, San Francisco, and numerous International research, exhibition and performance grants.
Meet Nic Low:
(Ngāi Tahu) is the partnerships editor at NZ geographic magazine and the former programme director of WORD Christchurch. An author of short fiction, essays and criticism, his writing on wilderness, technology and race has been widely published and athologised on both sides of the Tasman. His story collection Arms Race (2014) was shortlisted for the Readings Prize and the Queensland Literary Awards. Uprising (2021) details his walking expiditions exploring the Ngāi Tahu history of the Southern Alps. It recieved the CLNZ Writer's Awards, and was named a New Zealand Listener and Australian Book Review Book of the Year.
