Photographer John Lake, who we last saw at Toi Poneke with The Rise and Fall of Western Civilisation: Part One, is back at the Toi Poneke Gallery with a new exhibition, this time looking at the Wellington Central candidates in the 2008 general election and their many supporters.
The exhibition consists of portraits of all of last year’s candidates for Wellington Central. These portraits – stripped of all possible connotations by using the same white background and lighting – will line the gallery walls. Photos documenting other parts of the campaign – such as party supporters flanked in party flags, volunteers at work, union rallies and political debates in big halls or even sitting rooms – will also complement the portrait display.
You may have seen the cover of March issue of Metro magazine. Madeleine Sami, hanging off the Sky Tower, looking all glam while holding a miniature Peter Jackson/King Kong. "Auckland rules OK! How Wellington’s losing the cultural wars" the headline reckons.
Wind farms seem like a really good idea. They use wind (a good thing) and they’re a farm (another good thing) so anyone who complains about it should just shut up and think of the polar bears, right?Stephen Fry, actor, author, wit and geek, is on his way to dear sweet Wellington and we are rather excited!
He’s coming to Aotearoa New Zealand to film some bits for a BBC series he’s presenting, Another Chance To See, where he’s travelling the world, checking up on endangered species. While he’s in Wellington, he’ll be visiting the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary to see how the kakapo tuatara are doing (rather well, thank you).
Oh, but this is no ordinary visit by a sleb.
Mr Fry, being a glorious geek, has been utilising the modern powers of the interwebs to document the filming of the series.
He’s been making regular tweets to his Twitter account (and fostered a Twitter community of Fry fans), uploading photos from his iPhone, posting video blogs of his African adventures, and just generally keeping a full and interesting website, documenting his travels.
This is great news for all! Because it means that instead of getting out there and stalking him when he’s in town, you can actually spend that time lying around, drinking yummy Margaritas and keep up with Mr Fry’s adventures with the laptop in your tiki shack, instead of having to go to the effort of getting out and stalking him.
(Of course, if you do happen to see him out and about, let us know!)
We all had a completely brilliant time on Thursday night at the TAWAs!
It was great to see so many of y’all along there, along with the awesome nominees and a few celebrity guests (not that Wellington has any actual celebrities, but, you know…)
Thanks to our fabulous sponsors who gave us swag and prizes
And thanks also to Wellington Central MP Grant Robertson for presenting the Wellingtonian of the Year award, which went to Callum Brown of Green Cabs.
After the awards, we relaxed to the lazy sounds of The Lonesome Cowboy, and then danced up a storm to Bunnies on Ponies, who ended their set with a v. swingorilliant cover of Dire Straits ‘Sultans of Swing’.
It was a super evening, and now that our Friday post-TAWAs fug has worn off, we’re looking forward to the 2009 TAWAs.
All that remains now is to celebrate this year’s winners. We encourage you to support these business and places (in fact, all the nominees are awesome), as they’re all part of why Wellington is such an excellent town.
Te Papa, the natural history museum of New Zealand, is now housing the Colossal Squid.
That’s right, it’s a COLOSSAL SQUID. Squidzilla! Squid-Ra!
It’s become quite a draw card, so of course the Wellingtonista had to check it out.
The Colossal Squid
This lady-squid is housed in a purpose-built tank. Some may find it awe-inspiring, others may find it revolting. The squid has a sort of pinky outer layer of squidskin which is peeling off.
Did you know that squids have a beak like a parrot. Uuggh!
3D AV Squidtacular
Off to the side is a theatrette showing a computer animation of how the squid was accidentally caught by a fishing boat. I know what you’re thinking: "Boring, grandma! I am generation Y or even Z! I don’t use vowels, I have a two second attention span, carry three cellphones and can’t watch a boring old 5 minute video about a squid!"
Well, fortunately Te Papa have taken care of this and made the video in 3D. Yes, so you get to strap on a pair of glasses and watch the Colossal Squid being captured by a fishing boat in 3D. In threeeee-deeeee!
Whoa! Trippy as, man. Etc.
There I was taking a leisurely stroll along Lambton Quay when I happened to glance down Stout Street and suddenly noticed that the street was completely blocked by a giant pile of rubbish!
Goodness crikey me! What enviroterror has spewed on Stout? All is explained after the jump.
Google Maps has today launched Street View for Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch all over New Zealand.
A few months ago, on what looks to have been early in the morning in winter, the Googlemobile drove around the streets of our fair city, photographing the streets.
You can now view these streetscapes as the closest zoom-in on Google Maps. They even made it down Cuba Mall!
Street View in other countries has brought up all sorts of interesting finds, from "Hey, that’s me!" to getting snapped out entering a brothel (though Google say they will blur the faces of anyone who could be identified).
So if you find anything interesting, do share it with us – you might be rewarded with a free ticket to the TAWAs!
Update
Could it be? Is this familiar looking woman at the gate of Premier House its former resident, Helen Clark?
The National Library has joined the Flickr Commons project, whacking up many of their photos on Flickr. At the moment, there’s not much from Wellington, but we’re hoping that will change as more are uploaded.
One particular Wellington delight, however, is a set of photos of a ramshackle house on Cuba Street called the Old Shebang (shebang in this instance means dwelling).
And as well as that, Google are in the process of putting Life magazine’s archive of 10 million photos online. So far, searching for Wellington brings up slim pickings, but it’ll be worth checking back on as the archive grows.
But until then, you can browse Life’s New Zealand photos. Or, um, check out this photo of Madonna looking all cool in 1984.
There’s been a bit of action going on at the old Bucket Fountain, icon of Cuba Street.
First, it mysteriously disappeared:
We initially thought this was a retro ’80s David Copperfield-style magic trick, but it turns out it was just taken down for maintenance.
The fountain returned, with a fresh coat of paint, ready to splash the good folk of Cuba Mall once again.
But then a hand-written sign appeared up the top. It’s not so legible from the street, but zooming in revealed this message:
"Prove your hunter-gatherer skills by finding food in the forest at Te Papa."
Perhaps, with the Current Economic Situation, Te Papa is right to put the emphasis on natural history and away from art.
And if you’d like to escape the misery of modern life, you can now journey back in time to when the Bucket Fountain was first installed in 1969, thanks to the WCC’s The Cuba Street Memories Project.
From this, we learn that the Bucket Fountain was originally nicknamed the Sugar Shovel Fountain and it was painted yellow and black (so 2000s!).