You’d have to have been living under a rock (by which I mean "not been in Civic Square for the last couple of weeks") not to have noticed the outbreak of spots all over the City Gallery. It’s an installation by Yayoi Kusama to publicise her Mirrored Years exhibition, which is a showpiece for the newly revamped and extended gallery.

After nearly a year of closure, the gallery is celebrating its relaunch with the Gallery-a-Go-Go event in Civic Square this Sunday. While many will be most excited by the return of Nikau café (which reopened a week or so ago) and its famous kedgeree, there are a whole lot of new gallery spaces to explore after the expansion. There’s the brand new Roderick and Gillian Deane Gallery of M?ori and Pacific Art, which will host Ngaahina Hohaia’s Parihaka-themed work; a new Adam Auditorium; and a much larger Michael Hirschfeld Gallery. The opening exhibition there will be the huge installation Make Way by Regan Gentry, a Wellington artist best known for his large-scale public sculptures exploring public space and urban change.

[more after the jump]

Wellington is blessed with many and splendiferous forms of avifauna. Between the Sanctuary; the council’s efforts in keeping pest numbers low; and the natural attractions of our location, Wellington is party central for birds.

And so it is only fitting that the Wellingtonista takes at least a passing interest in Forest & Bird’s Bird of the Year Poll, given that some of our favourite residents are top candidates!

In truth though we’ve had some difficulty deciding if we should endorse one particular bird over another. One person wanted the Robin; another the Tomtit; and another suggested a non-resident left-field contender, the now extinct and totally not eponymous of any Wellingtonista alive or dead Chatham Island Whaktard (which is only a half-decent FaceBook campaign away from being the poll winner that cannot be admitted to).

It turns out though, that the person that writes the blog posting gets to decide, and thus I would urge you all to vote for the Kārearea (New Zealand Falcon).

Why? After the jump.

For the last couple of weeks, Wellington has been teased with the sight of grim reapers going about their business around the city. These hooded folk were promoting the new play "Good Night – The End", which has recently opened at Downstage.  Written by the multi-talented Jo Randerson, the play looks at a group of three grim reapers (and their zesty Italian administrator), just spending time in their break room between reaping.

And like most people, the stuff that gets discussed on breaks is often nothing to do with their work. So instead it’s arguments about doing the dishes, using all the Milo, and Cheezels, pies, pizzas and hash browns, coming across as an unruly mix of between The Office, passiveaggressivenotes.com, Big Brother and a bit of the Mighty Boosh thrown in for good measure.

There must be something about spring, and craft fairs as this saturday has 3 crafting events on in our fine city.

Make your first Craft destination Berhampore school from 9.30am, it’s home to wellington’s popular seasonal fair, knack. Knack’s been running since 2007 and there are 3  things I truly love about Knack:

• Knack is run as a fundraiser for berhampore school
• Knack is often where you will see some of Wellington’s emerging Crafters show casing their crafts for the first time
• There is a lovely laid back vibe at every knack, which makes it a lovely destination for some crafty culture.

Once you’ve checked out spring knack in Berhampore head further down the road and you’ll hit Craft Village in Island Bay.

Home  to about 50 Crafters, Craft village is a monthly market featuring local crafters like Kate Burgess of Stitch Lips whose quirky creations are featured on the Craft Village Posters.

Rest up overnight and then head out to the long established Annual Pinehaven Arts and Crafts Fair  at Pinehaven School Hall, Pinehaven Road, Upper Hutt.

It is not a ‘sit at your stall’ type of fair more like a gallery where, everything is set out on walls, and display tables. The school hall looks very unassuming from the outside but once you get in it’s an eye opener. The event is a fundraiser for Pinehaven School, so just like spring knack you can do some shopping and feel like you are helping make the world a better place.

It is eDay again tomorrow, your opportunity to put your eJunk in your trunk take it to the drop off point to get it taken care of responsibly.  Apparently 95% of materials in a computer can be recycled and reused and putting your electronic waste into landfill just isn’t an option because hazardous materials such as lead, mercury and cadmium can leach into the earth and get into waterways.

Where: Westpack Stadium carpark (map here)

When: Saturday 12 September

Tips for disposing of computer equiptment all year round are on the eDay site here.

We will see you there.

It’s a few minutes to 6pm on a Thursday night, a motley group are making their way along the Terrace to the St Andrew’s Church Hall. Inside, there are already a dozen or so people in casual attire. These are the "Advanced Class" who came at 5pm. Many of them stay on after their class to help and coach the "Beginners" who are arriving for their session with teacher Michael Harris. The beginners don’t come too early, because watching the advanced practise is very discouraging.

This is Thursday night dancing.

Every 8 weeks a new beginners class commences. Last night was the second session of the latest term, and already we’re old hands at the Clap Dance and foxtrot. We’re new hands at Rock ‘n Roll. Next week, God knows what fresh humilations await.

Old hands have expressed delight that this term’s intake is almost equal numbers of men & women. This means the more advanced women don’t have to dance as men so much. Men never have to dance as women.

The class begins with a simple warmup in the form of the "Clap Dance". This is because after every few steps, a lusty clap is required, before tippy-tapping back in towards your partner to bump hips. On the off chance you manage to connect without dislocating your partner’s hips, you get an encouraging comment from Michael. Me? After learning the next stage of the tippy-tapping, which involves a spin and a clap, I found myself about 10 metres away from my partner & having to sprint back in from across the room to attempt my "bump".

090909 UpStage Festival Preview from UpStage on Vimeo.

9 September (tomorrow) at 2pm get thee to a "real life" (RL) access node at the NewDowse (or a computer that doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles blocked) for the 3rd UpStage Festival, 090909.  www.upstage.org.nz will play host to 13 live online performances, ‘cyberformances’ no less, that span 9 time zones.

How does it work?

Well……

UpStage is a web-based platform that enables people anywhere in the world to participate in live online performances, created in real-time by geographically dispersed performers.  Audiences interact through a text chat tool.  The players use images, audio, video and text to creat the performances, operating "avatars" – graphical characters that move and speak aloud.  The performances are accessable to anyone with an internet browser.

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Three members of the Wellingtonista are already gleefully planning our outfits for the opening of the Montana World of WearableArt Awards Show in on the 24th of September at TSB arena.  The huge marketing push has begun with ads popping up near the airport and the details of the WOW wander are being hammered out as I type.  The show is worth around 10 million dollars to the Wellington economy and we will no doubt see creative lunges for our attention on a par with ‘that iceberg‘ and ‘those reapers‘.  Let’s hope they do Wellington proud with more creativity and less branded bumpf. 

Last year the supreme award went to Wellingtonian Nadine Jaggi and this year sees Wellingtonians dominating the field again with 40 out of the 165 garments from locals.  Last year Aunty Helen (or her COMMS people) did a mighty job of writing a speech on the fly but although I am sure the awards will be "World Class"™ I am not sure that we need John on stage with giant paua encrusted key for the occasion this year (but if he wants to give the paua dress another outing….)