Author: stephen clover

Xpressway To Yr Skull

X Way Vision is a video of live per­for­mances by artists from the Dunedin-based Xpress­way record label. Per­form­ing artists include The Dead C, Alas­tair Gal­braith, Pla­gal Grind, Chris Hea­zle­wood & Greg Cairns, Shayne Carter, and Chug.

Screen­ing at the Film Archive, Wednes­day 27 May at 7pm. Tick­ets $8/6 con­ces­sion.

[Read more after the jump]

Works on Paper

The win­dow at Bowen Gal­leries in Ghuznee Street is often choc­ka with all sorts of inter­est­ing tid­bits of visu­al art, and right now is no excep­tion with the Works On Paper “group-show”.

Works On Paper fea­tures a selec­tion of fan­tas­tic prints and draw­ings on paper by a num­ber of artists: amongst them Kim Pieters, Greg O’Brien, Chris Salmon, Euan Mac­Cleod, and…

Metaphor­i­cal Prox­im­i­ty (Ota­go), 2006 by Reg Mom­bas­sa!

Go Bus Wants No Big Guts

I could scarce­ly believe my eyes when I saw this today, down by the Ceno­taph:

Could it be true?

Can’t quite read it?  No wor­ries, there’s a zoomed-in ver­sion after the jump…

Grouper (US), Pumice, seht

Pumice and Grouper are play­ing at Hap­py on Sat­ur­day night, with local sup­port from seht (yesh, moi). It’s gonna be a great show. 

Grouper (Liz Har­ris from the U.S.A.) has put out (at least) 4 incred­i­ble, beau­ti­ful albums* in the last few years, and appar­ent­ly her live shows leave the records in the dust.

more after the jump…

Where you stay?

TVNZ has com­mis­sioned Wayne Youle to orches­trate an art work for an upcom­ing episode of New Art­land (host­ed by Chris Knox). Wayne’s idea for the work fol­lows on from his recent focus on New Zealand iden­ti­ty and the con­cept of turan­gawae­wae, which while specif­i­cal­ly relat­ed to Maori is a uni­ver­sal idea. We all as New Zealan­ders have a place or places that we link to phys­i­cal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly.

more after the jump…

EGO, The Musician as Artist

The link between local musi­cians and the “fine arts” is stronger than you may sus­pect and goes back sev­er­al decades in this town.  Often, through neces­si­ty, DIY musi­cians need to head into new ter­ri­to­ries to pro­duce their own art­work, as they lack the funds to out­source design work. The result­ing art­work, e.g. CD art­work and posters, is a genre in its own right.

Until its recent clo­sure, Christo­pher Moore gallery seemed to have rep­re­sen­ta­tion for every­one from Alis­tair Gal­braith to Stu­art Porter; the adja­cent Bowen Gal­leries still occa­sion­al­ly shows work by Kim Pieters and Susan Bal­lard from down south.  Oth­er col­lab­o­ra­tive efforts had the famous Welling­ton Media Col­lec­tive design­ing and pro­duc­ing posters for the Braille Records crew.

Now DAF106 gallery on Aro Street is run­ning a show of musi­cian self-por­traits.  EGO, The Musi­cian as Artist delib­er­ate­ly explores the way cre­ative peo­ple express them­selves through dif­fer­ent art forms.  EGO will draw togeth­er a host of local and nation­al musi­cians, who are also visu­al artists, as they lay their souls bare and present a self-por­trait in their cho­sen medi­um.

Self-por­traits cause the artists to think lat­er­al­ly about their work and the dif­fer­ence between per­for­mance and visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the self.  Sub­mis­sions may include paint­ing, graph­ic art, mul­ti-media, pho­tog­ra­phy and sculp­ture. Size restric­tions will apply so as to avoid the pos­si­bil­i­ty of var­i­ous egos bat­tling for space.

When you discover the irrefutable truth about demons can you still survive?

Hal­loween approach­es and what bet­ter way to cel­e­brate than to scare your­self shit­less watch­ing what’s rumoured to be the scari­est movie ever pro­duced in this coun­try? Yep, the Welling­ton­ista Film Sea­son at the Film Archive con­tin­ues at 7pm on Wednes­day the 29th Octo­ber with Glenn Stan­dring’s noto­ri­ous The Irrefutable Truth About Demons.

The Irrefutable Truth About Demons (offi­cial site) cen­tres on Dr Har­ry Bal­lard (Karl Urban), a Uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­er who has become obsessed with expos­ing cults since the recent death of his broth­er. “The sto­ry unfolds,” explains Stan­dring, “when Har­ry is attacked by this hor­ri­ble cult, at which point he has to try and work out whether there is just a weird cult chas­ing him, or whether, there are in fact demons. So he goes through a whole real­i­ty shift that he’d nev­er con­sid­ered before — embark­ing on a jour­ney to dis­cov­er the irrefutable truth.”

More (includ­ing a 7 minute doc­u­men­tary video) after the jump…

Samurai Store Coming

Almost in order to prove that rumours of the death of gen­uine, good qual­i­ty music retail­ers in this coun­try have been great­ly exag­ger­at­ed, on Novem­ber 6 Welling­ton will have a new spe­cial­ist music retail store. Samu­rai Store will be the retail exten­sion to the long stand­ing Samu­rai Dis­tri­b­u­tion and the recent­ly estab­lished ‘Samu­rai Music’ record label.

Owned and oper­at­ed by Geoff Wright (aka DJ Pre­sha) with the assis­tance of Dar­ryl McGown (aka D Dog from ‘Bass Fron­tiers’), Samu­rai Store will spe­cialise in Drum and Bass, Dub­step, and Breaks vinyl, CDs, and a rage of relat­ed mer­chan­dise. The store will also be stock­ing oth­er forms of elec­tron­ic music and sell­ing event tick­ets.

Welling­ton has not had a spe­cial­ist store like this for many years, and with the knowl­edge and com­bined busi­ness expe­ri­ence going into the cre­ation of this vinyl buy­ers par­adise, Samu­rai Store will be an excit­ing addi­tion to the cap­i­tal city’s music retail enti­ties.

Samu­rai Store [from 6 Nov 2008]
151 Willis Street [near that weird place where Turn­er’s Steak­house was]
Welling­ton 6011
Phone: 04–3842145  Fax: 04–3843646
email: info@samuraistore.co.nz
 

Anti-racism rally and picnic

Remem­ber a few years ago when a bunch of punks dressed up as fairies chased the Nation­al Front guys around the Rail­way Sta­tion beat­ing them up?  LOLara­ma.  Any­how…

Anti-racism activists will be hold­ing a ral­ly and pic­nic at the Welling­ton Ceno­taph at 10am on Sat­ur­day Octo­ber 25. The ral­ly and pic­nic is in oppo­si­tion to plans to hold a “Flag Day” ral­ly by the “Nation­al­ist Alliance”, a coali­tion com­pris­ing the Nation­al Front, New Right and Nation­al Democ­rats. 

More about these ass­hats after the jump.…

Kingpin: There Can Be Only One

The Welling­ton­ista sea­son of NZ fea­ture films con­tin­ues this Wednes­day with King­pin (1985), the pre­de­ces­sor to last week’s film Mark II.

Star­ring much the same cast but with the addi­tion of the won­der­ful and great­ly-missed Wi Kuki Kaa, King­pin tells the sto­ry of a provin­cial borstal: a world where only the strong sur­vive and The King­pin is the biggest, the mean­est, the tough­est, the boss. And, there can be only one.

Tick­ets $8 or $6 con­ces­sion — which includes a com­pli­men­ta­ry glass of wine (with ID) unless you can tell us which Hol­ly­wood block­buster pinched its tagline from King­pin, and we’ll give you a dou­ble pass. Film com­mences 7pm.

More details on The Film Archive’s web­site…

Some YouTube clip good­ies after the jump!