Gallery's Little Books of Art series wins award

Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū has scored an award and a commendation at the Museums Australia Publication Design Awards.

The awards honour excellence and quality in the design of publications and multimedia produced for the museums sector in Australia and New Zealand.

The Gallery’s big winner on the night was in the Book category for its Little Books of Art series.

It is yet another award for designer Aaron Beehre, who has created a series of books that feature high-quality reproductions of favourite artworks from Christchurch Art Gallery’s collection, with each book in the series curated to a different theme – portraits, sunlight, houses and Ōtautahi Christchurch.

“We’re really proud to have another award-winning publication under our belt,” says the Gallery’s Publications Co-ordinator Sarah Pepperle, whose own book Art-tastic, also designed by Beehre, won the Best First Book Award and the Elsie Locke Award for Non-Fiction at the 2019 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.

“As the judges said, the Little Books of Art series is very collectible, and if you want to see what all the fuss is about we have the whole set available in The Design Store at the Gallery. They make for colourful gifts and open you up to a whole new way of seeing what Christchurch Art Gallery has to offer.”

Aaron Beehre is a senior lecturer in design at the University of Canterbury’s Ilam School of Fine Arts.

The Gallery also received a ‘highly commended’ in the Exhibition Catalogue Small category for Brent Harris: Towards the Swamp, which showcased the darkly elegant paintings and prints featured in Harris’ first solo exhibition in a New Zealand public gallery, which ran from November 2019 to February 2020.

“There’s a lot of competition in New Zealand and Australia, and we’re honoured to be holding our own in such esteemed company with some really thoughtful, attractive publications,” Ms Pepperle says.