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 […]