Published 2007 by Tāhuhu Kōrero Toi Art History, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.
48 pages
190mm x 150mm, softcover, with black and white illustrations
Edited by Christina Barton & Roger Blackley
ISSN 977-1176-58800-5

What does it mean when an artist has exchanged one home for another? This question is central to In Transit: Questions of Home and Belonging in New Zealand Art, in which Leonard Bell explores the work of two artists, expatriate painter Douglas MacDiarmid, who left New Zealand for France, and photographer Marti Frielander, an immigrant to New Zealand. Bells’ nuanced readings place these artists within a wider frame, one where displacement can be recognised as a prime driver of creativity. Bell argues, furthermore, that this type of work is ambiguous by nature and apt to be ignored or misinterpreted by the nationalist lens through which New Zealand’s canon of art has been filtered.

Leonard Bell is an acclaimed specialist in the field of cross-cultural interactions and representations in New Zealand. He has investigated nineteenth-century colonial traditions as well as the work of twentieth-century European refugees. Currently Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Auckland, Bell is fascinated by the ways in which considerations of displacement and migration can shed fresh insights into the trajectories of New Zealand art history.