Culture 101

The paintings that Whanganui painter Edith Collier created in England 100 years ago remain to this day, utterly fresh. At that time, there was no one in Aotearoa New Zealand painting with such modernist verve.  “I am certain your fate will bring you back to England as mine did,” wrote our most celebrated artist of the period, Frances Hogkins to Collier, after she had returned home in 1921. Yet, th...

It’s a striking and brutal name for an art collective. The Killing is made up of six friends and former Elam School of Fine Arts students in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. At the time, they say, the choice of the name reflected their mindset - angsty, angry at the institution and full of what they describe as a lot of ‘young adult feelings’.

Mīria George (Te Arawa, Ngāti Awa, Tumutevarovaro, Enuamanu) and Hone Kouka (Ngāti Porou, Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Kahungunu) are both acclaimed, experienced writers and directors in theatre and film in their own right.  Collectively as partners in work and life they are the founders and producers of Tawata Productions, providing a platform for Māori and Pasifika artists for stage and screen. 

Arts News - Sunday 1 September

What happens when you fund 10 artists a part time wage - a universal basic income - for an entire year, to help facilitate change within their community across an entire region?    Over 2022 and 2023 arts agency Creative Waikato trialled such a project. Whiria Te Tāngata, was given $630,000 from the Manatū Taonga Ministry of Culture and Heritage’s Innovating Aotearoa fund. A documentary exploring...

Writers, poets, musicians, artists and storytellers have descended on Otautahi Christchurch this week for the Word Festival. More than 100 guests have been taking part in sessions across venues in the city from the 27 August to 1 September.

Every week on RNZ’s Culture 101 we explore the cultural richness of this country by catching up with a local in a place, big or small.   There’s no better demonstration of that richness than the cultural scene over-the-hill, top-of-the-south at Tākaka in Mohua, Golden Bay. 

Remember making dioramas with pen and card in shoeboxes as a child?  As a quick survey of German artist and writer Antje Damm’s instagram will attest, Damm creates a world of hand-cut wonder with tiny dioramas constructed in matchboxes.  It began with architecture and shoeboxes. At home with children after a professional life as an architect, Damm turned her 3D modelling skills to constructing car...

While festivals around the world have been either cancelled or scaled back, Electric Avenue in Ōtautahi Christchurch is doing the opposite.

It may be true that the most exciting place at a flat party is the bathroom. Private, yet not so private.  In a queasy bravado move for local television, that bathroom over one long night is the setting for the entire first episode of second series of comedy Not Even.   

This year marks 25 years since the Aotearoa band Stellar exploded onto the music charts in 1999 with multi-platinum album Mix.

Arts News for 25 August 2024.

They flit around you in the back garden at the compost, or dive at your feet in the bush. The pīwakawaka or fantail is a special bird: so common, yet so magic.  There's a lightness, a joy to this small bird, but while they perform a cheeky acrobatic dance closer to us than any other, they are also known as harbingers of death. For Māori, to have the ability to cross from our physical world  into o...

The Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra is bringing the epic scores of The Lion King and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to the stage alongside the films this year. 

Palmerston North or ‘Palmy’ as it’s known brims with energy, culture and heritage. Overlooking the Manawatū river, the region boomed with a pastoral farming industry. 

Last year the Ministry of Culture and Heritage Manatu Taonga reported New Zealand's arts and creative sector contributed $16.3 billion to New Zealand's GDP, or 4.3% of the total economy, in the year ending March 2023.

For three weeks in August every year, thousands of artists descend on Edinburgh for the largest performing arts festival in the world.

For many stand-up comedians, performing in a garage could seem like a career low-point. But in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, comedian Heta Dawson has turned his garage in his South Auckland family home into one of the freshest and most exciting comedy venues in North Island. 

Indian Ink Theatre Company has built up a remarkable reputation for developing and touring original work over 27 years.  Founded by Justin Lewis and Jacob Rajan, more than half a million people have seen their original delightful and often philosophical shows. They now tour them not just around this country, but to territories like Australia and North America. Quite a record for an independent the...

At the age of three, writer Sasha LaPointe was given her Skagit name in a ceremony - taqʷšəblu. In the Pacific Northwest, it’s a big deal to be given a Skagit name and she was her great-grandmother’s namesake - Violet taqʷšəblu Hilbert.

This weekend in Ōtepoti Dunedin small presses and independent publishers from around Aotearoa gather to share and exchange at Small Press Fest.  The festival reflects a move among younger creatives away from the internet towards community, focusing on the empowerment of making your own printed media. There’s also an eye on sustainability with presses more likely to be printing small numbers of boo...

Arts News: Injury at the Museum of Ice Cream, a #1 Netflix hit for NZ, Artbeat closes & kids books winner Stacey Gregg

30 kilometres west of Waihōpai Invercargill, is the town of Aparima or Riverton. It’s the gateway to spectacular and remote West Southland, an area sitting between the mountains of Fiordland and the Takitimu mountain range, with an infamous wild ocean out front.  Riverton is one of the earliest European settlements in New Zealand and before that  Aparima was a substantial Māori settlement, due to...

It’s a story about sisterhood and survival against a dark backdrop but Josephine Stewart Tewhiu never set out to make a film about abuse in state care. 

Artist Owen Connors is on a roll. They are one of four nominees for Aotearoa's most prestigious art prize, The Walters. Last year they won the $25,000 Rydal Art Prize, awarded biannually to a recent body of work considered by a jury to have made an important contribution to Aotearoa painting. They were also awarded one of the country’s most coveted residencies at McCahon House in the Waitakere.