A super great night with Gamefroot

Last night the City Gal­lery played host to the launch of Game­f­root, a new plat­form on which to build plat­form games – or more spe­cific­ally, a HTML5 Game Cre­ation tool. If you can use a web browser and if you can use mouse to click and drag – then you can use Game­f­root. The bar has […]

Music vs Art = Open City

City Gal­lery is cur­rently exhib­it­ing Round­about, a major col­lec­tion of bold, bright and wicked-as works from emer­ging artists from around the world. It’s well worth a vis­it. Part of Round­about is 48,000 Revolu­tions, a piece by Fly­ing Nun founder Roger Shep­herd. He’s selec­ted 24 hours worth of songs, which ran­domly play. There is also – and […]

Bill Hammond – City Gallery

Hammond_MASTER Assum­ing you haven’t swanned off to sun your­self in the miser­able bloody New Zea­l­and Christ­mas weath­er, dash­ing in and out of the rain­storms and/or hail with your bottle of Banana­Boat, tow­el­ing hat, and lawn­chair, then you’re prob­ably still around Wel­ling­ton.

Assum­ing you’ve made the right decision (and are hav­ing your hols in Feb­ru­ary), then we here at the Wel­ling­tonista advise you to get your­self along to the City Gal­lery for the FREE Bill Ham­mond exhib­i­tion, Jingle Jangle Morn­ing.

And why? Because even when it’s crappy out, Bill’s paint­ing is there for you.

Where we’ll be

If you’re try­ing to stalk the Wel­ling­tonista, and/or find some­thing to do this week­end, here are our hot tips:

  • The City Art Gal­lery tonight because Luke Buda is ador­able and Aspen has a good track record
  • The Aro Val­ley Fair. Per­haps you can find out for me why it seems that every­one in Aro owns a dog and/or a baby.
  • Try­ing to find the Wel­ling­tonista on our big night out on Sat­urday – it would be cheat­ing to tell you where we’ll be, but there may be clues in these posts here.
  • If the poster­’s this good the Voom and The Sneaks gig should be good as well. Voom used to be the lazi­est band in NZ – their songs are so effort­lessly pop per­fec­tion – but it seems they’ve finally got their act togeth­er after many line-up scan­dals.
  • The Fest­iv­al Italia on Sunday. Per­haps you could adopt a bad accent and try the “Do you have any Itali­an in you? Do you want some?” line you neg­lected to use on St. Patrick­’s Day.

A Friday night and a Saturday morning

Down at the City Gal­lery on Fri­day night they are run­ning anoth­er one of their Late Night Ses­sions, where you get to cruise around the big exhib­i­tion (this time it’s the bien­ni­al Pro­spect show) in rel­at­ive peace and listen to lovely live music while you do so. And all for free.

City Gal­lery’s pop­u­lar late night Fri­day returns. Wander through Tele­com Pro­spect 2007: New Art New Zea­l­and to a back­drop of inde­pend­ent and elec­tron­ic sounds by loc­al per­formers. Fea­tur­ing Penelop­ing, Tc Wedde with Luke Buda, and Aspen.

The lovely Luke Buda is of course in The Phoenix Found­a­tion, as is (the equally lovely) Tc Wedde. Aspen is also lovely and also known as Sign­er, and is one half of Over the Atlantic and one half of Skal­lander. And the “medi­um-core girl-boy plink­pop!” Penelop­ing also have a very good repu­ta­tion as a live act. Hav­ing exper­i­enced Late Night Ses­sions many times before – from the point of view both of a per­former and a pat­ron – I can heart­ily recom­mend this event.

lunchtime confrontation

We will admit it was the men­tion of a freely down­load­able pod­cast com­ment­ary in this week’s Listen­er that drew us in. Some of us Wel­ling­tonis­tas are more geeky than oth­ers. But giv­en what seems to be the theme of the City Gal­lery’s latest exhib­i­tion, Aus­trali­an artist Patri­cia Pic­canini’s In Anoth­er Life (19 Feb­ru­ary to 11 […]