Author: Tom

Spotacular

You’d have to have been liv­ing under a rock (by which I mean “not been in Civic Square for the last couple of weeks”) not to have noticed the out­break of spots all over the City Gal­lery. It’s an install­a­tion by Yayoi Kusama to pub­li­cise her Mirrored Years exhib­i­tion, which is a showpiece for the newly revamped and exten­ded gal­lery.

After nearly a year of clos­ure, the gal­lery is cel­eb­rat­ing its relaunch with the Gal­lery-a-Go-Go event in Civic Square this Sunday. While many will be most excited by the return of Nikau café (which reopened a week or so ago) and its fam­ous kedgeree, there are a whole lot of new gal­lery spaces to explore after the expan­sion. There’s the brand new Rod­er­ick and Gil­lian Deane Gal­lery of M?ori and Pacific Art, which will host Ngaah­ina Hohai­a’s Pari­haka-themed work; a new Adam Aud­it­or­i­um; and a much lar­ger Michael Hirschfeld Gal­lery. The open­ing exhib­i­tion there will be the huge install­a­tion Make Way by Regan Gentry, a Wel­ling­ton artist best known for his large-scale pub­lic sculp­tures explor­ing pub­lic space and urb­an change.

[more after the jump]

Shock horror! Ranfurly Shield generates excitement!

There was proof today that pro­vin­cial rugby can still actu­ally get pulses racing: it just requires a giant inflat­able Log o’ Wood and a typ­ic­al Wel­ling­ton day. Some sort of pro­mo­tion was going on in Civic Square, when a cheeky gust did what [insert name of pro­vin­cial team that you actu­ally give a mon­key’s about] has always longed to do: grabbed the Ran­furly Shield and whisked it away.

For some reas­on, there were only mod­est crowds to be endangered by the maraud­ing trophy. Oth­er than a macab­rely gal­lows-like struc­ture for a “test your passing skills” game, the only vic­tims appear to have been a moth­er and child who were bowled over, and with any luck just moment­ar­ily dazed.

Luck­ily, there was a smat­ter­ing of oth­er pass­ers-by ready to rush in and help sub­due the quiv­er­ing giant beast. If only the actu­al rugby were this excit­ing!

Remembering Dr Seddon Bennington

Quite apart from the work he did at Te Papa, Dr Sed­don Ben­ning­ton was someone who will be remembered by many Wel­ling­to­ni­ans, both per­son­ally and pro­fes­sion­ally. I met him a couple of times through the Civic Trust, and was always impressed with his charm and intel­li­gence.

His funer­al will be at Ron­go­maraeroa (Te Papa’s marae) on Wed­nes­day after­noon and his cas­ket will be brought onto the marae on Tues­day 21st July at 4pm. Those wish­ing to pay their respects will be able to do so until 10pm that night. Dr Ben­ning­ton will remain on the marae overnight until the con­clu­sion of the funer­al ser­vice on Wed­nes­day, and there is also a memori­al book to sign on Level 2 of Te Papa.

Whare ’nuff

This Thursday the 18th of June, Deidre Brown’s “Maori Archi­tec­ture: from Fale to Wharenui and Bey­ond” will be launched at the School of Archi­tec­ture in Vivi­an St.

The cel­eb­ra­tions will start with a mihi at 5:45pm, fol­lowed by a lec­ture at 6 and drinks at 7. If you’re inter­ested, please con­tact Christine McCarthy (04 463 6164 or christine.mccarthy@vuw.ac.nz) to RSVP before the end of tomor­row (the 16th).

Censor this!

I’m sure most Wel­ling­tonis­tas would agree that Aro Video is the best video hire place in town, so when our sub­scriber news­let­ter included the head­ing “We inter­rupt our reg­u­lar pro­gram for this import­ant announce­ment…” we could­n’t ignore it, and in fact we felt it was our duty to pass on this import­ant mes­sage:

CAMPAIGN FOR CENSORSHIP REFORM

We are spear­head­ing a cam­paign for cen­sor­ship reform and are call­ing upon the sup­port of our val­ued cus­tom­ers and the wider film-lov­ing pub­lic.

We believe that the cur­rent legis­la­tion is ser­i­ously out­dated and unfairly dis­ad­vant­ages the medi­um of DVD. As such, it has severely impacted on what titles can be made avail­able for rent, sale or trade with­in New Zea­l­and.

The main reas­on for this are the ‘pro­hib­it­ive’ costs of clas­si­fic­a­tion fees, and par­tic­u­larly the cri­ter­ia for which titles are sub­jec­ted to the costly exam­in­a­tion pro­cess. For example, it would cost over $2200 to clas­si­fy the highly acclaimed ori­gin­al BBC mini-series of “State of Play” (the Hol­ly­wood remake of which is cur­rently play­ing in cinemas).

This cam­paign is not “anti-cen­sor­ship” but we insist that the cur­rent levels of reg­u­la­tion are no longer appro­pri­ate for today’s media and cul­tur­al envir­on­ment. We simply would like to be able to provide you with a great­er range of qual­ity enter­tain­ment, and help elim­in­ate the ridicu­lous double-stand­ards that cur­rently pre­vail.

For more inform­a­tion, please vis­it our online for­um at www.lumiere.net.nz/censorship-reform, where you can also register your sup­port, com­ments and sug­ges­tions.

Also, if you know of oth­ers that would be inter­ested in this cause, please pass on this e‑mail or the for­um address, or spread the word by Facebook/Twitter, etc.

A ser­i­ous “show of hands” will make a dif­fer­ence, so don’t be shy! Thank you for your sup­port.

Kind regards,

Andrew Armit­age
pro­pri­et­or
AroVideo Online

A week of it

What a week to look for­ward to!

Tues­day 9th: Pecha Kucha at the OPT from 6:30pm. We love these nights, and this time they’ve got writers, artists, car­toon­ists and land­scape archi­tects (among oth­ers) in the line-up. Those with a prac­tic­al interest in street art might have to rush there from the At Large plan­ning meet­ing at Manky Chops, which starts at 5:30.

Wed­nes­day 10th: Artist Matt Hunt (aka Ace Hurt from Cor­tina) launches his new exhib­i­tion at Peter McLeavey gal­lery at 5:30pm (link for Face­book types). The title “Dream­ing of a New Heav­en and Earth and the Etern­al Night­mare of Hades” makes one won­der just what to expect from the after-party at Mighty Mighty.

Thursday 11th: Did someone say “Bur­lesque”? Oh, right, we did.

Fri­day 12th: If you’re plan­ning to go to Fly My Pret­ties, you’ll no doubt have had this night booked well in advance. Oth­er­wise: it’s Fri­day! Enivrez-vous!

Sat­urday 13th: More fly­ing pret­ti­ness, with a Mat­in­ee as well as the even­ing gig. But if you prefer your pret­ties more earth­bound, and think that feath­ers are best used for fan dan­cing, bring your pen­cils along to Dr Sketchy’s life draw­ing class at Mighty Mighty at 4pm.

Sunday 14th: The much-hyped City Mar­ket finally opens at Chaf­fers Dock. The hours (8:30am-12:30pm) might not appeal to night owls, but their Twit­ter feed sug­gests that there’ll be plenty to tempt us out of bed.

Earthly

We Wel­ling­tonis­tas have been strong sup­port­ers of Earth Hour in the past, and even though Keith Ng gave it a damned good fisk­ing over on Pub­lic Address, we’re still behind the concept. And so, it seems, are a lot of loc­al bars and res­taur­ants, with Wel­ling­tonista favour­ites Fidels, Sweet Mother’s Kit­chen, the South­ern Cross, Caffe
Itali­ano and Trade Kit­chen among the many places offer­ing can­delit din­ners on Sat­urday night. We just hope it does­n’t make those poor, fra­gile roller girls crash into one anoth­er*.

Keith’s right that the actu­al energy saved in an hour will be min­im­al, and the powers (no pun inten­ded) that be are unlikely to be swayed by the sym­bol­ism, but that need­n’t make it an empty ges­ture. If it helps a few people under­stand the impact of their decisions, and look for prac­tic­al options to save energy in the long term, then it will do some good. Keith points out that switch­ing to low-energy light bulbs is, for most applic­a­tions, a simple and sens­ible thing to do right now. So it’s just as well that as part of the Earth Hour pro­mo­tion, Wel­ling­ton City Lib­rary is giv­ing away free CFL bulbs until Sat­urday.

[*not really]

Heavenly Navigation

Fuse Cir­cus have joined The Fringe with The Nav­ig­at­ors, a new out­door show under the sails at Queens Wharf.

If you haven’t seen their pre­vi­ous shows, Heav­enly Bur­lesque or Grav­ity and Oth­er Myths, then get down there right now! If you have, then while a few of the moves may be famil­i­ar, it’s still won­der­ful enter­tain­ment. The “nar­rat­ive” may be little more than an flimsy frame­work from which to sus­pend yet more bio­phys­ic­al impossib­il­it­ies, and there’s a touch of pan­to­mime goofi­ness that detracts slightly from the inher­ent hot­ness, but there will still be plenty to make you gasp, laugh and won­der.

As someone who some­times struggles to stand upright in the morn­ing, let alone bal­ance sev­er­al people on one’s limbs while doing so, these guys will always be a source of amazement. They per­form most even­ings until Sat­urday the 7th of March, so you have no excuse for miss­ing them.

Cuba Street Carnival at a glance

We love the Cuba Street Car­ni­val, but their web­site: not so much. The pro­gramme is only avail­able as a Flashy map or as a print­able (but not down­load­able!) full pro­gramme. And with so much stuff to see so many stages at once, it’s hard to com­pare everything and work out what to see when.

So, I typed all the acts into a spread­sheet, and turned it into a simple table with all the acts lined up by time, thus hope­fully mak­ing it easi­er to plan your itin­er­ary. I should find a way to upload it through some googly docs magic, but in the mean­time, here it is in pngy good­ness: click on the small image for the large and legible ver­sion.