Author: Tom

Spotacular

You’d have to have been liv­ing under a rock (by which I mean “not been in Civic Square for the last cou­ple of weeks”) not to have noticed the out­break of spots all over the City Gallery. It’s an instal­la­tion by Yay­oi Kusama to pub­li­cise her Mir­rored Years exhi­bi­tion, which is a show­piece for the new­ly revamped and extend­ed gallery.

After near­ly a year of clo­sure, the gallery is cel­e­brat­ing its relaunch with the Gallery-a-Go-Go event in Civic Square this Sun­day. While many will be most excit­ed by the return of Nikau café (which reopened a week or so ago) and its famous kedgeree, there are a whole lot of new gallery spaces to explore after the expan­sion. There’s the brand new Rod­er­ick and Gillian Deane Gallery of M?ori and Pacif­ic Art, which will host Ngaahi­na Hoha­ia’s Par­i­ha­ka-themed work; a new Adam Audi­to­ri­um; and a much larg­er Michael Hirschfeld Gallery. The open­ing exhi­bi­tion there will be the huge instal­la­tion Make Way by Regan Gen­try, a Welling­ton artist best known for his large-scale pub­lic sculp­tures explor­ing pub­lic space and urban change.

[more after the jump]

Shock horror! Ranfurly Shield generates excitement!

There was proof today that provin­cial rug­by can still actu­al­ly get puls­es rac­ing: it just requires a giant inflat­able Log o’ Wood and a typ­i­cal Welling­ton day. Some sort of pro­mo­tion was going on in Civic Square, when a cheeky gust did what [insert name of provin­cial team that you actu­al­ly give a mon­key’s about] has always longed to do: grabbed the Ran­furly Shield and whisked it away.

For some rea­son, there were only mod­est crowds to be endan­gered by the maraud­ing tro­phy. Oth­er than a macabre­ly gal­lows-like struc­ture for a “test your pass­ing skills” game, the only vic­tims appear to have been a moth­er and child who were bowled over, and with any luck just momen­tar­i­ly dazed.

Luck­i­ly, there was a smat­ter­ing of oth­er passers-by ready to rush in and help sub­due the quiv­er­ing giant beast. If only the actu­al rug­by were this excit­ing!

Remembering Dr Seddon Bennington

Quite apart from the work he did at Te Papa, Dr Sed­don Ben­ning­ton was some­one who will be remem­bered by many Welling­to­ni­ans, both per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly. I met him a cou­ple of times through the Civic Trust, and was always impressed with his charm and intel­li­gence.

His funer­al will be at Ron­go­maraeroa (Te Papa’s marae) on Wednes­day after­noon and his cas­ket will be brought onto the marae on Tues­day 21st July at 4pm. Those wish­ing to pay their respects will be able to do so until 10pm that night. Dr Ben­ning­ton will remain on the marae overnight until the con­clu­sion of the funer­al ser­vice on Wednes­day, and there is also a memo­r­i­al book to sign on Lev­el 2 of Te Papa.

Whare ’nuff

This Thurs­day the 18th of June, Dei­dre Brown’s “Maori Archi­tec­ture: from Fale to Wharenui and Beyond” will be launched at the School of Archi­tec­ture in Vivian St.

The cel­e­bra­tions will start with a mihi at 5:45pm, fol­lowed by a lec­ture at 6 and drinks at 7. If you’re inter­est­ed, please con­tact Chris­tine McCarthy (04 463 6164 or christine.mccarthy@vuw.ac.nz) to RSVP before the end of tomor­row (the 16th).

Censor this!

I’m sure most Welling­ton­istas would agree that Aro Video is the best video hire place in town, so when our sub­scriber newslet­ter includ­ed the head­ing “We inter­rupt our reg­u­lar pro­gram for this impor­tant announce­ment…” we could­n’t ignore it, and in fact we felt it was our duty to pass on this impor­tant mes­sage:

CAMPAIGN FOR CENSORSHIP REFORM

We are spear­head­ing a cam­paign for cen­sor­ship reform and are call­ing upon the sup­port of our val­ued cus­tomers and the wider film-lov­ing pub­lic.

We believe that the cur­rent leg­is­la­tion is seri­ous­ly out­dat­ed and unfair­ly dis­ad­van­tages the medi­um of DVD. As such, it has severe­ly impact­ed on what titles can be made avail­able for rent, sale or trade with­in New Zealand.

The main rea­son for this are the ‘pro­hib­i­tive’ costs of clas­si­fi­ca­tion fees, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the cri­te­ria for which titles are sub­ject­ed to the cost­ly exam­i­na­tion process. For exam­ple, it would cost over $2200 to clas­si­fy the high­ly acclaimed orig­i­nal BBC mini-series of “State of Play” (the Hol­ly­wood remake of which is cur­rent­ly play­ing in cin­e­mas).

This cam­paign is not “anti-cen­sor­ship” but we insist that the cur­rent lev­els of reg­u­la­tion are no longer appro­pri­ate for today’s media and cul­tur­al envi­ron­ment. We sim­ply would like to be able to pro­vide you with a greater range of qual­i­ty enter­tain­ment, and help elim­i­nate the ridicu­lous dou­ble-stan­dards that cur­rent­ly pre­vail.

For more infor­ma­tion, please vis­it our online forum at www.lumiere.net.nz/censorship-reform, where you can also reg­is­ter your sup­port, com­ments and sug­ges­tions.

Also, if you know of oth­ers that would be inter­est­ed in this cause, please pass on this e‑mail or the forum address, or spread the word by Facebook/Twitter, etc.

A seri­ous “show of hands” will make a dif­fer­ence, so don’t be shy! Thank you for your sup­port.

Kind regards,

Andrew Armitage
pro­pri­etor
AroVideo Online

A week of it

What a week to look for­ward to!

Tues­day 9th: Pecha Kucha at the OPT from 6:30pm. We love these nights, and this time they’ve got writ­ers, artists, car­toon­ists and land­scape archi­tects (among oth­ers) in the line-up. Those with a prac­ti­cal inter­est in street art might have to rush there from the At Large plan­ning meet­ing at Manky Chops, which starts at 5:30.

Wednes­day 10th: Artist Matt Hunt (aka Ace Hurt from Corti­na) launch­es his new exhi­bi­tion at Peter McLeavey gallery at 5:30pm (link for Face­book types). The title “Dream­ing of a New Heav­en and Earth and the Eter­nal Night­mare of Hades” makes one won­der just what to expect from the after-par­ty at Mighty Mighty.

Thurs­day 11th: Did some­one say “Bur­lesque”? Oh, right, we did.

Fri­day 12th: If you’re plan­ning to go to Fly My Pret­ties, you’ll no doubt have had this night booked well in advance. Oth­er­wise: it’s Fri­day! Enivrez-vous!

Sat­ur­day 13th: More fly­ing pret­ti­ness, with a Mati­nee as well as the evening gig. But if you pre­fer your pret­ties more earth­bound, and think that feath­ers are best used for fan danc­ing, bring your pen­cils along to Dr Sketchy’s life draw­ing class at Mighty Mighty at 4pm.

Sun­day 14th: The much-hyped City Mar­ket final­ly opens at Chaf­fers Dock. The hours (8:30am-12:30pm) might not appeal to night owls, but their Twit­ter feed sug­gests that there’ll be plen­ty to tempt us out of bed.

Earthly

We Welling­ton­istas have been strong sup­port­ers of Earth Hour in the past, and even though Kei­th Ng gave it a damned good fisk­ing over on Pub­lic Address, we’re still behind the con­cept. And so, it seems, are a lot of local bars and restau­rants, with Welling­ton­ista favourites Fidels, Sweet Mother’s Kitchen, the South­ern Cross, Caffe
Ital­iano and Trade Kitchen among the many places offer­ing can­delit din­ners on Sat­ur­day night. We just hope it does­n’t make those poor, frag­ile roller girls crash into one anoth­er*.

Kei­th’s right that the actu­al ener­gy saved in an hour will be min­i­mal, and the pow­ers (no pun intend­ed) that be are unlike­ly to be swayed by the sym­bol­ism, but that need­n’t make it an emp­ty ges­ture. If it helps a few peo­ple under­stand the impact of their deci­sions, and look for prac­ti­cal options to save ener­gy in the long term, then it will do some good. Kei­th points out that switch­ing to low-ener­gy light bulbs is, for most appli­ca­tions, a sim­ple and sen­si­ble thing to do right now. So it’s just as well that as part of the Earth Hour pro­mo­tion, Welling­ton City Library is giv­ing away free CFL bulbs until Sat­ur­day.

[*not real­ly]

Heavenly Navigation

Fuse Cir­cus have joined The Fringe with The Nav­i­ga­tors, a new out­door show under the sails at Queens Wharf.

If you haven’t seen their pre­vi­ous shows, Heav­en­ly Bur­lesque or Grav­i­ty and Oth­er Myths, then get down there right now! If you have, then while a few of the moves may be famil­iar, it’s still won­der­ful enter­tain­ment. The “nar­ra­tive” may be lit­tle more than an flim­sy frame­work from which to sus­pend yet more bio­phys­i­cal impos­si­bil­i­ties, and there’s a touch of pan­tomime goofi­ness that detracts slight­ly from the inher­ent hot­ness, but there will still be plen­ty to make you gasp, laugh and won­der.

As some­one who some­times strug­gles to stand upright in the morn­ing, let alone bal­ance sev­er­al peo­ple on one’s limbs while doing so, these guys will always be a source of amaze­ment. They per­form most evenings until Sat­ur­day the 7th of March, so you have no excuse for miss­ing them.

Cuba Street Carnival at a glance

We love the Cuba Street Car­ni­val, but their web­site: not so much. The pro­gramme is only avail­able as a Flashy map or as a print­able (but not down­load­able!) full pro­gramme. And with so much stuff to see so many stages at once, it’s hard to com­pare every­thing and work out what to see when.

So, I typed all the acts into a spread­sheet, and turned it into a sim­ple table with all the acts lined up by time, thus hope­ful­ly mak­ing it eas­i­er to plan your itin­er­ary. I should find a way to upload it through some goo­gly docs mag­ic, but in the mean­time, here it is in pngy good­ness: click on the small image for the large and leg­i­ble ver­sion.