Culture 101

Bouncing off the success from the first season, documentary Takeout Kids is back for a second season and this time, it’s venturing beyond the takeaways.

Growing up as the only boy in a family of five children, Eli Matthewson was well prepared for a career in comedy. 

Dropping a sheep’s carcass from an aeroplane into the Waitemata harbour; sewing a sheep’s kidney onto your own back; yelling “get the f**k out” till the audience leaves, many razor cuts. The early, confrontational ‘70s performance work of the late Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland artist Peter Roche is the stuff of legend.   Yet, as Night Piece, a new documentary by filmmaker Bridget Sutherland shows, Pete...

Arts news: Arts as a 'nice to do', Parkin prize and Electric Avenue

Public galleries have been demonstrating our view of art history has been changing radically for years. It just hasn’t been published for a wider public, until now.  Art historian and curator Kirsty Baker’s smart and insightful new book Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa, published by Auckland University Press, is then a major publishing event. 

Each week Culture 101 puts the spotlight on a different region in Aotearoa and this week we’re in the Bay of Plenty town of Whakatāne.

The Bitches’ Box is back, and for the first time the show will be venturing to urban centres. 

Comedy podcast Did Titanic Sink? is back baby! Winner of the Comedy Podcast of the Year at the 2023 NZ Podcast Awards, comedians Tim Batt and Carlo Ritchie are steered towards investigating a local conspiracy - the mystery of the ‘Canterbury Cat’.

Almost 40 years on, Hunters and Collectors in Pōneke remains. The first vintage clothing store in the Capital, it’s a truly iconic creative Cuba Street institution. Hunters and Collectors’ matriarch is Chrissy O. Just turned 70, known for her flame-coloured hair and parade of remarkable vintage ensembles and spectacles, Chrissy O is herself a true avant garde style icon.

Married couple Michael Hurst and Jennifer Ward-Lealand have theatre and film careers that span 40 years. Indeed, they met in the theatre - at Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland’s Theatre Corporate in 1983. While they’re both beloved individually for their many and varied contributions to the arts, they’ve also appeared in some 22 shows together.  Yet it's never just been the two of them on stage together. U...

That role of the museum is just one of the ways poet, novelist and essayist Ian Wedde explores opening out space through culture in his third volume of collected nonfiction writing, The Social Space of the Essay. 

The 1960s Rolls-Royce which served as the limousine for Queen Elizabeth II’s royal tours in New Zealand is being auctioned.

Nestled in the impressive harbour of Canterbury’s Banks Peninsula, is picturesque town Akaroa.  

In the genre-busting documentary Grand Theft Hamlet, two out-of-work UK actors in lockdown attempt the seemingly impossible. They seek to mount a full production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet inside the ultra violent world of Grand Theft Auto - the popular multiplayer online video game - with often hysterical, bloody and thoughtful results. 

Mezzo-soprano Katie Trigg has been crowned the 2024 Lexus Song Quest winner. The prestigious opera singing competition took place on Saturday night at Michael Fowler Centre in Poneke Wellington. Five singers battled it out for the country’s biggest operatic honour. 

Multi-disciplinary artist Liv Tennet is trying to be a cool mum - without losing her cool. Her new solo dance show For You To Know and Me To Find Out has been brewing for the past few years amidst the juggle of creativity, work, art and motherhood. 

It’s difficult not to use the cliché description of ‘whirlwind’ but the past few years have been life changing for New Zealand Chinese actor Jess Hong. 

We’re in a housing crisis, most people agree. With strong awareness of the inequalities that it brings.  Yet, when it comes to talking about solutions to something so complex yet so personal, people struggle - reaching for phrases like ‘this housing thing’.  This Housing Thing is the title of a moving image work by artist Dieneke Jansen, who has long dedicated her art and activism to housing. It’s...

It’s 1979 in Ōtautahi Christchurch and an energetic underground punk scene is spewing up. It’s decades before the internet, with the very latest overseas sounds dribbling in slowly by import. Records shipped all the way from the UK.       This is the fertile and nostalgic setting for Sydney-based director, Jonathan Ogilvie's excellent fourth feature film, Head South. It’s premiering in Aotearoa Ne...

Arts News for 28 July 2024

Culture 101 puts the spotlight on a different region in Aotearoa every Sunday and this week we’re in New Plymouth, Taranaki.

From Sappho, to Sweden’s Queen and the Suffragettes, Unsuitable is the first book of its kind, spanning centuries and continents, uncovering the often hidden history of lesbian fashion. 

They’ve been dubbed ‘the MTV generation’ and the ‘Forgotten generation’ (though now they’re in power: ‘forgotten no more’ we say). They are Generation X: those born between 1965 and 1980.  The baby boomers came before them, the millennials after and the Gen Xers may still be getting used to it - but they are all now middle-aged. So, brought together, what does the art they’ve made tell us?  

It’s described as genre-bending, bespoke and immersive - a show you can’t fit into one category.

Hugo Grrrl keeps rather busy. He’s a fulltime drag artist - not just performing, but MCing, producing, writing and providing opportunities for the next generation of performers.  The alias of George Fowler, Hugo Grrrl’s events are also notoriously inventive - and sparkly - working in all manner of social spaces.