RAMP PRESS

Ramp Press is a new and dynamic art-house publisher that aims to develop a diverse range of research projects from the creative industries and is the publication arm of CCI. Since its establishment, Ramp Press has launched a range of publications including contemporary art catalogues, documentary photography books, and groove music. 

LAKE OF COAL

Short-listed for the Montana Book Awards 2007 

Co-published by Craig Potton Publishing & Ramp Press

Lake of Coal: the Disappearance of a Mining Township, tells the story of Rotowaro, a former mining township on the Waikato coalfields, west of Huntly. Rotowaro was originally located in the path of an opencast mine, but was entirely removed in the late 1980s. The book tells the story of the destruction of the community.

“Houses being busted down left, right and centre. It was a strange feeling to have witnessed it all from the start to the finish. Rotowaro as we knew it was beginning to change forever. All that was being left for us was its memories.”  Taniwha Williams, former Rotowaro resident

This groundbreaking book is a complex weave of photographs and text, a multi-layered work of social history that tells the story of Rotowaro from the point of view of the tangata whenua, the workers, their families, management and the photographer himself.

A 20 year photo-documentary project by New Zealand photographer David Cook who first visited Rotowaro in 1984, commissioned by the Waikato Museum to photograph regional mining activities, I encountered a village of 400 mine workers and their families. The residents knew that the vast reserve of coal underlying their streets was earmarked for a new opencast mining operation. Over the next three years the village was evacuated and every building removed. I documented this period of upheaval and continued to photograph the “Rotowaro Township Mine” up until 2004.

Lake of Coal puts a human face on the economic realities of the late twentieth century and asks: What does coal mining mean on a local level? What happens when a community loses the ground beneath its feet?  “One of the richest photographic investigations of location and ‘place’ that has been carried out in New Zealand.”
Anne Noble

Published by Ramp Press and Craig Potton Publishing, this book has been supported by: The people of Rotowaro, Solid Energy, Wintec, Waikato Museum, Lotteries Heritage Board, Trust Waikato.

Present Surface of Tell

Dane Mitchell

Co-published by The Physics Room and Ramp Press, August 2005.

This publication contains essays by Louise Garrett and Emily Cormack and explores a body of work that was shown at the physics room in Christchurch by Dane Mitchell, one of Wintec’s painting and sculpture tutors.

It is made up of a collection of bas-relief plaster casts that act as synthesised fragments cast from what appears to be an archaeological dig, and a suite of diagrammatic drawings that explore systems and power structures within museums. Present Surface of Tell employs an archaeological model as a way to interpret or disrupt the museological model.


Departure 

 

J. Harry Long

Producer of down-beat groove music, Jason Long is a Waikato-based musician and producer. His debut album Departure explores downbeat, ambient electronica. He creates highly evocative tracks with laidback grooves and richly intricate melodies. The album was produced with help from CCI as part of a post-graduate research project at Wintec.