Ground/Work: The Art of Pauline Rhodes | 2002

Published 2002 by Te Herenga Waka University Press.
136 pages
215 x 154mm, softcover, with colour illustrations
Edited by Christina Barton
With essays by Christina Barton, Pauline Rhodes, Geoff Park, and Sarah Treadwell.
Design by Sarah Maxey
Printed by PrintLink
ISBN 9780864734334

Pauline Rhodes has pursued one of the most dedicated and innovative courses in recent New Zealand art. But she is an artist who does not make permanent objects, who refuses to treat her images as final products, who works only in temporary modes and often outside the normal contexts for viewing.

Ground/Work: The Art of Pauline Rhodes is the first book to document her extraordinary body of work, from her earliest gallery project in 1977 to her major outdoor installation in Hagley Park, Christchurch, in 2000. It explores how Rhodes draws on and engages with materials, processes and places, in a profound, ongoing meditation on the nature of being, here and now. It makes the artist's work accessible to a wider public, and secures her a central place in art history.

Christina Barton provides insights into the artist's working methods and locates her within the wider contexts of contemporary art both locally and internationally. Additional essays by ecologist and historian Geoff Park, and architectural theorist Sarah Treadwell, consider Rhodes in light of their respective disciplines.