Category: Reviews, News and Commentary

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

Sincere Apologies: did you really say that

John Daly-Peoples

Sincere Apologies

Don Koop, Jamie Lewis and David Wiliams

Auckland Arts Festival

Loft, Q Theatre

Until March 22

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

It’s opening night of Sincere Apologies but there are only twenty-five people in the Loft at Q with seating for more than one hundred. Maybe people have read about the show already and have found out that they may have to speak. That’s a big no-no for some New Zealanders. Public speaking – that’s when you make a complete idiot of yourself with the wedding speech, or the farewell speech at the office. No wonder only twenty-five turned up.

It all starts simply enough. An envelope is handed round the group with instructions to keep it moving until the music runs out. Just a version of pass the parcel, and then the lucky person gets to read out the instructions and hand out fifty envelopes.

These are fifty real apologies that are distributed to the audience. They are mainly from the last fifty years, all of them factual, collected by the three creators, Dan Koop, Jamie Lewis and David Williams. There are apologies from government ministers, public figures as well as private individuals, all expressing remorse for things they have said or done or their governments have done. One by one, the audience members step up to the microphone and read them out aloud.

There are some important apologies. New Zealand government ministers apologizing for the government actions during the Land Wars, an on-air apology by Paul Henry to the Governor General Anand Satyanand for dumb things he said on radio and there is also Kanya West apologising to Taylor Swift and Beyonce for dumb things he has said about them.

I got to read out two apologies. One by the chairman of the Fukushima Power Board apologizing for the trouble and harm caused by the explosion and release of radioactive materials into the sea and air.

The other was by Geroge Bush apologising for the treatment of Japanese /American citizens during the Second World War.

There were lots of other apologies for the harm done by war with some private individuals apologising for what their German and Japanese parents may have done during the Second World War.

There was a range of apologies from all walks of life and for all sorts of reasons. There was Tiger Woods apologizing for his infidelity and an apology for the harm caused by the Dawn raids.

There were also a couple of apologies to theatre goers who had made complaints to Q Theatre for unstated reasons.

One apology was very succinct – “Fuck”.

There are no actors in this mix of ordinary people but some of them were as assured as if they were. Others displayed a bit of hesitancy, but all seem to relate to the apology they were reading. Some of the apologies from government ministers were a bit formulaic and those apologies were buried under the same set of words. When these statements are stripped of power, position, and spin they seem hollow, lacking real meaning. Other apologies like Jacinda Ardern’s apology for the Christchurch Mosque murders were filled with meaning and history seemed particularly relevant.

Hearing these apologies, one is made aware of the power of language and sometimes because of the way in which people read them the readings were given an added emotional tone.

There are couple of made-up apologies with dates set in the future – an apology in 2065 to Kiribati and other island nations for the inundations of 2050 and one from the Australian government acknowledging the death of the last koala in existence. The one disappointment was that there was no discussion at the end of the session, only applause by the audience for their own collective performance.

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

 Auckland Art Gallery announces the finalists for 2027 Walters Prize.

John Daly-Peoples

Image credit: Edith Amituanai, Vaimoe (video still), 2024. Digital video, sound. Cinematographer: Ralph Brown. Photo credit: Ralph Brown

Held every three years, the Walters Prize is widely regarded as Aotearoa New Zealand’s most prestigious award for contemporary art. Over its 24-year history, the prize has helped elevate contemporary New Zealand art, both nationally and internationally. Conceived as a platform to showcase excellence in the visual arts, it has bolstered careers, stimulated critical debate and enriched the cultural life of Tāmaki Makaurau and wider New Zealand.

Four artists have been selected by an independent jury for works exhibited between February 2023 and February 2026.

In making their selection, the jury made the following comments: “These artists have made an outstanding contribution to contemporary art in Aotearoa over the last three years, a period marked by political unrest, escalating conflicts, and environmental devastation. Rather than amplifying this turbulence through spectacle, they each respond to the disorientation of our times by turning an acute attention toward local and personal narratives, while expanding the material and conceptual possibilities of their practices.”

Edith Amituanai (born 1980, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland) is a New Zealand-born Samoan lens-based artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Amituanai was nominated for Vaimoe, 2024, first exhibited in Edith Amituanai and Sione Tuívailala Monū: Toloa Tales, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna Waiwhetū, 2024, which demonstrates the artist’s recent shift into moving image while maintaining the gracious, lucid enquiry that has defined her practice over the last two decades. Vaimoe gently pushes against conventional ideals of home and belonging, exploring the ways relationships are upheld and maintained through proximity and distance, while acknowledging the challenges of change, disconnection, and communication.

Image credit: Richard Frater, Nicky’s conversion (video still), 2025. HD video, colour, sound. Lett Thomas, Auckland. Image supplied by the artist

Richard Frater (born 1984, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington) lives and works in Berlin. Frater was nominated for Nicky’s conversion, 2024, first exhibited at Klosterruine Berlin, 2024 and Lett Thomas, Auckland, 2025, a work that tenderly records the rehearsal of a sermon by an Anglican priest, articulating the challenges of reconciling the interior self with the structures through which we have come to understand the exterior world. With dignity and grace, the work describes a changing gender identity and offers a path through the Anglican tradition towards acceptance and love of ourselves and others.

Image credit: Ammon Ngakuru, Three Scenes (installation detail), 2025. Mixed media sculptural installation. Commissioned by Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, with support from the Chartwell Trust and the Contemporary Benefactors of the Auckland Art Gallery, 2025.

Ammon Ngakuru (born 1993, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland) lives and works in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Ngakuru was nominated for Three Scenes, commissioned for Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in 2025, a work that responds to the Gallery’s outdoor terrace and its site on Albert Park with an elegant restraint characteristic of his practice. Implicating the audience in its field of sculptural references, the work establishes a stage on which uncertain interpretation is acted out.

Image credit: Sorawit Songsataya, Ranad detail from the exhibition Fibrous Soul, 2024. Taranaki andesite, Ōamaru limestone, onyx, dried plant. Taranaki andesite carving by Donald Buglass. Photo courtesy of the artist and Govett- Brewster Art Gallery

Sorawit Songsataya (born 1986, Chiang Mai, Thailand) is a Thai-New Zealand artist currently based in Bangkok. Songsataya was nominated for the exhibition Fibrous Soul, presented at Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 2024, for its exploration of processes of accumulation, regeneration and transformation. Across moving image and sculpture, and including work made by the late weaver and kaitiaki of Te Niho o Te Ātiawa Maata Wharehoka, Fibrous Soul draws together organic and artificial materials, and customary and contemporary practices, to elucidate slippages between human and more-than-human worlds and the possibility of communication across them.

Tātaki Auckland Unlimited Director of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki Dr Zara Stanhope says, “It has been a privilege to begin my term as Director of the Gallery welcoming in the jurors and artists for the 2027 Walters Prize. Their selection is a poignant reminder of the breadth and range of art across Aotearoa New Zealand and of the activity currently shaping the visual arts as a healthy and vital part of the cultural sector.”

The finalists are invited to present new work or their nominated work at the Gallery in a public exhibition, scheduled to open in March 2027.

Auckland Art Gallery’s Senior Curator, Global Contemporary Art, Natasha Conland, who works closely with the artists to realise the prize exhibition and says, “These finalists express materially rich works with unique, often humorous and intellectually rewarding content. It’s not surprising that they each carry a large following of supporters who are looking to ask new questions of art, and to explore its potential,” says Conland.

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

Shane Foley, Time and Tide: Looking at Auckland’s past

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Shane Foley Campbells Point at Judges Bay

Shane Foley, Time and Tide

Artis Gallery

Until March 30

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Shane Foley’s “Tide and Tide” exhibition is based of archival images of Auckland‘s waterfront from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. They are of images of foreshores, beaches and building, most of the which have disappeared,

Several of the works make reference to Auckland’s history so “Campbells Point at Judges Bay” ($7500) includes `Kilbryd’, the large Italianate home of Sir John Logan Campbell. In this painting the artist has shaped much of the view making the foreshore beach a series of flat planes while the cliffs below the house have been sculpted with gentle curves of lawn.

Shane Foley Heaphy’s View, St Georges Bay, early 1860’s

In her “Heaphy’s View, St Georges Bay, early 1860’s” she has carefully constructed two houses in the foreground while two background houses owe much to Braque’s “Houses at L’estaque”.

Shane Foley Settlement, St Georges Bay 1867

With “Settlement, St Georges Bay 1867” ($3800) the houses seem like surreal addition, the boxlike shapes placed in the carefully formed landscape consisting of folded landforms, where the fence lines are made from abstract curves.

With “Trees at Shelly Beach, Pt Erin 1914” ($1900) she has depicted one of the now forgotten buildings which could be found on Auckland’s waterfront. This was the salt water, tidal baths at Pt Erin which were demolished for the Auckland Harbour Bridge.

Other buildings from the period include “West End Rowing Club at St Mary’s Bay 1914” ($4800) and ‘The Jetty, St Mary’s Bay. 1950’s’ ($4800) where the eerie white buildings stand out from the background.

There is a slight tension in viewing these works, as the past and present merge and the abstraction the artist uses distances our view, giving them a dream-like aspect.

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

Paul Moon, The Art of Colonisation

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Paul Moon, The Art of Colonisation: Images of Europe’s encounters with New Zealand, by

Ugly Hill Press

RRP $55.00

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Paul Moon’s “The Art of Colonisation” is the latest in a number of books which have looked at New Zealand art from a political and social perspective. This reinterpretation of the history of art involves re-examining, challenging, and recontextualizing traditional art narratives through a modern, often critical lens.

He has chosen twenty works, mainly well-known, which record the development of New Zealand and the intersection of explorers and colonists with the indigenous people.

The works range from Isaac Gilseman’s “A View of Murderers Bay (1643) though to Marcus King’s “The Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi” (1938). The years between the dates of these works has produced a substantial amount of written and visual material which records the colonization and development of New Zealand.

Part of that material is the art which was produced at the time. Some of it is personal records, simple sketches and paintings, other works are commissioned works for specific purposes. Moon and other writers have noted that the art of this period is inherently political, serving as a reflection of power, identity, and social values of the time regardless of the artist’s intent.

Moon notes of this period of art production “This was the realm of art, where images of imperial activity and its consequences ranged from disturbing to calming, scientific to whimsical, superficial to intimate and paternalistic to outright injurious”.

By choosing what to create, who sees it, and how it is displayed, much of the art of this early period in New Zealand’s history gives a colonisers viewpoint rather than that of the indigenous.

The first artwork Moon refers to is Isaac Gilseman’s “A view of Murderers Bay” which is a record of the first fateful encounter of European explorer with Māori. Gilseman’s view as Moon recounts was “an image of European cultural and racial narcissism in this period.

William Hodges ‘A view of Cape Stephens in Cook Strait with Waterspout”

Subsequent images Moon refers to include a mixture of landscape, images of indigenous and European constructions and portraits. These include Herman  Diedrich Sporing “A fortified village” (1773) and William Hodges ‘A view of Cape Stephens in Cook Strait with Waterspout” (1776)


Even art that seems apolitical, like portraits or landscapes can be seen as political acts because it is produced in a specific social context, reflecting the established, mainstream standards. 

William Ashworth “The Emigrants

So even the relatively innocuous portrait of the Mackay family which was commissioned from the artist William Allsworth is shown after Moon’s research, to display the artists or at least the  patriarchs attempt to provide a better pedigree for the family . The tartan which many of the family are wearing is red, white and black whereas the tartan of Clan Mackay is actually blue, black and orange. Moon points out other inaccuracies in the painting as well.

Charles Heaphy “View of a part of the town of Wellington

Such minor matters seem to take on greater importance  when rather than details related to family they relate to a town. In referring to Heaphy’s  “View of a part of the town of Wellington (1841) Moon quotes  the Presbyterian Minister John Lang writing about the town at the same time – “it consist of the verist of refuse of civilized society… their usual articles of barter are either muskets and gunpowder or tobacco and rum.. most of them live in open concubinage or adultery with native women”.

Heaphy’s view of Wellington, one of many he produced for the New Zealand Land Company however shows a relatively ordered settlement with stock grazing and well  tended pastures.

Augustus Earle’s “Distant View of the Bay of Islands”

Augustus Earle’s “Distant View of the Bay of Islands” (1827) provides Moon with an image which “represents a common view at the time that Europe was at the centre of the world’s values and development” with the artist placing himself at the centre of the image, surveying his domain.

There are several paintings Moon refers to which were painted around the turn of the century which were part of the nation building images which of the time.  Among them is Kennett Watkins “The Death of von Tempsky at Te Ngutu o te Manu” which depicts soldier in dramatic pose yet hides the Māori figures in shadow.

Marcus King “The signing of the Treaty of Waitangi”

The final image in the book is Marcus Kings “The signing of the Treaty of Waitangi”, painted to celebrate the centenary of New Zealand. Here the image is filled with symbols and flags of the British Empire with little representing Māori.

In the lower left hand, the artist has included a figure turned to the viewer who seems perplexed or appalled at the scene.

In his introduction Moon writes about the “bumpy marriage between art and colonisation…the offspring of this relationship was visual portfolio of imperialism – part record, part propaganda and part prescription …tracing the progression of art’s intricate allegiance with Europe’s colonisation of New Zealand. It is a visual portfolio which still needs to be clarified, reflected on and understood.

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

Bluebeards Castle: NZ Opera’s & Auckland Philharmonia’s inspired performance

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Judith (Susan Bullock) and Bluebeards (Lester Lynch) Image: Thomas Hamill

Bluebeards Castle

By Bela Bartok

NZ Opera & Auckland Arts Festival

Aotea Centre

March 13th & 14th

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

In Bela Bartok’s original staging of Bluebeards Castle, the newlywed Judith enters her husband’s dark, foreboding castle where she is faced with seven locked doors that she is forbidden to open. In this version by Daisy Evans, it is a single trunk which holds the memories of the couples past lives which Bluebeard remembers while Judith herself seems to become lost to him.

For this production director Daisy Evens created a new Judith who is somewhere between an older woman with dementia and a woman facing her own psychological breakdown and who along with her husband can be seen as displaying the Freudian concepts of sexual trauma.

The castle can be seen as symbolic of Bluebeard’s soul; a dark mind filled with secrets that threaten to reveal his true nature. The opera itself can be seen as an allegory for the loneliness of the human soul, the impossibility of truly knowing another person, or the conflict between rational and emotional.

Bartok was writing the opera at the same time that Freud was engaged in studies into psychoanalysis and elements of this have seeped into Bartok’s thinking which aligns with Freud’s theories of exploring the unconscious mind, hidden sexual desires, and psychological trauma.

Bluebeards Castle like other Symbolist art works, replaced traditional dramatic narratives with dark, subjective internal journeys, mirroring the Freudian focus on repressed emotions and dreams.

Despite Bluebeards protests she removes the symbolic items from the chest and in doing so she discovers events from Bluebeards past, events she needs to recognise if she is to fully understand him. He also needs to acknowledge these events if they are to be a truly understanding, loving couple.

In opening the chest for the seventh time she discovers the three women of his past, one found in the morning, one at noon and one at sunset, Then with Judith, his fourth, the bride he found at night, having fully understood her husband she joins the women  leaving Bluebeard in perpetual darkness.

The seven memories in the trunk contain the relics of the couples past that Lester Lynch’s Bluebeard remembers with joy and anguish, while Susan Bullock’s Judith emotionally engages with her former self, as lover, bride and mother.

References are made throughout the opera about the power of light to overcome darkness and symbolic of this the stage was studded with two dozen domestic lamps which flickered on and off at various points.

Like the story of Bluebeards Castle, the music is mysterious and riveting, providing a background soundscape which seems to continually shift as the various events of the opera are revealed.

Throughout the work there were sequences where the music provided particularly unsettling sounds, while there were other times when the orchestra was able to symbolise the idea of light flooding into the darkness of the castle. There were some exquisite passages particularly the blaring drama of the organ which was like a palpable force and the swelling of the strumming harps.

It was the emotional richness provided by the two singers which helped maintain the tension along with their creation of character though their acting. Bullock displayed a voice of amazing power while Lynch plumbed great depths as he revealed his inner thoughts.

This production was a stunning display of acting and singing along with an inspiring performance by the Auckland Philharmonia under the direction of conductor Brad Cohen.

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

 A Place in Sultan’s Kitchen

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

 A Place in Sultan’s Kitchen (or How to Make the Perfect One Pot Chicken Curry)

By Joshua Hinton (and Dominic Hinton)

Auckland Arts Festival

Rangatira, Q Theatre

Until March 15

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Making a one-pot chicken curry is so easy. The recipe is really straight forward. Slice up some onions, some potato, some chicken and a bunch of spices. It’s not that hard. It’s the chicken curry recipe Joshua Hinton’s nan, “MehMeh” made him for years and he is going to make it for us.

He is good at making it. He stands at his little cooking bench. Chopping and sprinkling and pouring. And just like in those TV cooking shows you also get to see shots of him doing all his chopping and mixing from above.

It feels as though Josh has invited you into his kitchen to have a personal chat as he reminisces, letting you into his cooking secrets and tales of his family.

He starts telling stories about his relatives and their journeys last century. From Iran to India to Australia, the family caught up in the British invasion of Iran in 1941 and then the Bombay Fire of 1944, when a British freighter loaded with explosives destroyed part of the Bombay Docks and the city.

These are some of the mixed-up tales his nan has told him, about her early life. They are a bit like the lives and the cultural mix of hundreds of immigrants. They are a mix of Persian (Iranian), Indian, Sri Lankin, Zoroastrian, English, South African, Bahia and Jewish.

The cooking becomes something of a metaphor for his life and his people before him, a mixture of memories, events and family tales.  The cooking and the recipes are his cultural history, binding memories.

While Joshau makes his chicken curry, his brother Dominic controls the lights, sounds and special effects as well as doing “MehMeh” s voice. Dominic also makes an appearance at the end of the show playing his guitar as the two of them sing a song about their family.

The show is a gentle exploration of a refugee family’s life, the various threads finally knotted together with the two brothers lives living in Australia. There are big, events, various wars, family movements, obvious and insidious racism but more joy than sadness, as Josh reflects on his family’s life.

Josh’s life as person of mixed heritage living in Wollongong has its surprises, being the only brown person in the school photograph and its gives rise to variations on the old trope about “where are you actually from”.

And then at the end there’s a meal of chicken curry in the Q Theatre foyer.

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

Duck Pond: Classy and skillful

John Daly-Peoples

Duck Pond

Circa

Auckland Arts Festival

Aotea Centre

March 12 – 15

John Daly-Peoples

In the hands of the Australian company Circe the world’s most romantic ballet is re-imagined as a circus spectacular, full of Circa’s signature physicality and shot through with cheeky humour and a thoroughly contemporary energy.

The audience is swept away by this tale of swans and hapless princes sparkling with quirky touches like the sequinned flipper-wearing duck army and a burlesque black swan. There are sumptuous aerials performances, jaw-dropping acrobatics and many feathers.

The show has been seen around the world and a review of Duck Pond in The Guardian by Lindsey Winship was enthusiastic.


“Australian company Circa are masters of modern circus, often eschewing obvious exhibitionism, and instead weaving acrobatic skills with a dance and theatre sensibility to make mood pieces.

The name is a parody of Swan Lake and it borrows from the famous ballet – shards of Tchaikovsky’s score feed into Jethro Woodward’s soundtrack – and also from another fairytale, the Ugly Duckling. So we get a love triangle of sorts between a prince, an ugly duck and a vivacious black swan. The conceit might seem to promise a more conventional narrative, but it delivers something a little different. The mood is understated, classy, colours of black and gold, a clan of performers in shimmering velvet catsuits. The music is a constant underscore rather than a game of set-ups and climaxes.

There is a lot of beautiful skill on show. Acrobats climb up human towers; flyers somersault between bases. Their formations of three are especially inventive: ornate arrangements of bodies in fine-tuned equilibrium, toes anchored on hips, lower backs, shoulders, anywhere they can get a foothold. There are some lovely moments of flow between couples who lift and fling, curl and unfurl, balance and counterbalance. Bodies tie themselves in knots on the trapeze; others soar on the silks. The ugly duck is revealed to be a swooping swan; the black swan has a dominatrix moment walking over a man’s bare back in red stilettos. But there are lulls too, such as a pillow fight that turns into an anticlimax.

Story-wise, director Yaron Lifschitz puts a couple of nice twists on the Swan Lake narrative but it lacks a big emotional payoff. Low-key lyricism, rather than transactional tricks for applause is Circa’s way and Duck Pond is a lovely show, with warmth, skill and some wow moments.”

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

Helios: Our star up close

John Daly-Peoples

Helios

Auckland Arts Festival

Auckland Concert Chamber

Free Entry

March 8 – 15    10.00am – 9.30pm

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

This week you can experience Helios, a breathtaking, larger-than-life artwork created by renowned UK artist Luke Jerram.  Arriving in New Zealand for the first time, Helios is both a scientific wonder and a multi-sensory artwork, offering a rare opportunity to visualise the beauty and complexity of our closest star.

The globe measures six metres in diameter and was created at a scale of 1:230 million, it is constructed from approximately 400,000 images of the Sun’s surface. These images combine photography by astrophotographer Dr Stuart Green with data from NASA solar observations. Internally lit, this spherical installation allows for a safe yet awe-inspiring examination of the Sun’s extraordinarily detailed surface, revealing features such as sunspots, spicules, and filaments.
 

Named after the ancient Greek and Roman sun god – symbolic of time and life. Helios blends real solar imagery with animated lighting accompanied with an immersive surround-sound composition by Duncan Speakman and Sarah Anderson, creating a powerful and unforgettable experience.

Luke Jerram’s multidisciplinary arts practice involves the creation of sculptures, installations and live artworks. Living in the UK, but working internationally, Jerram creates art projects which excite and inspire people around the world.

One of his recent projects Echo Wood is a collaboration between the artist and charity Avon Needs Trees   It is an extensive new artwork made from 365 living trees.

The native trees will slowly grow into a vast 110-metre-wide design.  Blossoming at different times of year, pathways and avenues will be created to guide visitors on a journey through the forest towards a central circular gathering space, formed from 12 English oak trees. Echo Wood will take a century to fully emerge – but will endure for generations.

Co-commissioned by National Trust, Cork Midsummer Festival, Liverpool Cathedral, Old Royal Naval College and University College London. 

Helios Closeup
Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

Julia Bullock: a strong, insistent voice

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Julia Bullock with the Auckland Philharmonia

Conductor, Christian Reif

Auckland Arts Festival

Auckland Town Hall

March 7

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

In her recent concert at the Auckland Town Hall Julia Bullock sang a group of songs which she considered as having an “American” sound. These included George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein and Margaret Bonds. Bonds is a pianist / composer who Bullock has championed for several years a major black composer who was overlooked for many years primarily due to systemic racism and sexism in the classical music industry, exacerbated by the loss of her manuscripts and a lack of publication.

Bullock included three settings of poems by Langston Hughes – “The Negro speaks of Rivers”, “Winter Moon” and “Poeme D’Automne” which gave voice to black aspirations in the 1920’s. With Bullocks singing of “The Negro speaks of Rivers” she provided a fine sense of the Negro spiritual, the softness of her delivery veiling a strong, insistent voice and a slowly developing dramatic force. Her voice delivered an emotional and haunting tone capturing the essence of heritage and endurance.

“Poeme D’Automne” was an astonishing song in which images of falling leaves and the colours of autumn were linked to the human body. She sang this with a surging operatic voice providing and intense and emotional sound.

“Winter Moon” was a short piece, but it showed that Bond was not just writing music to accompany the words of the poem, she had the ability to write dramatic meaningful music.

She sang Stephen Sonfheim’s “Somewhere” as though it was an anthem for the displaced and disadvantaged – a piece very relevant today’s America. There was also the poem “To Julia de Burgos” by Bernstein, a vibrant piece of music which spoke of an angry revolutionary adventure in which she projected the words as though a personal statement.

She also sang a couple of George Gerswin songs, “Somebody from Somewhere” and “Summertime “from “Porgy and Bess”.

She also sang “La Conga Blicoti” a vibrant, Afro-Cuban jazz-influenced song performed by Josephine Baker with the Lecuona Cuban Boys, which features a distinctive conga rhythm.

She also sang Billy Taylor’s “I wish I knew how it feels to be free” like a requiem or funeral lament, very appropriate as a song for freedom.

There was also “I have Two Cities” by the French composer Henri Varna and lyricist Geo Koegar with lines such as

Manhattan is beautiful,

But why deny it.

What enchants me is Paris,

All of Paris

Which she sang as a hymn to Josephine Baker.

The concert opened with the Auckland Philharmonia playing Erich Korngolds “Theme and Variations” and closed with them playing Kurt Weill’s “Symphony No 2”.

Bullock has an affinity for the outsider artist which has led to her interest in Josephine Baker who made the journey from the US to Europe where she made her name while the two composers became outsiders under the Nazis  and were forced to move from Europe to the US.

Korngold who was a major composer in Austria influenced the style of composition and singing in the 1920’s and 30’s with operas such as “Die Tote Stadt” while Weill was influential in bringing Bertolt Brecht’s work to the public with works including “The Threepenny Opera”.

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

Helios: Our star up close

John Daly-Peoples

Helios

Auckland Arts Festival

Auckland Concert Chamber

Free Entry

March 8 – 15    10.00am – 9.30pm

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

This week you can experience Helios, a breathtaking, larger-than-life artwork created by renowned UK artist Luke Jerram.  Arriving in New Zealand for the first time, Helios is both a scientific wonder and a multi-sensory artwork, offering a rare opportunity to visualise the beauty and complexity of our closest star.

The globe measures six metres in diameter and was created at a scale of 1:230 million, it is constructed from approximately 400,000 images of the Sun’s surface. These images combine photography by astrophotographer Dr Stuart Green with data from NASA solar observations. Internally lit, this spherical installation allows for a safe yet awe-inspiring examination of the Sun’s extraordinarily detailed surface, revealing features such as sunspots, spicules, and filaments.
 

Named after the ancient Greek and Roman sun god – symbolic of time and life. Helios blends real solar imagery with animated lighting accompanied with an immersive surround-sound composition by Duncan Speakman and Sarah Anderson, creating a powerful and unforgettable experience.

Luke Jerram’s multidisciplinary arts practice involves the creation of sculptures, installations and live artworks. Living in the UK, but working internationally, Jerram creates art projects which excite and inspire people around the world.

One of his recent projects Echo Wood is a collaboration between the artist and charity Avon Needs Trees   It is an extensive new artwork made from 365 living trees.

The native trees will slowly grow into a vast 110-metre-wide design.  Blossoming at different times of year, pathways and avenues will be created to guide visitors on a journey through the forest towards a central circular gathering space, formed from 12 English oak trees. Echo Wood will take a century to fully emerge – but will endure for generations.

Co-commissioned by National Trust, Cork Midsummer Festival, Liverpool Cathedral, Old Royal Naval College and University College London. 

Helios Closeup