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.