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 […]

It never rains…

…but it pours, espe­cially in Pori­rua today, caus­ing sud­den flood­ing and ser­i­ous dis­rup­tion. I down­loaded the hourly rain­fall data from Great­er Wel­ling­ton’s site (a rather pain­ful manu­al pro­cess, but a big improve­ment from not long ago, when you could only get the charts as stat­ic images) and put togeth­er a quick graph. Here are cumu­lat­ive […]

Notional Significance: Yellow Earth

[See all Notion­al Sig­ni­fic­ance posts] Wind-hur­ried rain­drops pelt against the Shade­house roof, which provides but mea­gre shel­ter as I wait out the passing shower. Cold droplets des­cend through green air into the expect­ant foliage, main­tain­ing a humid atmo­sphere to feed a pteridomaniac’s wet dream. In a fern-fevered nation this is an orgy of pat­ri­ot­ic sym­bols, […]

Notional Significance: Lagoons

[Alf’s back after a long absence! You can catch up on his pre­vi­ous post in this series, or read all Notion­al Sig­ni­fic­ance posts.] The path skirts the six-lane high­way, com­pressed between traffic and hill­side, passing beneath stol­id, gal­van­ised totems that awaken onrush­ing com­muters to an immin­ent decision. Soon the curve of the car­riage­way straight­ens, but the scrubby […]

Are you Super? Will you Submit

The loc­al gov­ern­ment com­mis­sion has pro­posed a reor­gan­isa­tion of the Wel­ling­ton region, which you can read more about over on the loc­al gov­ern­ment com­mis­sion site. The region­al coun­cil is split over the pro­pos­al. Per­haps more import­antly, accord­ing to Stuff, only 26% of Wel­ling­to­ni­ans are in favour of the pro­pos­al. We’re not tak­ing a side here […]

Notional Significance: Two Tides

[See all Notion­al Sig­ni­fic­ance posts] The stream is now fully can­al­ised, a tame chan­nel run­ning arrow-straight towards the har­bour, as subtle as an engineer’s ruler. It once meandered across the broad­en­ing val­ley, softly fold­ing into the estu­ar­ine flats. On its left bank, the colo­ni­al forces built Elliot’s Stock­ade to over­see the new road, but the […]

Notional Significance: Asylum

[See all Notion­al Sig­ni­fic­ance posts] After my detour, I head back to the motorway’s edge. My route takes me along Mexted Terrace—a name that is engraved across Tawa’s skin, and with its twin asso­ci­ations of car deal­er­ships and rugby it encom­passes two dimen­sions of the sub­urb­an myth­os. On the corner of Tre­mewan Street, with the […]

What a Feeling!

Do you ever won­der what hap­pens at the end of the day to the freshly made bread that Wel­ling­ton baker­ies can­’t sell? Do you ever won­der what hap­pens to the fresh fruit and veget­ables at the mar­kets that are still edible but not good enough to sell? I can tell you. For the last few […]

Crafting at Pataka

Sat­urday June 9, 10am – 4pm

CRAFTING is a part of THE BIG LOOK-SEE at Pataka this week­end, which is an open day event for gal­ler­ies and museums in the region.

CRAFTING will also cel­eb­rate one of Pataka’s exhib­i­tions called Arts Soci­ety by Judy Dar­ragh. The exhib­i­tion is an art install­a­tion that cel­eb­rates ‘craft’ and the hand­made.

There will be a stun­ning range of fun and funky jew­ellery, art objects, cush­ions, toys, clothes, accessor­ies and loads more cool stuff.

You can also play a little game of ‘Spot the Wel­ling­tonista’, as there will be no less than THREE of us there. Come and say a big “hola”, and buy us a gin. Man, there’d bet­ter be some gin.


A flag for our time

A week­end trip to the out­er reaches of Wel­ling­ton­ist cov­er­age ended with a crack­ing vis­it to Pataka at Pori­rua and in par­tic­u­lar the com­pre­hens­ive and thought pro­vok­ing ‘Sym­bols of Sov­er­eignty’ series. Out­lining the extraordin­ary evol­u­tion of flags in New Zea­l­and this a series of five exhib­i­tions all with a flag theme: JACK OR BLACK – […]