Press
Past the Tower, Under the Tree wins ‘Best Non-illustrated Book’ at the PANZ Book Design Awards 2024
“This lovely, compact book is a thoughtful and elegant work, blending academic rigour with a poetic touch. The package evokes a nostalgic feel, reminiscent of vintage pocket books, yet it’s refreshingly modern. The bold orange cover and matching section separators, each using variations on magnified cellular wood imagery contribute to a unique aesthetic that’s very much in line with GLORIA’s house style. Inspired by 1970s political posters and a 1919 school textbook, this book masterfully embodies the publisher’s principles of care, community, and craft, making it a standout in the market.”
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Past the Tower, Under the Tree review, Crane Brothers
“This book is the epitome of the phrase “good things come in small packages”… It makes for a multifaceted reading experience, one that will bring memories to the forefront of experiences that shaped you. GLORIA press should be celebrated too, as a two-woman intercontinental publishing platform that acts as a research facility exploring a multidisciplinary approach to publishing.”
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‘Is that how you want to end up?’, Satellites
“Of course, none of us is James Baldwin or Janet Frame or Amy Winehouse or Nina Simone. But don’t stories about renowned artists resonate with aspects of our own lives? Or do we unwittingly bend our lives into the structure of such stories, not because they are really true, but because humans can’t help having our lives shaped by stories?”
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‘A values base for radical left and Te Tiriti justice’, Newsroom
“In my activist life, I often want to say to young people, come with me. Come with me to the courtroom. Come with me to the protest, to the hīkoi. Come with me, and let’s see what happens.”
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‘Collection of learning and change’, Otago Daily Times
“This collection is pocketbook in size, yet feels full, an amalgam of experiences of learning and changing pace. Here are but a few examples of individuals living lives on their terms, moulded by mentors esteemed in their eyes. From this work will hopefully come many more stories, for it is always a pleasure to read of contentment and growth, especially in stories far different from one's own.”
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‘Marking a Return’, Pantograph Punch
“Mokonui-a-rangi Smith recounts his experience of learning tā moko with his mentor, Croc Coulter. An extract republished from Past the Tower, Under the Tree.”
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‘Return to the printed form’, Otago Daily Times
“What could happen if an artist or designer had control over the publishing process? What books could be made out of that? How does that change how books are made? How are they promoted?”
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‘Books received: Past the Tower, Under the Tree’, Art New Zealand
“The editors call these 12 stories ‘learning in community’, but they are in fast life lessons, really, stemming from a breadth of experience that is a testament to the reach of the contributors and the vision of the editors. Together they make up a volume that is edifying, yet welcoming; like the best of lessons, it invites you in and takes you further than you thought you could go.”
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‘Drawn Conclusions: A Graphic Book Review on Past the Tower, Under the Tree’, Metro
“This book is a quilt, each piece a panel, Kerr’s handsome design the quilting holding the layers together. Like looking at a quilt, or listening to Lou Reed’s New York album, I recommend absorbing Past the Tower, Under the Tree in a single setting. Read it continuously before you revisit and pry open each contribution individually.”
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‘Book review: Past the Tower, Under the Tree’, Art News
“The contributors of Past the Tower, Under the Tree: Twelve Stories of Learning in Community—a varied cohort including writers, artists, researchers, educators and social workers—each reflect on their artistic formation and the informal spaces in which it often took place, invariably among people and through conversation.”
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‘Thinking Out Loud: Balamohan Shingade’, ArtNow
“On the development of ‘Singing with Practical Intent’ in the anthology Past the Tower, Under the Tree: Twelve Stories of Learning in Community published by GLORIA Books”
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‘Kōrero with a Tā Moko artist’, Radio New Zealand
“Mokonui-a-rangi Smith is a traditional Ta Moko artist from West Auckland, and his story features between the covers of a new anthology called Past the Tower, Under the Tree: Twelve Stories of Learning in Community.”
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‘Extract: Want to travel into Space?’, Kete Books
“An extract from ‘Want to travel into Space’ by Dominic Hoey and published in Past the Tower, Under the Tree: Twelve Stories of Learning in Community.”
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‘Talking Culture: Photobook Friday at Auckland Festival of Photography’, The Antipodean Photobook
“The conversation started with each of the panelists outlining the benefits of working in the photobook format and points were made around the continuing importance of a DIY attitude and the independence that this allows for artists and photographers to maintain control over the publishing process.”
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‘Dwelling in the Margins’, Gold publication award winner, Pride in Print Awards
“I wanted to create a ductile jacket that wrapped around the book like vinyl. The book is small in size but bold in thought, so the cover needed to be really vibrant to reflect that. Screen-printing allowed us to print a canary yellow ink onto vinyl-like paper. It was an experimental process, but one worthy of a book on art publishing.”
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‘Press Run’, Metro
“Most of our books sit in an awkward space between genres — a cookbook with poems, a paperback on art, a tiny photobook. We are interested in genre-bending, margin-dwelling subcategories and look to subvert expectations of what a book should be. Even if that means we can’t be categorised easily!”
‘As needed, as possible’, Art New Zealand
"It is good news that Enjoy and GLORIA collated the PDFs they produced and published online during the first 2020 lockdown to create the publication As needed, as possible (2021). The book is an attractive package and the limitations of page layout have forced a (creative and quirky) rethink of those interminable texts designed for computers… A savvy bunch of contributors write about the work they do and the value of their labour in the art world in which they find themselves, providing and provoking insights via text, graphics, photography, email conversations, brainstorming lists and origami patterns. There is a vibrant generosity underpinning this collection—the curators and organisers write about what they know so that others too may benefit from their experience.”
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‘Still Looking Good’, People’s Choice Award Winner, ANZ Photobook Awards
“[Alice Connew and Oliver Connew’s] small book with a large scope, drew on multiple art forms to comment on the impact of humans on the environment … An innovative, conceptually driven photobook that successfully draws on the disciplines of performance and photography. Its compelling design elements, and unorthodox approach to subject matter, keep the viewer thinking as they move through the book. Strong visual elements all come together in a well resolved and original package.”
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‘Dwelling in the Margins’, Art New Zealand
“True believers in the digital revolution will find Dwelling in the Margins: Art Publishing in Aotearoa an unwelcome aberration. Here is proof — an attractive, thumbable, hand-sized package with a perky yellow cover — that the old world order is not going anywhere soon… This is mind-opening publishing at its best.”
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‘Still Looking Good’, Art New Zealand
“Still Looking Good, a tiny potent work featuring dystopian industrial landscapes with the figure of a dancer flitting in and out of the images; this was a finalist in this year’s Photobook Awards.”
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‘A Scene Is Only As Good As You Make It’, The Pantograph Punch
“Dwelling in the Margins: Art Publishing in Aotearoa is a small, beautifully made tome of 24 essays by 30 unique contributors. Wrapped in a soft, canary yellow dust jacket, it is easy to pick up and very hard to put down. Partly due to the fact that – despite being over 300 pages long – it’s perfectly designed to fall open in your hand, but mostly due to the breadth of essays that explore art publishing in Aotearoa today.”
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‘Katie Kerr and publishing in the margins’, Radio New Zealand
“The country's cottage industry of small press publishers is bigger than you might imagine. And it's also thriving. The proof is in a new book on art publishing in Aotearoa called Dwelling in the Margins, edited by Katie Kerr… Lynn Freeman first asked Katie for a definition of "art publishing"”
Listen to the audio here
‘Review: Dwelling in the Margins’, North & South
“A work of art itself, with exquisite but not flashy design and production, this volume collects pieces by some 30 makers or observers of art books, a tradition which has long flourished in this country.”
Read the review here
Art publishing and focusing on communities rather than clients’, Storyo
‘Art publishing tends to work on a different operational model with different intentions — most of the time, we don’t expect to make much money from sales. In a way, this can be liberating for the publisher because it removes any need to meet commercial expectations and opens up the book as a space for exploration.’
Read the interview here
‘Amidst and Beyond: Alice Connew and Virginia Woods-Jack’, Contemporary HUM
“Ultimately we all should be recognised for the diverse range of roles we both do and can play. We should accept, and be accepting of, the fact that we all need to be both supporters and supported, regardless of gender.”
Read the extract here
‘Dwelling in the Margins’, Metro, Autumn 2021
”Launched in 2016, GLORIA produces some of the most thoughtfully designed and elegantly produced art and photography books in Aotearoa. Primarily interested in artist-made books where the full arc of bookmaking is completed in-house, Kerr and Connew started Gloria simply because they each had artistic projects that required a publishing platform, so decided to do it themselves.”
Read the article here
‘Review: Dwelling in the Margins’, Kete
“I’ve long admired the work Kerr does with GLORIA Books. Its publications are consistently constructed with such care and craft with thoughtful and beautiful design and typography… Every aspect of Dwelling in the Margins is a triumph. The writing is from a variety of angles, voices and experience which is illuminating. The production itself is gorgeous from the zing of the canary yellow cover, the elegant typography and layout and beautiful photographic spreads.”
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‘The Fine Art of Naming your Publishing Platform’, The Spinoff
“Unsurprisingly, given the topic, the book is beautifully put together: a crayon-yellow vinyl cover, cool photos, the occasional essay anchoring a miscellany of highly snackable bits and pieces of text.”
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‘The Lowdown’, The Big Idea
“Dwelling in the Margins is an invaluable and creative look at art publishing in New Zealand and its many trailblazers in their own words. It’s published by GLORIA and over its contributions, it speaks to the complexion of the strong rise in small art book publishing this century, in a time when issues of waste are prominent and the internet has become the media’s central tool.”
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‘Arts Diary’, Radio New Zealand
“Last week in the mail I received a wonderful little book that is about to be released. It is published by a small independent publisher in Auckland called GLORIA and called Dwelling in the Margins: Art Publishing in Aotearoa… it’s a remarkable book in terms of collecting stories from all these incredible mavericks who have been doing art publishing in New Zealand for years, some for decades… I love that this book is connecting together all these histories.”
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‘Between the Novel and the Film: Photobooks in Aotearoa New Zealand’, Art New Zealand 176, Summer 2020-21
”Alice Connew is a co-founder of GLORIA, which published siblings Alice and Oliver Connew’s Still Looking Good, a tiny potent work featuring dystopian industrial landscapes with the figure of a dancer flitting in and out of the images; this was a finalist in this year’s Photobook Awards.”
Buy the magazine here
‘Art, Not Science: Episode 11', The Physics Room
In this episode of Art, Not Science, we talk to graphic designers, artists, and publishers Daniel Shaskey, Katie Kerr, and Matthew Galloway. They discuss arts publishing and design during a pandemic and their respective publishing projects Avian Loop, As needed, as possible (co-published by Enjoy Contemporary Art Space), and PAN, which have all been launched digitally during lockdown in lieu of a print release. They will also discuss the challenges and possibilities of digital publications, the joy of holding a piece of paper, and how the community that surrounds the printed copy is as important as ever.
Listen to the podcast
Still Looking Good, named as a finalist in the 2019 Australia and New Zealand Photobook Awards.
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The 2019 Best Antipodean Photobooks compiled by Doug Spowart and Victoria Cooper,
The Antipodean Photobook
”Have you ever had that kind of dream where you lost in the world with endlessly expanding spaces of desolation and destruction? You move amongst people not interested in helping you or what you are trying to tell them. I am a child from the era of the threat of nuclear war. Many of my childhood dreams were filled with an overwhelming desperation where I dream of trying to run or scream and I am frozen and silent unable to do either. This small book for me is about the reality of these dreams… a present where there is a kind of madness in and anxiety of the inability to stop and listen and reflect on what it means to be human.” Still Looking Good, nominated by Victoria Cooper.
See the full list
An interview with podcast The Stack by Monocle Magazine
"And now to New Zealand, where a vibrant art book scene is emerging. GLORIA is a publishing platform that treats the production of books as an artistic practice. The result: exquisite books that touch on topics from migration to dance, politics to food, photography to typography. But for GLORIA, the form is just as important as the content, and each publication is a work of art.”
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'Loose Reads’, Kiran Dass, 95bFM
"On 95bFM’s Loose Reads Kiran spoke about the locally produced and beautifully crafted Dirt by Gemma Walsh and Katie Kerr. Not your average cookbook, Dirt is experimental and brings together delicious plant-based recipes paired with poems, writing, and conversations with local writers and thinkers. It would make a lovely gift!"
Listen to the segment
'Alternative Routes: An interview with Katie Kerr’, Design Assembly
"The editorial aspect of my work is quite poetic in nature, but aesthetically, my research revolves around intensive investigation into paperback book design... In opposition to the breadth of output produced in a commercial design practice, I focus on a single format, hoping to gain some form of tacit knowledge through the act of designing with craft-like repetition."
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'A Trip to the Bauhaus: Reflecting on a century of women in design', Designers Speak (Up)
"When Walter Gropius opened the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, in 1919, he announced that the school would be open to “any person of good reputation, regardless of age or sex”. Women, who had previously been refined to art education at home with tutors, applied en masse, far outnumbering the applications of their male counterparts."
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'Sexier in Print: GLORIA and hard press', Lana Lopesi, The Pantograph Punch
"With a very different approach to art publishing, GLORIA joins hard press who together seem to form a new generation of arts presses. Picking up on the energy of places like Clouds and split/fountain, GLORIA and hard press are exciting new voices which have joined the ecology. With different approaches and design aesthetics they are collectively reminding us how every publication in of itself is whole. An exciting revitalisation of this underappreciated art form."
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'Katie Kerr: Neither here nor there', Hannah Mackintosh, The Big Idea
"Through this publication, Katie has begun to explore the individuality of the migratory experience. It speaks to the lack of personal experiences amongst a global media that is saturated with stories on migration.... Between Two Strangers offers a small but vital contribution to a larger broadening of how we talk about migration."
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'An interview with GLORIA', Janie Cameron, Debate Magazine
"Due to algorithms, our ability to access unexpected digital content has become narrower. The bookstore becomes one of the few places where this is disrupted – where you can find content that wasn’t chosen for you by a computer. But of course, bookstores are under threat, as is publishing, and the industry has huge pressure to put books on shelves that the public will buy. GLORIA wasn’t launched to make money (it’s more likely to do the opposite), but we believe it’s important to offer an alternative to commercially-led art and photography publications."
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