The finalists for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards have been announced for 2024.
The AUP team is excited to see Don Binney: Flight Path by Gregory O'Brien shortlisted for the Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction at this year's awards.
The judges note on the shortlisted title says: "In this wonderfully rich and honest portrait of the artist Don Binney, Gregory O’Brien is never an unquestioning cheerleader for his subject. So while readers see and appreciate his famous works and learn about his interest in both geology and royalty, they also discover his sometimes prickly and sardonic personality. Binney neither liked nor identified with the description ‘bird man’, but hear the name Don Binney and his soaring solo birds come instantly to mind."
The awards will be held in Auckland on Wednesday, 15 May. For more information, visit the New Zealand Book Awards website.
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A richly illustrated account of the life and work of one of New Zealand’s most iconic artists.
Painter, printmaker, teacher, writer and ornithologist, Don Binney (1940–2012) was a mercurial presence on the New Zealand cultural scene from the time of his meteoric rise to fame in the early 1960s. His unmistakable, stylised depictions of birds have come to define an era in the development of the nation’s art. Don Binney: Flight Path follows the painter from Te Henga / Bethells Beach – his artistic tūrangawaewae – through his years of wandering not only the length of Aotearoa but as far afield as Latin America and Europe.
Drawing extensively on Binney’s letters, journals and other writings, award-winning author and curator Gregory O’Brien takes us into the world of this gifted but paradoxical artist. Richly illustrated with Binney’s paintings, drawings and prints – alongside photographs and documentary materials – this is the first full-length monograph on one of New Zealand’s most important twentieth-century artists.