Join editors, Christina Barton and Anna Miles, and Susan Ballard, Lachlan Taylor, and Hanahiva Rose, three of the fourteen writers included in Barbara Tuck – Delirium Crossing, the publication accompanying Tuck’s exhibition, as they discuss their approaches to writing about painting.

This is an opportunity to find out more about how the book and the exhibition evolved as conscious alternatives to the conventional retrospective exhibition with its accompanying catalogue, fulfilling the artist’s ambition to create a forum for thinking about her medium, as much as a tool to canvass her practice.

Susan Ballard is an Associate Professor of Art History at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. Her most recent book is Art and Nature in the Anthropocene: Planetary Aesthetics (2021), and she recently curated the exhibition Listening Stones Jumping Rocks at Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery.

Christina Barton is director of Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery and a curator and art historian with specialist knowledge of the history of New Zealand art, especially after 1960. She first encountered Barbara Tuck’s paintings in the early 1990s, including her in the exhibition Surface Tension: Ten Artists in the ’90s at Auckland City Art Gallery in 1991.

Anna Miles is an Auckland art dealer and lecturer in visual arts at Auckland University of Technology Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makaurau. She has represented the work of Barbara Tuck since 2006.

Hanahiva Rose (Ngāi Tahu, Te Atiawa, Ngāti Toa Rangatira) is a writer and curator based in Paekākāriki. She has held curatorial positions at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and Te Papa and is widely published for her writing on modern and contemporary art practices in Aotearoa.

Lachlan Taylor is a writer and curator living in Pōneke Wellington. He holds MAs in both Art History (2018) and Creative Writing (2022) from Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. In 2021 he took on the role of commissioning editor of the ArtNow Essays digital platform. Lachlan’s writing has been published in Art + Australia, Art News New Zealand, Art New Zealand, ArtNow, the Art Paper, and The Pantograph Punch.

Listen: 'Writing About Painting' Panel Discussion Wednesday 17 August 2022