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Collected stories and commentary, from New Zealand and elsewhere, on people and the arts, and celebrating talent.   Keep Reading

In 2019 a survey exhibition at the Auckland Art GalleryToi o Tāmaki of feminist art activists, Guerilla Girls, led Wellington-based writer, Anna Knox to reflect upon and research the status of women artists in Aotearoa within the context of their male counterparts.  Published online in The Spinoff, Knox pre-empted her commentary,... Keep Reading

It might just be me. Reading a recent article regarding the purchase of the maligned Malvern House building on Hereford Street (‘Fed-up neighbour buys central Christchurch 'eyesore' bringing down the block’, Stuff, Feb 2, 2021), I was struck by how my perception of the area in question was in stark contrast to the sentiments expressed. The... Keep Reading

Commissioned by SCAPE Public Art in 2001 and sited to float above the stairway in the former Christchurch Boys’ High School in The Arts Centre, Bing Dawe’s Out of the Black Water was damaged by the February 2011 earthquake, but has been lovingly been restored by the artist and reinstated in the same location.  Dawe recognised the merits... Keep Reading

Larence Shustak: air gun? offers a privileged insight into the life and work of American photographer Larence Shustak (1926-2003). Moments from a rich personal narrative as recounted by long time friend and filmmaker Stuart Page, accompany a body of work spanning decades and diverse locales, from ‘Uptown’ New York to Aotearoa. The... Keep Reading

I’m feeling like a ‘bout of nostalgia for long forgotten picture palaces in Christchurch I’d love to share with you.  The appetite has always been strong in Ōtautahi for foreign language, independent, cult, festival films.  The major chains of the day Kerridge Odeon and Amalgamated Theatres both took a longer term view of... Keep Reading

Collected stories and commentary, from New Zealand and elsewhere, on people and the arts, and celebrating talent. Keep Reading

Undoubtedly Bill Hammond was one of New Zealand’s greatest painters.  Not merely in the trivial sense of the large sums his work went for at auction, but in terms of what he said about us as people.Bill was the supreme dissector of the Kiwi (admittedly predominantly Pākehā). His works from the 1980s were surrealist visions of an uptight,... Keep Reading

When the 15th March 2019 Mosque attacks happened, Colombian born, Christchurch-based artist Janneth Gil was immediately reminded of memories of her life in Bogotá in the 1980s and 1990s.  The United States was then waging a war on drugs in Colombia in armed conflict with drug cartels, with civilians caught in the middle with the cartels... Keep Reading

I discovered Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history at high school in 1973 through Gordon Brown and Hamish Keith’s An Introduction to New Zealand Painting 1827–1967.  This is a history which has its origins in the appointment of the country’s first professional art gallery director in 1952, Eric Westbrook and his successor Peter Tomory at... Keep Reading

Founders and hosts of the annual Tai Tapu Sculpture Garden, Annabel Menzies-Joyce and Peter Joyce will once again open their garden to the public over three weekends in March:  Saturday and Sunday, 6th  and 7th, 13th and 14th, and 20th  and 21st  March.   As in previous years the exhibition provides support for... Keep Reading

Thieves’ Market considers concepts of orientation, spirituality, and acquisition, bringing a contemporary perspective on ancient processes to The National.  Areez Katki’s intricate beadworks document the artist’s ongoing explorations of identity –navigating ancestral traditions of object making, and engaging with inheritances of... Keep Reading

In collaboration with writer and academic Dr Karlo Mila, printmaker Michel Tuffery’s Te Moana Nui a Kiwa, features new digital drawings, (and prints from the Handle with Care Series), that resonate within the 30 year history of his arts practice.  Tuffery’s partnership with Mila has seen the realisation of the digital video Mana Moana... Keep Reading

At the end of last year I started a new role at the Christchurch City Council; my full title is Community Arts Advisor.   In the first few weeks when people would ask what I was doing I would clip the title and say “Arts Advisor”—it seemed more straightforward.  It also mitigated any confusion around “Community Art”—a... Keep Reading

Family, friends, children, sunshine, love, happiness and exercise are the seven nouns one woman used in a painting of her body to describe the things that give meaning and joy to her life. Keep Reading