Culture 101

From the ancient oud to the electric axe, the Martin acoustic to the Fender Stratocaster, American National Guitar Museum touring exhibition Medieval to Metal covers a whole lot of stage with 40 guitars. Believe it or not, there’s even an air guitar.   

From hanging out with Daleks and Weeping Angels to the many different iterations of the sonic screwdriver - costumes, props, gadgets and gizmos from the world’s longest running sci-fi series have materialised in Pōneke Wellington as part of exhibition Doctor Who Worlds of Wonders: Where Science Meets Fiction. It’s now at the Tākina events centre. 

A documentary theatre piece is giving the stage to stories held onto for decades. The adoption experiences of birth mothers in the 1950s and 1960s in New Zealand are being heard in I Carried This at the Hannah Playhouse in Pōneke Wellington this June. 

Comedian and writer Lana Walters has won the Billy T Award for 2024, New Zealand’s premiere comedy award. 

Arts news for the 26 May 2024 on Culture 101.

In Pōneke Wellington this week artists, technologists, and critical thinkers have been exploring together questions around machine learning and artificial intelligence. They’ve gathered as part of Rising Algorithms: Navigate, Automate, Dream, a symposium produced by the Aotearoa Digital Arts Network, or ADA for short

Boris Eldagsen became the most notorious artist in the world last year, after winning an award at one of the world's biggest photography competitions with an image entirely generated by AI. 

Each week, Culture 101 puts the spotlight on a different region in Aotearoa for the weekly Regional Wrap. This week we’re in the steampunk capital of the world - Oamaru. 

As global warming continues, many parts of the world including natural wonders and island countries are at risk of damage or disappearing. This has led to a trend of ‘last chance tourism’ where travellers visit areas threatened by climate change - before it’s too late. Ironically, the more tourists visit these areas, the more widespread the climate crisis becomes, which again fuels ‘last chance to...

Te Pou Theatre’s latest offering puts a spotlight on the wāhine factory workers behind the iconic Crown Lynn crockery. 

Gamers with a passion for creative writing can merge their interests in Aotearoa's only creative writing paper dedicated to video games.

Pōneke Wellington based Ebony Lamb has the distinction of having developed two parallel acclaimed careers: as a singer-songwriter and as a photographer. 

Arts news for 19 May 2024

The Auckland Writers Festival has set central Tāmaki Makaurau abuzz this week with a strong lineup of leading local and international authors, panel discussions, and events, including the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.  For more than three days, the festival takes over Aotea Centre and various inner city venues. This year the festival has a brand-new artistic director, Lyndsey Fineran. 

Te Whare Tapere in the Christchurch Arts Centre is neither a European-style gallery or theatre. As a space principally by Māori, for Māori, it is, says co-founder artist Juanita Hepi, “a multidisciplinary, indigenous house of storytelling.” Te Whare Tapere was the name given by Māori before the arrival of the European to such community houses of storytelling, dance, music, puppets, games and other...

You know those embarrassing uncomfortable thoughts and feelings you have you usually keep inside? Pōneke playwright and comedian Viki Moananu uses theatre and comedy to let them out. He calls them ‘Icky’. 

Gore is quite rightly known as our Capital of country music. But there’s always been much more going on culturally in this East Southland town.

Vast exclusion zones operate around the cities of Pripyat, near the ruined Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, and Plymouth, on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, decimated by the island’s volcano. The two cities have been the focus of two long research projects with multiple exhibitions by Pōneke Wellington based Mexican artist Raúl Ortega Ayala. 

The notoriously punishing, elite world of the Moscow Bolshoi Ballet Academy is centre stage in Joika - the first ever film collaboration between New Zealand and Poland. 

Over 100 years ago artist Ahilapalapa Rands’ great-grandfather, the ukulele virtuoso Ernest Ka’ai wrote the song ‘Across the Sea’, the lyrics speaking to the pull that Hawai’i has for Kānaka Maoli (indigenous Hawaiaans) living elsewhere. Born and raised in Aotearoa New Zealand, Rands is of Kānka Maoli, Samoan, Cook Islands and Pākehā descent. She is then truly of the Pacific. In her latest install...

A professional in the comedy scene for more than a decade now, Rhys Mathewson knew he was going to pursue comedy as a career after taking part in Class Comedians in 2006 at the age of 15.  From that point, his star has been steadily on the rise. He won Best Newcomer for his first solo show in 2009 and, just a year later at the age of 19, he became the youngest person to be awarded the Billy T Awar...

Ten years ago acclaimed potter Rick Rudd sold his house -  together with its unique native and sculpture garden - in Castlecliff, Whanganui to establish Quartz Museum of Studio Ceramics in downtown Whanganui. Born from Rudd’s concern that there was nowhere where you could see exhibited the history of New Zealand ceramics, it is Aotearoa’s only museum devoted to the ceramic arts, and the largest ce...

Aotearoa New Zealand is a land of birds. Yet contemporary fiction providing a bird’s eye view has been slow to arrive.  While Catherine Chidgey’s award winning 2022 novel The Axeman’s Carnival looks at human interaction from the perspective of a magpie, Shelley Burne-Field’s new adventure novel for young readers, Brave Kāhu and the Pōrangi Magpie has a whole flock of makipai (magpies). 

In this week’s Regional Wrap we look at the culture of Far North town Kaitaia.

In an article on Stuff in 2019, comedian Guy Williams posed the question, “Where are all the Māori comedians?” Williams noted that, despite our main comedy award being named after Billy T James, he could only name a handful of Māori funnymen and women working at the time.  Now in 2024, comedian and actor Bailey Poching is responding. In a piece for Vice titled 'Here Are All The Māori Comedians' Po...