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 […]