Culture 101

It’s the end of an era. A Snort era. What was supposed to be one month, became one decade. The weekly improv comedy show in Tamaki Makaurau which quickly became a cult hit and drew in the crowds to The Basement every Friday night, has come to an end. 

Dr Huhana Smith (Ngāti Tukorehe) was the first graduate from Toioho ki Apiti with a Bachelor of Māori Visual Arts in 1998. She now holds a PhD in Māori studies. 

Living in the Kāpiti Coast town of Ōtaki, where he runs a gallery and shop with his wife Mia Brennan, Hohepa 'Hori' Thompson says his art and expressions are his way of “decolonising himself”, a journey that is still on-going. 

Culture 101 Arts News: November 19 2023

Marcus McShane’s latest experiment is to employ his cargo bike as a mobile video projection unit, screening commissioned audiovisual animation onto the upper floors of Cuba Street buildings as he cycles along, with the film designed to work in rhythm with his bike.

It is 50 years since The Rocky Horror Show premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London. 

The NZSO will accompany an 80-strong choir this week in a celebration of Pasifika music, combining symphony with songs from the Pacific.

Dr Rebecca Rice, Curator in Historical New Zealand Art has been rethinking Aotearoa New Zealand’s colonial visual culture, and her current research focuses on nineteenth-century female botanical artists, who arguably have not had the attention they deserve. Working between the fields of art and science, Rice says their work often sought to interest a wider public in the burgeoning field of botany,...

There are many books about lighthouse keepers. And many iconic images of lighthouses on our coastline. Yet the lighthouse keeper was pretty much made extinct in the 1970s in New Zealand when lighthouses became automated.  In Adrienne Jansen’s sixth novel, Light Keeping, the work and home of the lighthouse keeper is brought back to life.  Giving voice to others, through writing and publishing oppor...

Spooky, beautiful, yet funny, Greta Anderson’s photography transforms day into night, while invasive flora and domestic objects glow with spiritual electricity.   

Each week Culture 101 puts the spotlight on a different region around the motu - for our regional wrap.  This week we're in culture-rich Ōtepoti, Dunedin with Pip Laufiso.

“Sharpen your pencils and limp your wrists, Queer Academy is upon us.”

Records are made to be broken right? 

Born and raised in Rēkohu, the largest of the Chatham Islands, musician and storyteller Ajay Peni is a young ambassador for the revitalisation of Moriori culture and its rongo, or music. While now based in Perth, Peni’s blues-rock group Black Robin provides a contemporary musical window into the experiences and stories of this remote and wild South-Eastern part of Aotearoa New Zealand. 

Every week on Culture 101 we invite a guest to share their love of culture and shout out to other artists. This week it's actor, director and producer Te Kohe Tuhaka (Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Porou). 

A pioneer artist across the ‘60s and ‘70s and one of the most influential arts educators of his generation,  Jim Allen passed away just shy of turning 101 in June.  Known for inspiring what has been termed ‘post-object art’ in New Zealand, Allen was still working as a performance artist in his 90s. And he had a formative influence on another legend of experimentalism and education, artist Phil Dad...

Three theatre institutions are celebrating 50th anniversaries this year.   

An ambitious new book - Pacific Arts Aotearoa - has been released, spanning six decades of multi-disciplinary contributions from Pacific artists to New Zealand, Oceania and the world.

Karin Bettley tells Culture 101 about how her love of creative life in the coastal town of Raglan. 

An annual Spooky Disco means Halloween proves the busiest day of the year for a community and arts centre established on the green and surrounding buildings of a former bowling club in the Eastern Hills of Wellington. 

In the handsome just released book Don Binney Flight Path Gregory O’Brien tracks the avian-like swoops in the career of the late Tāmaki Makaurau painter, teacher and ornithologist (1940–2012).    

He’s best known for fronting rock band Shihad, but musician Jon Toogood says playing acoustic solo shows is now where he feels most “human”.

American slime mould tours Aotearoa creating giant kinetic sculpture of rubbish

The name of the northern Hawkes Bay river town of Wairoa has been translated as "the long water which bubbles, swirls and is uneven". That certainly became true earlier this year when Cyclone Gabrielle swallowed the town, leaving a flooded trail of destruction in its path. But what of life beyond that catastrophic event? What makes Wairoa special? Wairoa's Deputy Mayor Denise Eaglesome-Karekare fi...

While other kids went to kindergarten, when he was a small child Tongan New Zealand artist John Vea was on the factory floor where his father worked. The experience has led Vea to make the relationship between factory and manual labour work and the Pacific Island community central to his performances, sculpture and installations. Exhibition Outcast at Tamaki Makaurau’s Gus Fisher Gallery brings Ve...