The images of exploding fuel from Geoffrey H. Short’s exhibition Towards Another (Big Bang) Theory at {Suite} Gallery on Oriental Parade are immediately evocative to me of a number of different other imageries, occurring in roughly this order: of the US military napalming bits of Vietnam of Francis Ford Coppola napalming bits of the Phillipines […]
If you’re in the market for a real bona fide “Holy shit, look at that!” experience, try heading down to the eastern end of Abel Smith Street, opposite the Southern Cross. Where on the corner of Wigan Street there was once a Tattoo Museum (or this), with an imposing moai on the street front (image), […]
Solander Gallery: Works on Paper is Wellington’s contemporary works on paper gallery. I have a soft spot for printmaking and being a gallery that — not exclusively, mind — specialises in this discipline with a consistent rotation of strong shows from talented New Zealand printmakers, Solander has become a favourite space of mine to visit. They […]
Narrative Playgrounds is a group exhibition at Pixel Ink Gallery of visual works by emerging and established New Zealand artists. The common theme of the show is that the work is inspired by stories and the imagination. Gallery director, Rosalind Clark, said the exhibition is all about translating the imagination onto a blank canvas. The artist’s brief was to […]
From the public art programme which brought you Kim Paton’s Free Store and Tao Wells’ The Beneficiary’s Office (which both caused significant national media interest and debate) I’d like to present to you: Colin Hodson’s The Market Testament. An entire office building on Wellington City’s The Terrace is to be turned into a work of […]
[See all Notional Significance posts] I weave through concrete islands and metal barriers to the edge of the Basin Reserve. Just inside the fence is a monument to William Wakefield: as an abduction accomplice, mercenary, principled duelist and city father, he was the marginally more respectable of the Wakefield boys. The memorial is supposed to […]
There was a photo in last Tuesday’s Dom Post of a paintbrush-toting chap in bright orange. Council employees wearing high-vis vests in the paper almost never means something good, and on reading the associated story* this was no exception: Wellington City Council workers yesterday started removing graffiti in a lane that links Ghuznee St with […]
National significance begins with a roundabout: from the air it looks like a navel, the axis of the world, the green Omphalos where one begins. But what is beginning here? There’s a distinct impression that more traffic comes from the eastern suburbs via Broadway than from the airport itself, which would make this a somewhat […]
Before reaching the starting point of the journey, I need to take a preliminary journey, from something resembling the heart of the city to the start of the highway: the airport. That in itself tells us something about just where cities fit into the whole “National Significance” agenda. A city is never an end in […]
If you’re a bit late in getting your 2011 calendar sorted out, you could do worse to download and print out Wellington graphic designer Tim Denee’s lovely (and free!) design. Get it over at his website.