The Long Dream of Waking: New perspectives on Len Lye

The last year has been very productive in terms of publishing and research. Beside overseeing the long overdue publication of Robert Graves and  Len Lye’s 1941 essay Individual Happiness Now, I was thrilled to be have the opportunity to bring together Lye’s photogram work in the Shadowgraphs publication. On the research front, I’m eagerly awaiting the publication of a co-authored essay concerning the conservation of kinetic art through the Getty Conservation Institute and presently working on another co-authored piece concerning Lye’s experimental cinema and advertising.

The big event of the year however is a new collection of writing on Lye arriving in November 2017, published by Canterbury University Press and edited with Wystan Curnow and Roger Horrocks. I’ll follow with more detail once we have a press release in hand but, for now, here’s the cover (a 1979 portrait by Robert Del Tredici) and a list of contributors.

The Long Dream of Waking features contributions from the following: Scott Anthony (Nanyang Technological University), Geoffrey Batchen (Victoria University Wellington), Paul Brobbel (Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre), Rex Butler (Monash University, Melbourne), Wystan Curnow (Len Lye Foundation and Professor Emeritus of the University of Auckland), Sarah Davy (Len Lye Foundation and Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision), A.D.S. Donaldson (National Art School, Sydney), Alla Gadassik (Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver), Shayne Gooch (University of Canterbury), Malcolm le Grice (Professor Emeritus of the University of the Arts, London), Roger Horrocks (Len Lye Foundation and Professor Emeritus of the University of Auckland), Aaron Kreisler (University of Canterbury), John Matthews (Len Lye Foundation), Peter Selz (Emeritus Professor of the University of California, Berkeley), Luke Smythe (University of Otago, Dunedin) and Evan Webb (Len Lye Foundation).