Culture 101

The Cardrona or the Thistle Inn? The Puhoi or Hotel De Brett? The White Hart or the Whangamomona? Which is this country’s most classic pub?

Dame Susan Devoy’s career has been nothing if not lane-changing. And as such, an inspiration for us all.

There’s human intelligence - when we use it. We’re getting to grips with artificial intelligence. And many people are getting fascinated with plant intelligence - the magic work of mycelium for example. But there are other intelligences - what Awhiworld, a group of ‘artists, scientists, hackers and makers’ in Whangārei call  ‘Strange Intelligences’.

The rural town of Greytown in the Wairarapa in the lower North Island is particularly proud of its heritage and history. 

We all make mistakes, but can we accept our errors and take action before things start to unravel beyond our control?  In New Zealand director Christine Jeffs’ powerful new feature film A Mistake, adapted from the novel by Carl Shuker, American actor Elizabeth Banks (The Hunger Games, Pitch Perfect) plays a gifted surgeon dealing with the aftermath of an emergency surgery that went wrong. The reas...

The fashion designer is celebrating 25 years of the label Crane Brothers and to mark the occasion, the company is teaming up with The Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi to launch a Laureate Award for design

“It is a cliche to say literature saves lives,” Behrouz Boochani has written, “but I experienced it with my whole being.” Behrouz Boochani is a Kurdish journalist, human rights defender, writer and film producer who came to international attention after his memoir, No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison won the 2019 Victorian Prize for Literature and the prize for non-fiction in Au...

Arts news: a cheeky ceramics award winner, Chidgey nets Darwin and Dickens publisher and a new Christchurch artist space

The latest production by Māori theatre company Te Rākau Hua o Te Wao Tapu, Unreel tells the story of a community affected by gambling as the Hīnaki Hotel looks set to launch the very first AI pokie machine.    This year Te Rākau Hua o Te Wao Tapu celebrate 35 years as Aotearoa New Zealand's longest running independent Māori Theatre Company.  Co-founder and celebrated veteran actor Jim Moriarty has...

The 34th season of the World of Wearable Art has kicked off in the capital - an annual spectacle of fashion, art, circus, dance and music.  This year’s theme is Dream Awake, and the competition has 91 finalists from 15 countries.  Joining Culture 101 to discuss the spectacle of WOW is Stuff arts journalist Andre Chumko and theatre maker and writer for Wellingtonista, Emma Maguire. 

The beautiful Rangitikei region - running alongside the river of the same name from the Manawatu to Ruapehu - is better known as a place depicted by artists than for its arts scene.  It’s famous as the rural landscape depicted by painter Peter McIntyre in the mid 20th century.  One notable recent initiative however, is bringing contemporary artists to the region. Laura and Richard Morrison own a s...

This week, artist Jefferson Chen, also known as Goodspace, is paying homage to Lim Chhour's legacy and the hardworking vendors by launching his debut album, Let's Talk About Death, with a multi-media installation Vendor. 

Artist Ana Iti has been awarded Aotearoa New Zealand’s most prestigious art award, the Walters Prize at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Her sculpture and sound installation ‘A resilient heart like the mānawa’ is on display at the gallery.   Like the UK’s Turner Prize, The Walters Prize 2024 has four finalists in exhibition, chosen by a jury.  Yet, while that same jury awards the final Prize to...

Hawkes Bay theatre maker Kristyl Neho (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahungunu) grew up with more death around her than most people.

The Capital’s Deputy Mayor Laurie Foon has long championed Pōneke Wellington - it’s local businesses, its fashion and, sometimes more controversially, its bike lanes.

Arts News: Parekowhai's controversial giant kangaroo, Te Unua Museum of Southland's cost blowout and extinct animal discovered in rock art.

Has joy ever been such a crucial visible part of art as it is in the work of crochet extraordinaires Lissy and Rudi Robinson-Cole? The married couple are on a mission to bring light, warmth and Te Ao Māori to all of Aotearoa New Zealand with their electrically colourful woollen work. 

Maurice and I is an unexpectedly moving, delightful, at times harrowing look at the enduring partnership between architects Sir Miles Warren and Maurice Mahoney and the creation and saving of the iconic Christchurch Town Hall.

Each week Culture 101 puts the spotlight on a different region in Aotearoa. This week we’re in the port town of Lyttelton near Ōtautahi Christchurch. 

So fearless is composer Eve De Castro Robinson that not only did she recently give a seminar entitled ‘Being Fearless’ but, now in her 60s, she recently tried doing stand-up comedy for the first time.  Not typical for a composer, yet Robinson has always been bold in working with others and across artforms. She ascribes to composer John Cage’s view: “Get out of whatever cage you’re in.” 

Independent, trailblazing alternative pop artist Theia has released a new musical anthem. Staunchly proud of being a wahine Māori artist, her whakapapa (Waikato-Tainui, Ngāti Tīpā) and her language, latest single Baldh3ad focuses on the “plague of colonisation”, with a direct address to the current government. 

Kirsty Webeck is one of Australia’s busiest comedians. But her path into comedy was anything but conventional.

With style and cinematic verve, if there was ever an Aotearoa artist to be dubbed disco queen it would be Lisa Reihana. Disco because her latest commissioned work on the rooftop of the National Gallery of Singapore, Glisten moves with sequins and sound.  114,000 shimmer discs dazzle in the warm breeze, complete with a soundscape. They make up patterns inspired by Southeast Asian Songket and Māori...

He's reached that stage of getting called a legend of the underground and certainly, Bill Direen is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most singular, long serving and distinctive poets and musicians. His career began in the fertile music and theatre scene of Ōtautahi Christchurch in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.  Forming the group The Bilders (for which he has been sole constant, with a fascinating ros...

An area of Aotearoa New Zealand arts getting major global reach right now is music and sound for film.  Culture 101 brought together three composers and musicians making inroads in this field to talk about how they make the remarkable work they do: Moniker’s Sam Flynn Scott, Lachlan Anderson and Stephen Gallagher.   The reach doesn’t get much bigger. August saw the debut of the animated feature Sa...