Author: Robyn

Art, Art, Art!

So, right now there’s a whole lot of real­ly good stuff being exhib­it­ed in Welling­ton’s gal­leries.

City Gallery

After the huge­ly suc­cess­ful Yay­oi Kusama exhi­bi­tion turned the gallery into a mag­i­cal won­der­land, the main gallery space has now been giv­en over to three also won­der­ful artists.

More after the jump. 

Hello, Kitties

You know there’s that cat you see on the way to the bus stop — the one that rolls around on the foot­path and lets you tick­le his bel­ly, and you’ve nick­named him Cap­tain Choi­cepants? Well, that’s a neigh­bour­hood cat.

Inspired by the Neigh­bour Cats zines, Petra Jane has cre­at­ed a pub­lic Google map of neigh­bour­hood cats around Welling­ton and beyond.

So if there’s a fur­ry rogue in your ‘hood, add it to the map!

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UPDATE: The Neigh­bour­hood Cats map has been shut down. Could this be to foil poten­tial cat­nap­pers? Oh well — you’ll just have to cre­ate a map in your mind.

Wellywood Sign Generator

The Welly­wood sign madness/awesomeness con­tin­ues!

Auck­lan­der Edward from has cre­at­ed the Welly­wood Sign Gen­er­a­tor.

This is a crop of my attempt, where I have added a help­ful “lol” to explain that the sign is a “send-up” and a “tongue-in-cheek play” on the Hol­ly­wood sign.

Hooray for Wellywood

Every­one knows that while Welling­ton has a world-class, award-win­ning film pro­duc­tion indus­try, it’s been sore­ly lack­ing one seri­ous thing: a giant sign pro­claim­ing WELLYWOOD.

Well, our prayers have been answered! By June a giant WELLYWOOD sign will be erect­ed in the hills of Mira­mar, and will serve as a visu­al dis­trac­tion for pas­sen­gers suf­fer­ing a bumpy approach to the air­port.

Quot­ed in the Dom Post, May­or Ker­ry sez:

“The sign will be one of the first things peo­ple will see when they arrive in Welling­ton. They will be left in no doubt that this is the heart and soul of New Zealand’s film indus­try.”

Unless you make the approach from the Lyall Bay end of the run­way. In which case, you will be left think­ing you’ve just arrived in Welling­ton, not the world cen­tre of the film-mak­ing uni­verse.

Oh, I sup­pose I should­n’t mock it. After all, the Hol­ly­wood sign turned that small Los Ange­les vil­lage into a film-mak­ing cen­tre sec­ond only to Welling­ton.

And, to be fair, it’s a lit­tle embarass­ing that Mos­giel has a giant sign in the hills but Welling­ton does­n’t yet.

Ignite Wellington

Next Tues­day, 2 March, sees the very first Ignite evening in Welling­ton, 6.30 at the Para­mount The­atre.

Ignite is sim­i­lar in for­mat to Pecha Kucha evenings. With Ignite, the speak­ers have five min­utes each to deliv­er 20 slides, at 15 sec­onds per slide. This con­straint will (hope­ful­ly) unleash creav­i­ty and caus­es audi­ences brains to ignite with inspi­ra­tion. Or some­thing like that.

The line-up so far has some­thing for every­one:

James Everett — Design for Play
Mike Brown — Cycling across Amer­i­ca
Tim McNa­ma­ra — Kiwis help­ing Haiti (& more!)
Lenz Gschwendt­ner — Real­is­ing your ideas
Julia Hold­er­ness — Venice Bien­ni­al
Dave Moskovitz — The music indus­try
Mark Har­ris — ACTA — We *could* tell you, but we’d have to kill you
Dave ten Have — Noth­ing to fear, but fear
Melis­sa Clark-Reynolds
Sarah Harpur
David Ritchie

Find out more at the Ignite web­site. Admis­sion is free, but make sure you reg­is­ter if you want to go. It’s going to be a good one.

The art of the panhandle

The “Excuse Me” guy aside, Welling­ton does­n’t see all that many pan­han­dlers around. But recent­ly, a fel­low has tak­en up in the door­way of the old Unit­ed Video on Courte­nay Place, with a sign advis­ing passers­by by that he’s look­ing for mon­ey for a trip to Auck­land.

What lies in this gold­en land is uncer­tain. When I passed by the spot tonight, he was nowhere to be seen, but some­one had made this sign:

A gueril­la art project? A clever anti-pan­han­dling mea­sure? Or per­haps this will become a new tourist attrac­tion — get your pho­to tak­en look­ing for­lorn under the sign, and maybe one day you too will make it to Auck­land.

Boganwatch

AC/DC — the great­est band on the plan­et — are play­ing in Welling­ton tonight and Sat­ur­day on the Black Ice tour, and the city has been over­run by bogans, glo­ri­ous bogans.

Stuff reports on the inva­sion, includ­ing a quote from one fan who reck­ons, “I’d say every bogan from around the coun­try will be there.”

Mean­while, the arrival of our black-T-shirt­ed brethren has not gone unno­ticed on Twit­ter:

@CUSTOMSBREWBAR ghuznee street is crawl­ing with old bogans… so many black jeans and met­al tshirts! “Throw your goats up”

@meganhuddleston There are a ridicu­lous num­ber of bogans in town. THUNDER!

@bnolan Lol at all the bogans out­side. It’s awe­some how you can just tell they’re going to ACDC. Super nice peo­ple so far too! Rock on! #acdc #wlg

@Narelle_NZ Saw at least 15 bogans and 2 mini-bogans on the way to get lunch #acdc #welling­ton

@bradgallen Today welling­ton = So. Many. Bogans…

@missannajane The black holey jumpers and ACDC t‑shirts are out en force on the streets of Welling­ton. Appar­ent­ly, bogans drink Star­bucks.

We wel­come any com­ments or obser­va­tions of the bogan inva­sion. Man, Welling­ton is gonna go off this week­end!