Dean Roberts, aka The Moth, was an experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist who lived in Auckland, New York, Bologna and Berlin. A student of the sound artist Phil Dadson, he went on to lecture at Elam School of Fine Arts and Berlin’s dbs music school. He was also a total crack-up and spinner of excellent yarns. In August, he died in his sleep in Lisbon, Portugal at the age of 49.
A survey of recent film work by Jon Rafman Oh, the humanity! opens at Whangārei Art Museum on December 20. It is, the gallery say “a harrowing meditation on the digital era’s fraught promises, and how they may have ultimately been broken.” Rafman’s career has seen him dubbed an internet artist. His work has obsessively followed and meditated on the development of cultures and their aesthetics online. His is a serious dedication to the disturbance of our psyche from perhaps spending too much time...
For the regional wrap we head to Raglan Wharf to speak with Tony Sly of Tony Sly Pottery where the scenic views inspire his work. Among his Raglan cultural highlights Tony Sly mentions artists Chris Meek and Jean Carbon, the Raglan arts weekend (held every Labour Weekend) and, naturally, his wharf studio.
Tāmaki Makaurau's eclectic Karangahape Road is known as a creative hub for alternative arts and events, unique hospitality and independent retailers. Now it can add a new fine arts gallery to its attractions. The gallery is the brainchild of former head of art at Webb's, Charles Ninow.
Joar Nango is one of only a few practicing Sámi architects in the world. He has travelled to Aotearoa New Zealand to present, with collaborators, the exhibition Building an archive of Indigenous architecture at Objectspace in Tāmaki-Makaurau Auckland.
Izzy joins Culture 101 to share her Fast Favourite choices, and why she is passionate about continuing the legacy of her father.
RNZ’s Simon Morris was listening to one of the most popular series in the UK - Sherlock & Co - when he recognised the voice of Dr Watson’s girlfriend and later his good lady wife, Mary Morstan. It was the New Zealand accent that gave her away. The series is only second in popularity in the UK to the long-running Archers.
White footed ants made from freshwater pearls, a scorpion's sting carved out of ebony, and an orangutan and a gibbon in yew wood and hollywood, respectively. What about a giant petrel beak in basswood? Or a pupu rangi (kauri snail) made out of kauri gum and silver? These are but a handful of the 44 diverse animals represented exquisitely and imaginatively in jewellery by Jane Dodd in exhibition The Kingdom , up in a Victorian-era attic stuffed with dead animals at Tuhura Otago Museum in Otepoti ...
Oriwa Morgan Ward joins Culture 101 to share her passion for promoting of Māori art and Te Reo Māori through creative activity.
If there’s an aspect of the arts Cadence Chung isn’t involved in, you sense it won’t be long before she tackles it. Encounter is a narrative-led audio walk in Pōneke that follows the stories of early Chinese immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. Premiering this month, it is presented by BATS Theatre as part of the Six Degrees Festival.
The Te Tai Tokerau screen producer joins Culture 101 to talk about his SPADA Screen Industry Award and why he is passionate about empowering a new generation of storytellers.
It’s a roll call of turn-of-the-century Kiwi greats: John Clarke, Neil and Tim Finn, Bic and Boh Runga, Jenny Morris, Chris Knox, The Topp Twins, Che-Fu, Don McGlashan, King Kapisi and Dave Dobbyn. The only performer to turn down appearing on The Underwatermelon Man and other Unreasonable Rhymes was John Rowles.
2024 has been quite the year for screen actor and filmmaker Chelsie Preston Crayford. A week ago she finished filming her first feature film Caterpillar, a work she has directed and been writing for six years. Then there is her role in almost every peopled frame of the now streaming TVNZ crime drama A Remarkable Place to Die. Preston Crayford plays the show’s lead Detective Anais Mallory. The only thing she plays support to is Queenstown’s remarkable scenery.
Events from the NZ arts world over the past week.
A 600-page new book that took 12 years to create is set to reframe the history of Maori art. Toi Te Mana (Auckland University Press) brings together work from Maori artists and museums from around the globe, ranging from Polynesia voyaging waka to contemporary Maori art, from body adornment and carving to street art and moving image.
Dunedin artist Kari Morseth is weaving harakeke history back into the city's daily life. The Rope/Walk community art project is centred around the South Dunedin's Rope Walk Building where Morseth has so far woven 68 metres of harakeke rope by hand with the help of many volunteers.
Jeff Thomson, one of Aotearoa’s senior professional sculptors, is best known for doing absolutely everything that’s possible with corrugated iron. His corrugated iron Holden sits in the Te Papa collection. He and his partner, artist Shona Cameron, live in a corrugated iron shed home/workshop in Helensville, out west of Tāmaki Mākaurau Auckland.
The Pacific Fashion Fusion Show is preparing to run its annual catwalk through downtown Auckland's freshly designated Komititanga. Komititanga is the area that joins the end of Queen Street with the waterfront.
The front of artist Ann Shelton's award-winning new book worm, root, wort.. & bane bears an image of a small silvered glass flask held in the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University. The flask is said to contain a witch. The original owner reputedly warned that if you took off the wax seal from the flask, then there would be a 'peck o'trouble'. Shelton's artist book doesn't directly advocate for the seal to be broken, but does suggest it's high time we let a bigger 'genie' out of the bottle....
A roundup of the arts scene.
Ngatu, siapo, aute, masi, tapa… just some of the names from across the Pacific for barkcloth which reflect the rich variety of bark used and working processes. . Tapa is having a moment in the art gallery - both as an extraordinarily vital traditional media in use across the Pacific and also as a discipline being re-energised by a new generation of makers in Aotearoa New Zealand. Artists are carrying forward distinct island cultural traditions, and speaking to their own sense of place in the wor...
The Portage Ceramic Awards have long honoured the dynamic world of contemporary ceramics within Aotearoa New Zealand. The 2024 Premier Award winner and three Merit Award winners were announced at a ceremony on Thursday at Te Uru Gallery in Titirangi, where the work of 40 of the finalists is now being shown until February next year. This year's judge is internationally celebrated artist and West Auckland native, Kate Newby.
This week on Regional Wrap we go to Gisborne where exhibition Wimples, crosses, and lepers Women of Influence has just opened at Tairāwhiti Museum. Margaret Hansen has also written a book by the same name about her two aunts Marie and Alice, and her own musings growing up Catholic.
Churches big and small throughout Aotearoa New Zealand are vital spaces of culture and community but there are increasing challenges with heritage restoration and their relevance in today’s world. Around the country there are parishes operating from halls and community centres while precious traditional places of worship are boarded up. A recent renovation in Pōneke Wellington offers inspiration. On Friday a small Anglican church in the suburb of Island Bay won the Small Project category at the ...
For almost six decades photographer John Miller has been a protest photographer in Aotearoa New Zealand. From his first photographs of an anti-Vietnam War protest on Auckland’s Albert Street as a high school student in 1967, to Hīkoi mō te Tiriti earlier this week, John Miller (Ngāpuhi) has focused much of his work on the faces of dissent.
In April 2024, one of our most treasured artists Dame Robin White travelled from her home in Masterton to Aomori north of Honshu in Japan, to be an artist in residence at the Aomori Contemporary Art Centre. A focus of her residency was the work of Aomori woodcut master Munakata Shiko who’s known for his community-orientated approach - something which aligns with White’s own as a painter and printmaker.
The sheer diversity and invention of electronic music today in Aotearoa is evident in a list of sounds at the upcoming electronic sonic arts festival Outlier in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Curated by Grace Verweij and Tash van Schaardenburg, some are subgenres, while others, they admit, are made up. On the list: glitch, deconstructed club, emo electronics, ambient, gorge, modular + synthi, hyperpop, maximalist breaks, broken cassettes, mutant classical, ambisonics, techno-naturalism, taonga pūoro,...
This month Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage released a draft for consultation of Amplify: A Creative and Cultural Strategy for New Zealand. It’s stated as a national strategy that outlines how the government will prioritise support for our creative and cultural sectors to 2030. Submissions are due 15 December.
The Ministry for Culture and Heritage has released Amplify: A Creative and Cultural Strategy for New Zealand. It’s a draft open for public consultation described as ‘action-oriented’ outlining how the government could support the creative sector through till 2030.
Raimona Inia’s focus with partner Nikora Mihinui has long been the perpetuation of their culture, with a strong focus on storytelling. A new series of six books they are producing in both Te Reo Māori and English, He hokinga mahara ki a ratou mā capture the proverbs of the elders of Te Arawa and share their origins. There are, Inia says, a total of just under 300 proverbs featured.
