Return to the valley of the dolls

I was in Welling­ton, my first time back since I left in April, and I was furi­ous­ly catch­ing up on things. I got the bus out to the Hutt and vis­it­ed the Dowse Art Muse­um. It was choice, but as I left the gallery, I spied some­thing much more intrigu­ing across the square. Over at […]

Zinefest 2012

Welling­ton Zine­fest annu­al zine mar­ket and fes­ti­val returns to Mighty Mighty this Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 17th. Now in its 6th year, Welling­ton Zine­fest is New Zealand’s longest run­ning fes­ti­val of zines. ‘Zines’ or ‘fanzines’ are self-pub­­lished mag­a­zines cre­at­ed to high­light music scenes, fan­doms, activism, craft, cre­ative writ­ing or sim­ply the zinemaker’s own odd­ball obses­sions. Zine­fest brings […]

Review: The Hobbit Companion

It’s not by chance that John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s was the set­ting that would become the default tem­plate for the pop­u­lar notion of high-fan­­ta­sy; no arbi­trary cir­cum­stance that led to Tolkien’s intri­­cate­­ly-craft­ed argot becom­ing the lin­gua fran­ca of the sword-and-sor­cery genre as it’s com­mon­ly under­stood today. Tolkien, with his fel­low Inkling and under­study in Chris­tian­i­ty […]

Horseplay

We noticed the oth­er day that Namastey in Dixon St had had a makeover. Most of it involves  over­stuffed couch­es and smart new table­cloths, but it was the art­works that real­ly stopped us in our bha­ji. I’m not real­ly sure what’s going on here. I imag­ine it’s based upon tra­di­tion­al mythol­o­gy, but the whole thing […]

A secret to share

Today’s guest post comes from Heather of Food­ie Gems of Wellie. Yay, we love guest posts! We all love a secret. Espe­cial­ly one that deliv­ers plea­sure. A jaunt around the recent­ly launched Secret Art Walk uncov­ered all sorts of Welling­ton trea­sures. From the mag­nif­i­cent rata cone archi­tec­ture of the Supreme Court to the holo­graph­ic dis­play […]

Pablos Art Auction 2012

Pab­los Art Auc­tion — that gala high­light of the local art scene — is on this Wednes­day night. This year it’s big­ger and bet­ter than ever and in an all-new venue: Massey Uni­ver­si­ty’s Great Hall. If you’re a sea­soned col­lec­tor and art-auc­­tion attendee I expect you already have your tick­et and the date marked in […]

WOW 2012

It was my first time at WOW. I knew that I could expect a spec­ta­cle along with fan­tas­tic wear­able art but I was unpre­pared for just how delight­ed I’d be. The sheer exu­ber­ance of the per­form­ers, the out­landish designs, and the joy of the win­ning design­ers made me clap my hands in child­ish glee sev­er­al […]

Wonderful Wellington Lux

Today we have a guest post from Suzanne over at Obser­va­tions. Yay guest posts! Last night I went to the fas­ci­nat­ing Welling­ton Lux light­ing event on the Welling­ton Water­front. (Runs from 6pm to 11pm, 1 to 9 Sep­tem­ber) This  “teas­er” event con­sists of four light­ing instal­la­tions, using new and inter­ac­tive tech­nol­o­gy. The idea is to […]

The Winter is coming

Well it’s pret­ty much here.… although today ain’t half bad and here’s hop­ing the week­end is kind. Just a note, there’s rather an insane amount of good stuff open­ing tomor­row at City Gallery Welling­ton. They are launch­ing the Win­ter Sea­son with a heap of new shows. Plus it seems they are sneak­ing in a new […]

Review: Lucrece

An adap­ta­tion of Shake­speare’s nar­ra­tive poem “The rape of Lucrece” by Binge Cul­ture Col­lec­tive. It’s a visual+audio instal­la­tion at the Toi Poneke Gallery plus a live per­for­mance on Thurs­day and Fri­day evenings.  Fiona McNa­ma­ra’s direc­tor’s note states “This pro­duc­tion of Shake­speare’s poem claims the text, writ­ten by a man in a patri­ar­chal soci­ety, as a […]