Review: Krishnan’s Dairy

Review by Talia Carlisle. A wise man once told me that real loves grows, and so does my love of Indi­an Ink’s now leg­endary tale of Krishnan’s Dairy that wound up its final sea­son in Welling­ton this week. The pro­duc­tion is a well pol­ished gem in the crown of cre­ative team Jacob Rajan and Justin […]

Things are getting surreal at Te Papa

We might be stuck in New Zealand for a while, but that does­n’t mean the world can’t come to us (espe­cial­ly if they’re rich, appar­ent­ly). That’s the cool thing about the new exhi­bi­tion Sur­re­al­ist Art: Mas­ter­pieces from Muse­um Boi­j­mans Van Beunin­gen He Toi Pohe­wa: He Toi Marupō o Muhia­ma o Boi­j­mans Van Beunin­gen. You’ll get a […]

Toi Art at Te Papa — a first floor glimpse

When you’re step­ping into Te Papa’s new gallery space Toi Art, be pre­pared for some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from your stan­dard gallery expe­ri­ence. Toi Art is a gallery space 20 years in the mak­ing, it takes over two floors of Te Papa and the new entrance gallery is larg­er than any space at Te Papa. I […]

Review: The Undertow

The Under­tow is a mas­sive the­atri­cal epic pre­sent­ed by 35 per­form­ers from Te Rākau The­atre. Writ­ten by Helen Pearse-Otene and direct­ed by Jim Mori­ar­ty it fol­lows the sto­ry of sev­en gen­er­a­tions of Welling­to­ni­ans — Māori and Pāke­hā — as they carve out a life in Ōwhiro. Each of the four plays explores the expe­ri­ence of […]

Review: Te Pō

Three men gath­er in a room. Detec­tive Inspec­tor Brett is look­ing for Bruce Mason who has gone miss­ing. Rev­erend Athol Sedgewick had din­ner with Mason the night before last and is pos­si­bly the last per­son to see him before he dis­ap­peared. Wer­i­he has an eight o’clock appoint­ment with the play­wright. No-one has any idea where he […]

Unveiling Unveiled

Bet­ter than Christ­mas morn­ing was how this non fash­ion­ista* described Mon­day morn­ing at Te Papa when Tom and  I wit­nessed Keira Miller from Lon­don’s Vic­to­ria & Albert Muse­um unpack­ing an embroi­dered silk satin wed­ding dress designed by Nor­man Hart­nell in 1933. Keira is in Welling­ton to super­vise the unpack­ing and set­ting up of Unveiled: 200 years […]

Te Papa turns TEN

Te Papa Museum, Wellington, New ZealandWhol­ly schmol­ly, has it real­ly been 10 years … yes, it has!

In my ear­ly days in Welling­ton it was a goal of my ex-wife and I to at least stay in Welling­ton for the open­ing of Te Papa .. and now, here we both are able to cel­e­brate its 10th Birth­day.

Who remem­bers the mur­al-ed fence around the build­ing site with the wee holes to check out progress?

I love Te Papa and it is just awe­some to be able to take my son and daugh­ter along to it as well (of course they adore the place). Mind you those coloured pan­els fac­ing Cable Street are still a bit crap in my mind.

Te Papa (that’s “(y)our place”) cel­e­brates its first decade on Sat­ur­day 16th Feb­ru­ary with a host of events includ­ing:
(after the break)

Glancing at the Stars

If this were the Auck­lan­dista site, this’d sure­ly be about Mil­lie. But it’s not. Besides, we’d nev­er heard of her until yes­ter­day. Mil­lie Elder? Mil­lie Holmes?

Any­way… that’s just allud­ing to celebri­ty gos­sip to lure you in. And to trap the googlers… yoohoo!!

Here in the Cap­i­tal city, when we talk about stars we talk about the real­ly big ones! Real stars.

Matariki

Matari­ki.

In May or June each year, just before dawn (yeah right!) look toward the North East­ern hori­zon & you should see the Matari­ki con­stel­la­tion. The Greeks called it Pleiades (although they view it upside down to us) or the Sev­en Sis­ters, the Japan­ese called it… Sub­aru!

To Maori, it marks the New Year, and is asso­ci­at­ed with the Win­ter Sol­stice. The name itself lit­er­al­ly refers to the Eyes of God.

This month till the 1st of July, Te Papa are host­ing a Matari­ki Fes­ti­val, click through for fur­ther details.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion on Matari­ki itself, can be found here, here & here.