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!