Ex Libris

Sam Hartnett

Exhibition at Object Space

13 Rose Road, Ponsonby, Auckland

24 November 2018 - 3 February 2019

Publication: Ex Libris: Regarding Three Libraries

Photographs by Sam Hartnett. Edited by Anna Miles and Lucy Treep

Celebrating three specialist, purpose-designed and soon to be closed University of Auckland libraries. Photography by Samuel Hartnett, publication edited by Anna Miles and Lucy Treep.

The Ex Libris exhibition and publication celebrate three specialist University of Auckland libraries designed as purpose-built learning environments to support education and scholarship in the creative arts. In June 2018 the University of Auckland Vice-Chancellor announced that these libraries would close and their collections would be consolidated within the General Library on Alfred Street. In this process, 45 full-time library staff will lose their jobs. The Elam School of Fine Arts, The School of Architecture & Planning and the School of Music & Dance will lose architecturally-designed libraries adjacent to their teaching spaces.

Photographer, Samuel Hartnett was approached to make a record of the three libraries. Ex Libris: Regarding Three Libraries, the publication that accompanies his exhibition reflects these places of “eureka discoveries and infinite possibilities,” including a history of each library, record of the specialist librarians who have tended them, and the action by current students in response to the imminent loss of these spaces. The contributors are Sait Akkirman, Rachel Ashby, Kathryn Aucamp, Sebastian Clarke, Warren Drake, Elena Lochore-Ward, Anna Miles, Victoria Passau, Nova Paul, Tim Sumner, Lucy Treep, Brian Flaherty, Raukura Turei, Stephen Turner, Linda Tyler and Jane Wild.

Read essay by Lucy Treep

The closure of a specialist architecture library reminds us of its great impact

Noted, 23 November, 2018

Review by John Hurrell for EyeContact: 7 December, 2018

“In his twelve images, each framed tightly, simply and austerely with stained wood, Hartnett is a bit like Sherlock Holmes, using his eagle eye to seek out clues or forensic traces of the behaviour of absent users or staff, scrutinising each scene for material evidence of how the space functioned, looking for details—explained in the image titles which talk of bodily traces—most of us would miss”. Read full review on the Eyecontact site.