Culture 101

Researchers at the University of Sydney are suggesting eyed needles were used to adorn clothing for social and cultural purposes, marking the shift from clothing being used as a necessity for protection to expressing identity. 

Some say attention spans are not what they were. We scroll images and film and shuffle songs. Even cricket games can be over in 40 overs.  So, could flash fiction be the written storytelling form of our time? Or is it yet another passing fad.

Sisters, suitors and swooning - the Dashwood family is getting a raucous spin in this latest iteration of Sense and Sensibility at Circa Theatre. 

A chemist and now a comedian (naturally), Dr Joel Rindelaub has been swapping the classroom for comedy clubs with his show Science Is No Joke. He first performed his one-hour set at the NZ International Comedy Festival in May before taking the show to his home state in Minnesota in the US. 

Harry Ricketts joins RNZ’s Culture 101 to discuss First Things, a memoir of this much loved writer and teacher’s childhood and early adulthood. His first 29 years.

It’s not possible to consider modern textiles in Aotearoa New Zealand without encountering the advocacy, research, curation and art of weaver Margery Blackman. The same could also be said of the life of many of the cultural institutions of Ōtepoti Dunedin over the past 60 years.  

Arts news for Sunday June 30

Pete Sephton was a friend of Barry Brickell's and is a trustee of Driving Creek. He's a screen print artist, very involved in the annual Coromandel Arts Tour in October and township support group Artists in the Making.

A landmark anthology Everything That Moves, Moves Through Another brings together the experiences of 27 mixed heritage creatives across Aotearoa.

The famous buddy road trip film Thelma and Louise is taking on a different life at the Civic Theatre in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland this month. Best friends and long-time creative collaborators, Julia Croft and Nisha Madhan are putting their own spin on the adventure crime tale, and in this version - as their title says - Thelma and Louise Don’t Die.

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 t...

A conversation with her five-year-old niece prompted Mandi Lynn to explore body shaming in a photo exhibition and short documentary.

Arts news for 23 June 2024

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.

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 en...

Arts news for 16 June 2024

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.

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. 

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.  

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. 

A small farming town in South Australia has been on a mission to show art can improve health and well-being.

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.

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. 

Arts news for Sunday 9 June.

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.