Live Leader Board

      Here at the Welling­ton­ista we’re firm faves of Richard Ain­dow — for­mer edi­tor of Fish Head mag­a­zine, and Quiz Mas­ter of Wednes­day nights at Mighty Mighty — so we were pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to catch him out­side the Rogue & Vagabond last night with a group of lycra-clad lit-up young ladies in incan­des­cent cos­tumes. […]

The New Zealand Fringe Festival

The New Zealand Fringe Fes­ti­val has been going for a week and it’s got just over two more weeks to run. Sad­ly, I’ve only made it to two shows so far (because mov­ing house) a pathet­ic effort real­ly, because there are HEAPS. Cabaret, cir­cus, com­e­dy, dance, music, the­atre, visu­al art — there are a lot of […]

Review: The Wind City

The lat­est book from local spec­u­la­tive fic­tion pub­lish­ers Steam Press is the début nov­el of nine­­teen-year old Sum­mer Wig­more. It’s a won­der­ful urban fan­ta­sy, set quite con­crete­ly in the very real envi­rons of mod­­ern-day Welling­ton, but pop­u­lat­ed through­out with myth­i­cal char­ac­ters and crea­tures from Maori folk­lore (col­lec­tive­ly known as iwi atua). Our two main pro­tag­o­nists […]

Stop taking selfies and enter this photography competition instead

Carter Obser­va­to­ry, that big old bub­ble up on the hill, is run­ning a pho­tog­ra­phy con­test with a but­t­load of prizes, and you should enter it. The title is “Light & Dark” and any­thing under that goes.  Judges include Mark Gee, who you may remem­ber from such moon pho­tos as this. There’s a kids’ cat­e­go­ry too, […]

Solo 36 — Hall of the Unrecognised

On now at the New Zealand Acad­e­my of Fine Arts the instal­la­tion ‘Hall of the Unrecog­nised’ cel­e­brates the inau­gur­al Nation­al Coun­cil of Women which first met in Christchurch on 13 April 1896. The instal­la­tion is part of the Solo 36 group show. It’s an inter­est­ing and pro­vok­ing exhi­bi­tion con­sid­er­ing the cur­rent debate around rape and […]

One Sleep till Bookfair

Sat­ur­day  is  Welling­ton’s most amaz­ing, most awe­some, most excel­lent, book relat­ed event of the year — The DCM Annu­al Book­fair Take 90000+ books, add LPs, CDs, DVDs, Cas­settes, Mag­a­zines, Jig­saw Puz­zles & Games galore. Every­one going to book­fair has a strat­e­gy for this is one of those very few shop­ping events when you can’t spend ‘too […]

Baby it’s cold inside

A lit­tle late to the par­ty but still some­thing rather delight­ful has popped up in the city.  Cleave (a project between artist Gab­by O’Con­nor, oceanog­ra­ph­er Craig Stevens, cura­tor Katharine Allard and the amaz­ing kids from Mira­mar Cen­tral school) is liv­ing at 86 Vic­to­ria St Welling­ton until July 13 2013. It’s view­able 24/7 as it’s all […]

The cupboards are bare

here’s a sneak peek into the food bank shelves at DCM this after­noon — emp­ty! As we know from Game ofThrones, win­ter is com­ing. So this week­end If you’re plan­ning to vis­it Chaf­fers New World, please buy a cou­ple extra items and pop then in DCM’s  food­bank bins at the exit. Things like tuna and tinned stews are […]

Whakuku a Nga Kina

The art world is full of sharks[cita­tion need­ed], but one recent pub­lic sculp­ture is attract­ing watery beasts of a dif­fer­ent kind. Via his Face­book group, artist Michel Tuffery has been doc­u­ment­ing the sting-rays which have been cruis­ing his Nga Kina at Kumu­to­to wharf which was installed in Novem­ber 2012.

Signs of the time — advertising we like

So many sur­faces in Welling­ton are crammed with posters try­ing to sell us some­thing, so we thought it might be nice to look at some of the adver­tis­ing that actu­al­ly looks good. This week, our favourite piece of adver­tis­ing are these posters from Welling­ton Zoo. These absolute­ly gor­geous ani­mals (there’s a red pan­da in the […]