Shane Cotton: The Hanging Sky

A spectacular book on one of Aotearoa New Zealand's most sought-after artists. For two decades Shane Cotton has been one of Aotearoa New Zealand's most celebrated painters. The Hanging Sky presents his complex and provocative skyscapes: vast, nocturnal spaces where birds speed and plummet.

Read four distinctive responses to the assembled works: Eliot Weinberger offers a poetic meditation on what he calls "the ghosts of birds" in Cotton's paintings. Justin Paton plots his own encounters with Cotton across six years in which the artist was constantly "finding space". Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow confronts the haunting role of Toi moko, tattooed Māori heads, in the paintings and in her own past. And Robert Leonard argues the case for Cotton as a cultural surrealist exploring "the treachery of images".

Presented on a grand scale, this covetable book is designed by award-winning designer Aaron Beehre and features seventy-two large colour plates, a foil-stamped cloth cover and blue page edges.

This book was made possible with the support of Nicola Best and Greg Bloomer, Garth and Lisa Gallaway, Aloysius and Eileen Teh, and Anthony Wright and Selene Manning. Published with the assistance of Christchurch City Council, Creative New Zealand and the Friends of Christchurch Art Gallery, and in association with the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.

Hard cover book with foil-stamped cloth cover and blue page edges