Experienced and written by Mount Maunganui-based writer Kalou Koefoed, Brickell Brac is an illustrated, full-colour 310-page exploration of the creative process, inviting the reader to let go of preconceived ideas of what art can or should be. It gently reminds you that we have only ‘one life babes, make it a good one’, and gives you permission to play, to let go, and to start again.

Inspired in spirit by pioneering New Zealand potter Barry Brickell, the book documents three years of wild artistic adventures carried out by an ever-flexing band of makers across Aotearoa, including Karl Fritsch, Laurie Steer, and Paul Maseyk.

Featuring essays, handwritten fragments, full-colour spreads, and contributions from
participants in this self-proclaimed art movement, the book celebrates collaboration in all its abundance. Lo-fi moments sit beside flashes of clarity. The author’s own wranglings with writing, making, and letting go are woven throughout – not as conclusions, but as process laid bare.

“I didn’t realise how much my self-worth was tied up with my creativity until I was halfway
through writing this book,” says Koefoed. “Brickell Brac has been a huge lesson in letting go of outcomes, of perfection, and learning to create for the sake of creating.”
Writer, artist, and curator Greg O’Brien describes the book as ‘Gnarly magnificence. Brightness, good humour and spirit(s) aplenty.’

It is brickells in your undies, in a cyclone, on Pot Rock at high tide. It’s not the thing, but how.