Author: kowhai

Lunchtime Willis Wander

If you are work­ing near Willis Street today you could use your lunch hour to sam­ple two very dif­fer­ent exhi­bi­tions.

The Japan­ese Embassy on Lev­el 18 and 19 of the Mages­tic Cen­tre on 100 Willis Street is always worth a vis­it to give you that thrill of sur­vey­ing the city from the floor to ceil­ing glass win­dows of a shiny tall build­ing.

Today is the last day of the a pho­tog­ra­phy exhi­bi­tion at the Japan­ese embassy, Gaz­ing at the Con­tem­po­rary World: Japan­ese Pho­tog­ra­phy from the 1970s to the Present.

Cross­ing the road you can vis­it a sound instal­la­tion that has been set up in vacant com­mer­cial space at 141 Willis Street.  Pop­u­lar Arche­ol­o­gy: A Sound Archive is one part of larg­er project called Let­ting Space that is look­ing pret­ty excit­ing.

Pop­u­lar Arche­ol­o­gy is focused on redun­dant tech­nol­o­gy and is con­struct­ed with a vari­ety of tape decks play­ing tape loops of dis­in­te­grat­ing frag­ments of New Zealand sin­gles that made the top 10 between 1967 and 1994 in a wall of sound com­pris­ing over 30 tape play­ers.  You have until 9 May to catch this show but it would make a nice jux­ta­po­si­tion with the show across the road for today only.

I’m a Slave for you

Any­one remem­ber this guy? The self-same enter­pris­ing young man has been seen with an assort­ment of HI-VIZ clad work­er types, some wait­ers and a gui­tar stum­ming up inter­est in an event rather shock­ing­ly enti­tled: “the Welling­ton Char­i­ty SLAVE AUCTION”.  Don’t wor­ry folks, it is all above board and for a damn good cause.  Tomor­row at Queens Wharf Square busi­ness­es will be donat­ing ser­vices (and prod­ucts) that will be auc­tioned off to ben­e­fit the Sky­light Trust. 

A sam­ple of the ser­vices on offer:

• $1000 Pyrotech­nics / fire­works dis­play
• 6 hours of top-rate nan­ny ser­vices
• 2 x male wait­ers for 2 hours
• 16 hours build­ing / land­scape work
• $700 Beau­ty spa treat­ment

A sam­ple of the prod­ucts on offer (start from $5):

• $300 bas­ket of GHD prod­ucts
• $100 wine from Te Kairan­ga 
• 3 month Domin­ion Post sub­scrip­tion 

Enter­tain­ment will be pro­vid­ed by Sasha Vee so if you feel like open­ing your wal­let for a good cause get on down from 11.00am until 1.30pm.

Check out the full list of what is on offer here.

Help is Coming

Stone in the bosom

Shi­no­bi Sushi Lounge is hav­ing two spe­cial kaise­ki nights Mon­day and Tues­day this week.  Tues­day is ful­ly booked and Mon­day has less than ten places left so if a bloody amaz­ing 3 course feast fea­tur­ing 18 dish­es using only fresh local ingre­di­ents appeals BOOK NOW.

We sam­pled a few of the bluff oys­ters that will be on the menu and saw the mas­ter hand­mak­ing ramen for the occas­sion.  It is going to be an event in my mouth I am sure of it.

Oishii so desu.

What: Kaise­ki (mul­ti-course din­ner)

Where: Shi­no­bi Sushi Lounge

When: Mon­day 12 April (tomor­row)

Cost: $80

For more pic­tures from last year’s kaise­ki head over to James Ogle Pho­tog­ra­phy.

Pick of the Fringe by Candlelight

…well the stage itself will be lit up like a Christ­mas tree but the bar and exte­ri­ors will be lit by can­dles for Earth Hour.

 Sat­ur­day is the clos­ing night for Pick of the Fringe at Down­stage, if the whirl of Fringe and the New Zealand Inter­na­tion­al Arts Fes­ti­val has passed you by this year you can still catch two out­stand­ing shows at Down­stage. 

The­atre is an expe­ri­ence to be shared and both shows on offer are real­ly acces­si­ble as well as being ‘Fringe’, so you could take you sis­ter or your boyfriend or your work col­league.  You can see both shows for $40 which is very rea­son­able.

back/words is a piece of doc­u­men­tary the­atre with per­for­mances that focus on being com­plete­ly faith­ful to the source of the sto­ry.  The source being in this case, filmed inter­views with peo­ple that have been loose­ly framed around impor­tant ‘firsts’.  Out of hours and hours of footage they have shaped a the­atre length show full of humor and emo­tion.

Culture Kicks

This Sun­day 28 March there is an inter­na­tion­al cel­e­bra­tion of the beau­ti­ful game going on at Mar­tin Luck­ie Park, Berham­pore 9am — 5pm.

Cul­ture Kicks is a mul­ti eth­nic foot­ball fes­ti­val with five-a-side teams from Welling­ton rep­re­sent­ing coun­tries from around the world bat­tling it out on the pitch for a chance to take home the 2010 tro­phy.

There will be Columbian dancers, African drum­ming, music from Matiu Te Huki and Lion dancers from the Chi­nese Sports and Cul­tur­al Cen­tre.

The day kicks off with Bel­la Kalo­lo singing the New Zealand Nation­al anthem (the woman has some pipes!) and prize giv­ing will be at 3.45pm.

With around 40 teams rep­re­sent­ing over 20 coun­tries you don’t have to pick just one team to sup­port.  A few team names to give you the flavour of the day: Havana Hus­tlers, Tar­tan Army, Uni­ty Arabs, Soma­li Eagles, Los Deca­dentes, Kore­an White Angels, West African Kiwis. 

There will be healthy food­stuffs on offer from the Hari Krish­nas, so all you need are your chants and some sun­block (well let’s face it, you should prob­a­bly bring a rain­coat too, this is Welling­ton after all). 

Night Noms

Any­one who has been down to the water­front this week would have seen a large rusty barge parked in the lagoon and a bunch of scaf­fold­ing and mar­quees going up.  You may well be won­der­ing,  “what the hell is all of this in aid of?”

Well gen­tle read­er, today for one day only, the area around the lagoon and Frank Kitts Park is being trans­formed into a slice of Asia (well about 10 or so slices of Asia) for the South­east Asian Night Mar­ket.  The mar­ket opens with a can­non blast at 4pm and fin­ish­es up at 10pm.

This is only the sec­ond time the mar­ket has been held in Welly, and the big dif­fer­ence is this time they are cook­ing with gas, out­side, live and direct.  Last time it was held in the TSB are­na and lines snaked across Queens Wharf for hours so pre­pare your­self for Cuba Car­ni­val style crush.  Get in amon­st the sights, sounds, smells and not for­get­ting for a sec­ond, the FLAVOURS of a real deal night mar­ket.  Yes, I did just use caps.  I know that is bad man­ners but I have seen the menus on offer and I have to say both “whaaa?” and “nom” in equal mea­sure, which is exact­ly as it should be.

Pro­gramme details and high­lights after the jump:

Pasifika Cancelled (but Newtown gets all the taro)

Pasi­fi­ka was can­celled this morn­ing due to high winds mak­ing it unsafe for per­fomers and stall hold­ers.  Safe­ty first eh.

So no Cindy of Samoa or Yan­dall Sis­ters and tasty food for us.

Well actu­al­ly, I think you will find that if you head to a cer­tain Pasif­ic Island Com­mu­ni­ty Church in New­town you will find the food and the odd act has relo­cat­ed (rumor has it that the Yan­dall Sis­ters are keen to belt out a few tunes).

A group of stall hold­ers from the Cook Islands have flown over espe­cial­ly so if any­one knows of some­where they can sell their wares tomor­row let us know in the com­ments.  They would real­ly appre­ci­ate it.

Unicon XV — Last chance to check it out

The Uni­con XV has been in town since the 28th of Decem­ber, with one wheel­ers dec­o­rat­ing the water­front and what feels like the whole damn inner-city, sav­ing us from that ghost town feel over the hol­i­day peri­od.  The Welling­ton flickr pool and the papers have been packed with pho­tos of the action.  There is some­thing pret­ty pho­to­genic about the sheer range of uni­cy­cle enthu­si­asts of all nation­al­i­ties that have decend­ed on our fair (but windy) city.

Today is your last chance to check out the action, the Best Trick Con­test will be held out­side Mac’s Brew­ery Bar at 2.00pm weath­er per­mit­ting.  

See you down there.  

Kora and Strike Percussion — A Collaboration of Sound

Syd­ney Fes­ti­val : Kora @ Becks Bar, Hyde Park Bar­racks Muse­um — 19th Jan­u­ary, 2008 (Pho­to © 2008, Joel Court­ney)

Bloody hell this is going to be intense!  One show only this Fri­day.

Last time I saw Kora play I was in field at Par­i­ha­ka and the earth moved, in fact the earth pos­si­bly got packed down too hard to grow grass for awhile, due to hun­dreds of peo­ple jump­ing and writhing in uni­son.  Way to freak the sheep man.

More after the jump.