Culture 101

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 Th...

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 onl...

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 t...

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 carr...

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 Au...

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...

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 print...

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,...

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.