poster for the exhibition with a lot of text on it

Sex Workers of Aotearoa: A Day in the Life of

Sex work­ers and artists have gone hand in hand for hun­dreds if not thou­sands of years.  Think of basi­cal­ly near­ly every nude woman in a clas­sic paint­ing by a white dude, or Moulin Rouge, or ‘Vic­to­ria’ or count­less oth­er exam­ples and you get the idea. Oh sure, they’re mus­es. But what if we did­n’t cen­tre […]

Preview: Kia Mau Festival

The fourth Kia Mau Fes­ti­val is on from 1–16 June 2018. A con­tem­po­rary Indige­nous the­atre and dance expe­ri­ence, the fes­ti­val cel­e­brates Māori, Pasi­fi­ka, First Nations artists and their com­pa­nies. Kia Mau Fes­ti­val is an inno­v­a­tive expe­ri­ence for whā­nau and com­mu­ni­ties through­out the Welling­ton region to engage with Tan­ga­ta When­ua and First Nations artists from across […]

A new taonga for Ngā Taonga

The 2014 amal­ga­ma­tion of our Film, Tele­vi­sion and Sound Archives into Ngā Taon­ga Sound & Vision saw its nomen­cla­ture jus­ti­fied this week with the unveil­ing of an aur­al taon­ga for the ages. On the 35th anniver­sary of Welling­ton Access Radio’s arrival on air, broad­cast mate­r­i­al dat­ing back through­out the station’s live­ly his­to­ry has been added […]

Something wonderful at The Dowse

Emma from Emma Makes kind­ly vis­it­ed and revis­it­ed  — Wun­der­rū­ma: New Zealand Jew­ellery  exhi­bi­tion at The Dowse  for us. Each time I return to Wun­der­rū­ma: New Zealand Jew­ellery I find some­thing new I want to own. It began at the open­ing with Emi­ly Valentine’s King­fish­er Brooch (2013). “Is that a bird?” said the friend I was […]

Maketorium — let the making begin

This week­end at Te Papa is going to be a grand one. Not only is it your last chance to see the very pop­u­lar Game Mas­ters, but kick­ing off at 10am and run­ning non stop till 6pm on Sat­ur­day is Mak­er­to­ri­um! Mak­er­to­ri­um is a cel­e­bra­tion of New Zealand’s  crafters, cre­ators, tin­ker­ers and inven­tors, of all […]

theNewDowse goes ape sh*t

The spiders are coming!Tak­en straight from the Weta Holics web­site:

As if you need­ed anoth­er rea­son to live in New Zealand! The won­der­ful Dowse Muse­um in Low­er Hutt has just re-launched and is now call­ing itself The­New­Dowse … AND they’re host­ing a King Kong exhi­bi­tion from June to Novem­ber this year!

They’re call­ing it Becom­ing King Kong. I feel excit­ed just think­ing about it!

It’s open­ing on 23 June and runs until 11 Novem­ber 2007. A wee bird tells me that it’s packed with insights into the ground-break­ing film-mak­ing tech­nolo­gies used to make the movie, as well as the cre­ative process­es used in the con­cep­tion of the char­ac­ter of Kong. That’s right – the grumpy ape that keeps on turn­ing up in the film he he…

The exhi­bi­tion will take you behind the scenes to expe­ri­ence the Weta way of work­ing, the expan­sive col­lec­tion of the sculp­tured crea­tures, the beau­ty of the sketch­es, the inno­v­a­tive tech­niques and the secrets of how these were achieved: it took thou­sands of draw­ings, hun­dreds of design maque­ttes and Weta Digital’s visu­al effects team years of work to cre­ate the char­ac­ter of Kong.

To cel­e­brate the exhi­bi­tion, we’ll be reveal­ing pre­vi­ous­ly nev­er seen before online images from the mak­ing of the film in the new Weta Gallery

Coming soon

Muka

The Set­tlers Muse­um is host­ing the MUKA YOUTH PRINT EXHIBITION 2006.

The exhi­bi­tion fea­tures a col­lec­tion of forty orig­i­nal lith­o­graphs by twen­ty promi­nent artists from New Zealand, Aus­tralia and Europe.

The exhi­bi­tion is unique in that it is only open to young peo­ple aged 5 to 18. The idea is that young peo­ple are giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see, select and buy an art work that they like, unin­flu­enced by adults or the name of the artist. All the works reflect the nor­mal style of the artists and there is no “talking down” to the chil­dren.

The uni­form low price means that this is an excel­lent way for young peo­ple to get real works of art into their hands.

Set­tlers Muse­um
The Esplanade
Petone

25 and 26 Novem­ber
12 noon — 5pm

Eclectic Electric

Here are a few things to keep your mind off the weath­er this week­end.

The World Press Pho­to ’06 exhi­bi­tion kicks off at Shed 11 today. It’s been inter­est­ing to see that the pub­lic­i­ty around town has tak­en a very polit­i­cal angle this year.

Just along the water­front at the Muse­um of Welling­ton City and Sea (I wish they’d find a short­er name!), they’re already two weeks into the month-long Welling­to­nia LIVE event. The word “eclec­tic” does­n’t even begin to describe the range of things going on there: there’s a per­for­mances from the Tinako­ri Hand­bell Asso­ci­a­tion, a Matari­ki cel­e­bra­tion with Toni Hua­ta, hur­dy-gur­dies, shan­ty singers, ghost tours, kete weav­ing and a debate on the con­tro­ver­sial Marine Edu­ca­tion Cen­tre. My main inter­est will be in the series of talks organ­ised by the Archi­tec­tur­al Cen­tre enti­tled “Why I do archi­tec­ture”. These kick off at 1pm tomor­row with Anna Kem­ble-Walsh and Mar­tin Han­ley of Red Design and John Mills of John Mills Archi­tects.

Poster for debut gig by The Blush ResponseFrom eclec­tic to elec­tric: new synth-pop band The Blush Response have their debut gig at Sand­wich­es tomor­row night. The band may be new, but the musi­cians will be very famil­iar to Welling­to­ni­ans: Jerami­ah Ross (aka Mod­ule), Rhi­an Shee­han, Raashi Malik (of Rhom­bus, among oth­ers) and Paul McLaney of Gram­sci.

Final­ly, you could always try to fig­ure out the loca­tion of the cur­rent Mys­tery Bar. If you do, you’d bet­ter get look­ing tonight because it’s closed on Sat­ur­day nights (that’s a clue). It also has some­thing in com­mon with Sand­wich­es.

Treaty2U

For those of you inter­est­ed in nei­ther the Sev­ens, nor local music… How about this? An oppor­tu­ni­ty to see the Tour­ing Treaty exhi­bi­tion TREATY 2 U, the Treaty of Wai­t­an­gi tour­ing exhi­bi­tion which is trav­el­ling around New Zealand over the next few months will be in the Welling­ton region over Wai­t­an­gi week­end. It will be […]