Boris Eldagsen became the most notorious artist in the world last year, after winning an award at one of the world's biggest photography competitions with an image entirely generated by AI.
Each week, Culture 101 puts the spotlight on a different region in Aotearoa for the weekly Regional Wrap. This week we’re in the steampunk capital of the world - Oamaru.
As global warming continues, many parts of the world including natural wonders and island countries are at risk of damage or disappearing. This has led to a trend of ‘last chance tourism’ where travellers visit areas threatened by climate change - before it’s too late. Ironically, the more tourists visit these areas, the more widespread the climate crisis becomes, which again fuels ‘last chance tourism’.
Te Pou Theatre’s latest offering puts a spotlight on the wāhine factory workers behind the iconic Crown Lynn crockery.
Gamers with a passion for creative writing can merge their interests in Aotearoa's only creative writing paper dedicated to video games.
Pōneke Wellington based Ebony Lamb has the distinction of having developed two parallel acclaimed careers: as a singer-songwriter and as a photographer.
Arts news for 19 May 2024
The Auckland Writers Festival has set central Tāmaki Makaurau abuzz this week with a strong lineup of leading local and international authors, panel discussions, and events, including the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. For more than three days, the festival takes over Aotea Centre and various inner city venues. This year the festival has a brand-new artistic director, Lyndsey Fineran.
Te Whare Tapere in the Christchurch Arts Centre is neither a European-style gallery or theatre. As a space principally by Māori, for Māori, it is, says co-founder artist Juanita Hepi, “a multidisciplinary, indigenous house of storytelling.” Te Whare Tapere was the name given by Māori before the arrival of the European to such community houses of storytelling, dance, music, puppets, games and other artforms.
You know those embarrassing uncomfortable thoughts and feelings you have you usually keep inside? Pōneke playwright and comedian Viki Moananu uses theatre and comedy to let them out. He calls them ‘Icky’.
Gore is quite rightly known as our Capital of country music. But there’s always been much more going on culturally in this East Southland town.
Vast exclusion zones operate around the cities of Pripyat, near the ruined Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, and Plymouth, on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, decimated by the island’s volcano. The two cities have been the focus of two long research projects with multiple exhibitions by Pōneke Wellington based Mexican artist Raúl Ortega Ayala.
The notoriously punishing, elite world of the Moscow Bolshoi Ballet Academy is centre stage in Joika - the first ever film collaboration between New Zealand and Poland.
Over 100 years ago artist Ahilapalapa Rands’ great-grandfather, the ukulele virtuoso Ernest Ka’ai wrote the song ‘Across the Sea’, the lyrics speaking to the pull that Hawai’i has for Kānaka Maoli (indigenous Hawaiaans) living elsewhere. Born and raised in Aotearoa New Zealand, Rands is of Kānka Maoli, Samoan, Cook Islands and Pākehā descent. She is then truly of the Pacific. In her latest installations at Pātaka Museum in Porirua, Across the Sea, she explores the connections across TeMoana-nui-...
A professional in the comedy scene for more than a decade now, Rhys Mathewson knew he was going to pursue comedy as a career after taking part in Class Comedians in 2006 at the age of 15. From that point, his star has been steadily on the rise. He won Best Newcomer for his first solo show in 2009 and, just a year later at the age of 19, he became the youngest person to be awarded the Billy T Award. He has since also won the Fred Award for Best New Zealand Show in 2016.
Ten years ago acclaimed potter Rick Rudd sold his house - together with its unique native and sculpture garden - in Castlecliff, Whanganui to establish Quartz Museum of Studio Ceramics in downtown Whanganui. Born from Rudd’s concern that there was nowhere where you could see exhibited the history of New Zealand ceramics, it is Aotearoa’s only museum devoted to the ceramic arts, and the largest ceramics display in this country.
Aotearoa New Zealand is a land of birds. Yet contemporary fiction providing a bird’s eye view has been slow to arrive. While Catherine Chidgey’s award winning 2022 novel The Axeman’s Carnival looks at human interaction from the perspective of a magpie, Shelley Burne-Field’s new adventure novel for young readers, Brave Kāhu and the Pōrangi Magpie has a whole flock of makipai (magpies).
In this week’s Regional Wrap we look at the culture of Far North town Kaitaia.
In an article on Stuff in 2019, comedian Guy Williams posed the question, “Where are all the Māori comedians?” Williams noted that, despite our main comedy award being named after Billy T James, he could only name a handful of Māori funnymen and women working at the time. Now in 2024, comedian and actor Bailey Poching is responding. In a piece for Vice titled 'Here Are All The Māori Comedians' Poching says the question isn’t and has never been about where the Māori comedians are, but rather: whe...
A psychological thriller, part of TVNZ’s Motherhood Anthology Series has been released in time for Mother’s Day. The film’s title Amah holds three different meanings. The term, used in East Asia, describes a woman employed by a family to cook, clean and look after the children. In the Chinese Hokkien dialect, it’s the name and title given to a paternal grandmother and, in the case of this film, it also stands for ‘Artificially Maternal Android Helper’.
10 albums in 10 years in 10 different genres - that was Troy Kingi’s goal. But after the release of the seventh album - 2023’s ambient instrumental vibe album Timewasters - he’s admitted in a new TVNZ series Desert Hīkoi it was “starting to feel a bit stale.” He had been feeling a creative block. Desert Hīkoi follows Kingi on his creative and spiritual journey with his band to regain his mojo.
The 2024 NZ Children’s Music Awards have been announced with the NZ On Air Best Children’s Music Video awarded to a two minute ode to flatulence. ‘Let it Out’ by Don McGlashan and Harry Sinclair, featuring Tami Neilson, is from the pair’s hit claymation TV series Kiri and Lou.
Arts News for 5 May 2024
In early 2021 writer Stuart McKenzie and director Miranda Harcourt’s verbatim play Transmission opened to sell-out houses at Pōneke’s small, dynamic BATS Theatre. Fast forward three years and a sequel Transmission Beta is about to premiere. And it’s a quite different, more complex story. McKenzie and Dame Miranda joined Mark Amery on RNZ’s Culture 101.
Festival Opera is celebrating 10 years of introducing, training and supporting young people in the opera through the Project Prima Volta community programme in Hawkes Bay.
Known for its surf and beaches, Mangawhai may not strike you as a hub for arts and culture. But locals are extremely proud of the modern museum which celebrates the town’s rich history, life around the harbour and the fight to save the endangered fairy tern.
Hamiltonians are getting the last laugh as the first-ever comedy club in the city is opening this month. Coinciding with the Comedy Festival, Last Laugh Comedy Club is the only comedy club in the Waikato region.
Actor, director and writer John Davies is celebrating 50 years in theatre with a national solo tour. Te Tupua - The Goblin is travelling to 16 regional centres, with Davies playing nine characters in English and te reo Māori.
The closure of the City Gallery building won't stop it from bringing art to the capital, its boss says.
Arts news for Sunday 28 April 2023
