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 — […]