As the son of two of our most lauded writers, the late JC Sturm and James K Baxter, John Baxter (Taranaki, Te Whakatōhea) has long had hats to wear in being part of literary legacies. It’s being both Māori and Pakeha though, that has led to the naming of a rare exhibition of Baxter’s distinctive paintings at Toi Mahara gallery in Waikanae as Rua Pōtae. Baxter says Rua Pōtae was a term used in the 1940s and 50s for ‘he who wears two hats’.
Jun 23, 2024•31 min
A conversation with her five-year-old niece prompted Mandi Lynn to explore body shaming in a photo exhibition and short documentary.
Jun 23, 2024•12 min
Arts news for 23 June 2024
Jun 23, 2024•3 min
Lizzie Russell is the Owner/Operator of Tennyson Gallery in Ahuriri Napier. A beautiful spot in an art deco building on the corner of an iconic street in the city. She tells Culture 101’s Maggie Tweedie about Hawkes Bay's famous Pecha Kucha nights and the gallery’s large collection of contemporary New Zealand Jewellery.
Jun 23, 2024•12 min
Ōtepoti Dunedin author Laurence Fearnley’s absorbing new novel At the Grand Glacier Hotel is, impressively, her thirteenth. In its pages Fearnley beautifully articulates the awkwardness and beauty within ourselves. In essense, she is adept at expressing the frailty and gentle wonder of our human condition.. In the novel Fearnley matches the inner thoughts of her protagonist to the surrounding environments of an old character-filled hotel, and her small trails through the grand, dramatic South Is...
Jun 23, 2024•15 min
Arts news for 16 June 2024
Jun 16, 2024•4 min
The Dead C guitarist Bruce Russell along with graphic designer and pedal steel guitar player, Luke Wood, has released a rich book of essays called A Record Could Be Your Whole World: Vinyl Records as the Total Artwork of the Late Twentieth Century.
Jun 16, 2024•27 min
Melanesia is a rich cultural region. It holds the largest Indigenous population in the Pacific, and has more languages than all of Europe. Vanuatu has 110 dialects and languages alone.
Jun 16, 2024•24 min
For Daimon Schwalger aka artist and celebrated electronic artist The Nomad, moving to Kawatiri Westport on Te Wai Pounamu South Island’s West Coast was a deliberate ploy to enjoy more isolation. Yet the event organiser hasn’t been able to help himself, organising a few major community events as well as heading a video and photography production company there.
Jun 16, 2024•8 min
The Doc Edge Festival is kicking off in Aotearoa from 19 June starting in Ōtautahi Christchurch. It’ll make its way to Auckland and Wellington before going online nationwide. With 66 local and international films and 28 digital immersive events and installations, there’s a plethora of projects for audiences to soak up.
Jun 16, 2024•16 min
A small farming town in South Australia has been on a mission to show art can improve health and well-being.
Jun 16, 2024•16 min
Back in the early 1930s, the pianette was briefly an Art Deco home sensation. Now a band of enthusiasts have revived the instrument by converting it into a Pianette Automatique.
Jun 16, 2024•12 min
Courtney Dawson (Ngāti Kurī/ Ngāti Amaru) broke into the comedy world just five years ago but has steadily been working her way to the top.
Jun 16, 2024•13 min
Arts news for Sunday 9 June.
Jun 09, 2024•4 min
The late art historian Jonathan Mane Wheoki has referred to Te Tai Tokerau in the North as the crucible of Māori art. Such were the number of groundbreaking modern Māori artists to come from this region in the 1950s and 1960s.Also among them is Elizabeth Mountain Ellis, who features with many in Te Ao Hurihuri, an exhibition of work by this generation at the Wairau Māori Art gallery in Whangarei.
Jun 09, 2024•40 min
If you were to speak into an old telephone - what would you say? London-based artist, Joe Bloom has been finding out. A View From A Bridge offers strangers passing by the opportunity to look out onto the water and speak into an old-fashioned chunky red telephone - sharing their inner thoughts, feelings and observations.
Jun 09, 2024•24 min
Each week, Culture 101 puts the spotlight on a different region in Aotearoa for the weekly Regional Wrap. This week we’re in Russell - Kororāreka.
Jun 09, 2024•7 min
As painter Claude Monet's garden and house in Giverny is to France, beloved artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman's garden and house is, in a more contemporary fashion, becoming to England. It's set on the dramatic shingle beach headland of Dungeness in the South East of England, in the shadow of a giant twin nuclear power station.
Jun 09, 2024•24 min
An Australian sculptor is reclaiming the female form through her woodwork.
Jun 09, 2024•17 min
Kaikōura is celebrating 60 years of surfing in a new long-term exhibition at their museum Wharenga - First Wave. Known for whale watching, wildlife and its beautiful coastline, the surfing history of the small town on Te Wai Pounamu’s East Coast hasn’t been as well known or well-documented until now.
Jun 09, 2024•12 min
In Kathryn Burnett’s new solo comedy play, Nicola Cheeseman is Back, Nicola is sick of trying to do it all. In an all too familiar situation for those in middle age: she has lost her mojo. With the guitar, kids and job is the play’s solo star, acclaimed actor Jodie Rimmer. Recently turned 50, with two boys heading into teenagehood, Jodie relates.
Jun 09, 2024•14 min
It’s not all online: live events are often where we come together as communities, sharing passions and considering the issues concerning us. It’s important they’re accessible to all. Except they’re not. Many people have impairments that can make it more difficult or impossible to attend live events. Deaf and disability advocates argue in fact it is the society that is creating the disability, not the person.
Jun 02, 2024•27 min
A new generation and those who never made it as far as Bluff can now discover this country’s iconic Pāua Shell House in an online virtual tour.
Jun 02, 2024•24 min
The Tūrangi Tongariro region, at the spectacular southern end of Lake Tāupo bordering the Volcanic Plateau, is midway between Wellington and Auckland, Napier and New Plymouth and Hamilton and Palmerston North. A popular topping off point, you couldn’t get more central.
Jun 02, 2024•5 min
From the ancient oud to the electric axe, the Martin acoustic to the Fender Stratocaster, American National Guitar Museum touring exhibition Medieval to Metal covers a whole lot of stage with 40 guitars. Believe it or not, there’s even an air guitar.
Jun 02, 2024•20 min
From hanging out with Daleks and Weeping Angels to the many different iterations of the sonic screwdriver - costumes, props, gadgets and gizmos from the world’s longest running sci-fi series have materialised in Pōneke Wellington as part of exhibition Doctor Who Worlds of Wonders: Where Science Meets Fiction. It’s now at the Tākina events centre.
Jun 02, 2024•13 min
A documentary theatre piece is giving the stage to stories held onto for decades. The adoption experiences of birth mothers in the 1950s and 1960s in New Zealand are being heard in I Carried This at the Hannah Playhouse in Pōneke Wellington this June.
Jun 02, 2024•12 min
Comedian and writer Lana Walters has won the Billy T Award for 2024, New Zealand’s premiere comedy award.
Jun 02, 2024•13 min
Arts news for the 26 May 2024 on Culture 101.
May 26, 2024•4 min
In Pōneke Wellington this week artists, technologists, and critical thinkers have been exploring together questions around machine learning and artificial intelligence. They’ve gathered as part of Rising Algorithms: Navigate, Automate, Dream, a symposium produced by the Aotearoa Digital Arts Network, or ADA for short
May 26, 2024•21 min
