David Cronenberg's 1979 body horror The Brood teases in its trailer that it's "a film so terrifying that it will devastate you totally". What possesses us to love horror films so? Curator of Screams may have the answer. They are a collaboration between two contemporary art and horror film lovers, Dowse Art Museum senior curator Chelsea Nichols and City Gallery Wellington senior curator Aaron Lister. Through their lively instagram account and exhibition curation, singularly, and together they exp...
Feb 22, 2025•16 min
The Hamilton Arts Festival has kicked off for another year. Music, theatre, dance, comedy and artistic experiences fill the Hamilton Gardens with more than 800 peformers this year, across 9 days. Most shows will take place in the gardens with a few sprinkled around the CBD including the Meteor and Riverlea Theatre. It's also the first time a literary festival will be held within the festival - called HamLit. Show Do Cafe is a contemporary dance piece exploring the journey of coffee starting n Br...
Feb 22, 2025•13 min
Tina, the debut feature film of Miki Magasiva is a love letter to both Samoan culture and how choral music, across cultures, can assist people in change. The way art can enable acceptance of the richness of our difference. But Tina is also centrally about how Pasifika women are leaders in taking culture forward. The title translates in English as mother, or female elder. And in the lead role Anapela Polata'ivao plays Mareta, a mother struggling after the death of her daughter in the 2011 Christc...
Feb 22, 2025•13 min
How can we live better, closer and more affordably together? New Zealand young architecture studio Space Craft are one of the winners of a recent competition to design the housing of the future for New South Wales. The state called for designs of cost effective but beautiful apartments that could be repeated at scale. The state has - like New Zealand - a major housing shortage. New South Wales needs to build 370,000 homes over five years. Space Craft are now refining their winning designs for in...
Feb 16, 2025•22 min
Tackling the Tamaki Makaurau performing arts scene and keeping it alive is part of Daniel Clarke's new role as Director of Performing Arts at Tātaki Auckland Unlimited. Clarke leads a team which oversees the Aotea Centre, Aotea Square, The Civic, Bruce Mason Centre and the Auckland Town Hall with the aim of putting a stronger focus on live entertainment, on behalf of the Auckland Council. Clarke moved from Australia to take on the role where he's had extensive experience in programming and direc...
Feb 16, 2025•24 min
The large town of Ashburton is to be found on the Canterbury Plains, halfway between Christchurch and Timaru. It is home to the increasingly celebrated Ashburton Art Gallery and Heritage Centre, whose director Shirin Khosraviani joined Culture 101 for our Regional Wrap. The gallery's new building opened 10 years ago and has now welcomed the local museum inside. In current museum exhibition, Bridging the Chasm the history of the Great Southern Railway is explored. How from 1874 it "opened Ashburt...
Feb 16, 2025•8 min
A familiar fixture in Ponsonby in Tāmaki Makaurau, Two Hands tattoo studio is celebrating 20 years. Tattoo artist Stefan Sinclair founded the studio in 2005 and specialises in single-needle fine-line tattooing, a style that became extremely popular in California in the 70s. His work has taken him all over the world including London, Berlin and Melbourne. He's now largely based from LA - but returns home to New Zealand every summer. Two Hands is marking two decades in the business with an exhibit...
Feb 16, 2025•18 min
Two characters both named Antonio in two different Shakespeare plays - the Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night - are often considered to be gay. Antonio in Much Ado About Nothing is also suspected. A new queer punk pirate musical Antonio! playfully suggests Shakespeare wasn't just reusing this character name, but was inspired by a real life gay pirate searching for love. In the musical, a swashbuckling Antonio is joined by a live band to reclaim his stories. Antonio! is the brainchild of three ...
Feb 15, 2025•11 min
A new multi-sensory sound performance is debuting at Silo Park in Tāmaki Makaurau. Artist and composer Flo Wilson is drawing inspriations from contemporary organ music and medieval choral traditions in her performance and installation. The six silos will be transformed with six singers and six loudspeakers giving audiences a sense of being inside an organ. The art work is part of the Second Festival of Secret Sounds run by the Audio Foundation. Flo Wilson is now based in Berlin but has returned ...
Feb 15, 2025•15 min
It's Pride Month in Tamaki Makaurau where the LGBTQIA+ community comes together to celebrate diversity and resilience throughout February. The month-long festival features more than 200 events this year with open-access arts, cultural and community events. Along with Big Gay Out and Pride Fest Out West, there's also an exhibition at Season Gallery Aotearoa and Pride Elevates at Q Theatre Loft. Auckland Pride Executive Director, Hāmiora Bailey, joins Culture 101 to play Fast Favourites.
Feb 15, 2025•14 min
Young Maori artists are currently being called to enter portraits of their tupuna, their ancestors in any media for the Kiingi Tuheitia Portraiture Award. The Award is hosted by Te Pukenga Whakaata the New Zealand Portrait Gallery in honour of the late Maori King. Artists have until March 20 to enter. One of the judges of the award is a young artist himself: a lead carver who holds responsibility for carrying forward the stories of the Tainui-Waikato people and the Kingitanga. He serves our new ...
Feb 09, 2025•22 min
Each week, Culture 101 puts the spotlight on a different part of Aotearoa for our regional wrap. This week, it's one of the food and wine capitals of the world - Napier. It's gearing up for the annual Art Deco Festival in which tens of thousands flock to celebrate all things 1920s. For four days, from the 13-16 February, the centre of the coastal city will be transformed by vintage car parades, fashion competitions, entertainment and food, drink and dancing. Heritage Manager at the Art Deco Trus...
Feb 09, 2025•7 min
First released in 1991 and sparking a whole new genre of empire-building games, computer game Civilization has tens of millions of players, among them tech world builders like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. . In the game you choose a leader from across ancient to modern history, and set about building a civilization. You develop agriculture, technology, a culture, economy, and religion. And, naturally,you expand territory, through both warfare and diplomacy. And no, current world leaders aren't ...
Feb 09, 2025•19 min
Husband and wife duo Damon and Lu Holter from Wisconsin are champion grillers in the world of American BBQ and competitive 'foodsport'. They've competed at the world's largest culinary festival, the World Food Championships for a decade. Founders of Croix Valley Foods, a family based business in Wisconsin making BBQ sauces, rubs and marinades, they're in New Zealand February 14 and 15 for Meatstock, the Hamilton festival that features an array of live music, barbecue and grilling competitions, b...
Feb 08, 2025•11 min
Over the summer, thousands have been flocking to the Auckland Botanic Gardens in south Tamaki Makaurau for Sculpture in the Gardens. Back after a 3-year hiatus, the exhibtion showcases 15 artworks from artists across the motu and features steel and glass work, soaring sculptures and sound and light works. The bienniel exhibition started in 2007 - and now attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each time. Co-curator Dr Linda Tyler has been involved since 2015 and spoke to Culture 101 about cho...
Feb 08, 2025•13 min
Courtney Johnston has been the chief executive of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa now for five years, joining Maori co-leader Arapata Hakiwai at the helm. Johnston's career as a director, curator and writer has been dedicated to our culture, and how we represent and access it. Prior to Te Papa she was the director of the Dowse Art Museum for eight years, worked at the National Library of New Zealand and in roles with various public galleries. Courtney will also be a familiar voice to...
Feb 08, 2025•14 min
Industries around the world are grappling with what AI means and how it could be empowering, challenging and potentially threatening.
Feb 02, 2025•24 min
Culture and heritage aren't just the preserve of cities and towns.
Feb 02, 2025•8 min
New Zealand dancer, choreographer and filmmaker Loughlan Prior has been named one of '25 to Watch' in 2025 in the prestigious US publication Dance Magazine.
Feb 01, 2025•13 min
President Donald Trump is back and so is Hollywood. He's appointed three ambassadors; Mel Gibson, Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone to revive the industry
Feb 01, 2025•17 min
Kiwi actor Luciane Buchanan has become a familiar face to millions as one of the stars in the Netflix series The Night Agent.
Feb 01, 2025•11 min
The latest arts news from around the motu.
Dec 22, 2024•6 min
83-year-old poet and songwriter Tucker Zimmerman has had something of a cultural Forrest Gump of a career, and 2024 has found him gaining new-found fame. Acclaimed album Dance of Love, out on 4AD records, is the result of a collaboration with fans who tracked him down in Belgium to record: folk-rockers of the moment Big Thief. It’s Tucker Zimmerman’s 15th album, in a recording career that stretches back to a 1968 debut produced in London with producer Tony Visconti - while another fan, David Bow...
Dec 22, 2024•35 min
Culture 101 speaks to the artist from Berlin about his first solo show in New Zealand and is innovative approach to art.
Dec 22, 2024•18 min
Our Regional Wrap takes us to somewhere named after the Christmas city itself.
Dec 22, 2024•6 min
Since winning the coveted Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Anora has spent the past six months taking the movie world by storm. It finally arrives in New Zealand cinemas on Boxing Day. Anora stars Mikey Madison (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Scream) as the titular character, a sex worker from Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.
Dec 22, 2024•16 min
It’s a 2024 thriller concerned with race, podcast-making and the criminal justice system high on a fair few 2024 best-of lists. 17 Years Later is Melbourne-based bestselling New Zealand writer JP Pomare’s seventh novel in as many years. In the book, it’s been 17 years since the violent stabbings of the British immigrant Primrose family while they slept, in Cambridge in the Waikato. And 17 years since the swift charge with the murders of the family's young live-in Māori chef Bill Kareama.
Dec 21, 2024•13 min
She joins Culture 101 to talk about her time in the South of France for the 2024 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship, her new novel and her highlights of 2024.
Dec 21, 2024•13 min
The Pōhutukawa - our Christmas tree - once bountifully fringed the West Coast north of Taranaki, and the East Coast north of Tairāwhiti Gisborne. While now found even further south, these trees with their stunning gold tipped crimson blooms remain synonymous with summer on the Northern East Coast. They are there, at the end of the garden, before the vivid blues of sea and sky in East Coast, a new body of paintings from one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most beloved painters, Karl Maughan. East Coast...
Dec 21, 2024•12 min
Renowned Māori actor and filmmaker Cliff Curtis has been honoured with the prestigious International Federation of Film Producers Associations Award at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. The event, held on Australia's Gold Coast, celebrated Curtis's outstanding contributions to the film industry. A decades-long career has included iconic roles in Once Were Warriors, Training Day, Whale Rider, and more recently, the Avatar sequels directed by James Cameron.
Dec 15, 2024•3 min
