Tag: writing

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Wellington Architecture: a Walking Guide

Wellington Architecture: A Walking Guide

John Walsh and Patrick Reynolds

Massey University Press

RRP $37.00

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

John Walsh and photographer Patrick Reynolds have just launched “Wellington Architecture, A Walking Guide”  a revised edition of the book first published in 2022. This is their third book in the series of architectural walking tours following on from their books on Auckland and Christchurch. It is a great addition to books which explore and explain our built environment.

 John Walsh in the introduction notes that he was born in Wellington which was as “compact and confined as a medieval city-state, intensely impressed itself on me, in the most impressionable part of my life. I remember the Freyberg Pool, where I learned to swim; the summer lights strung on the Norfolk pines along Oriental Parade; and the council yard where my father worked, next to the Herd Street Post and Telegraph Building. My high school was near the old National Art Gallery and Dominion Museum; we’d be sent to mass at St Mary of the Angels and, in blazers and ties, despatched from Wellington Railway Station on rugby expeditions into the hinterlands of the Hutt Valley.”

A building with a dome on the top AI-generated content may be incorrect.Public Trust Building

This reviewer also grew up in Wellington, living in the National Hotel across from the corner of Stout St and Lambton Quay. From our front room we had an impressive architectural vista including The Public Trust Building, The Government Departmental Building and The State Insurance Building. Further down the street was the Wellington Railway Station.

On my way to school I passed Ernst Plischke’s Massey House, The Old Supreme Court, The Old Government Building, The Beehive, Parliament building, the General Assembly Library, Turnbull House and the rather unfortunate Cathedral of St Paul. These were the background to my life at the time and it was only when I moved to suburban Karori that I noticed the difference in my daily environment.

A building with a dome top AI-generated content may be incorrect.Shed 7, Wellington Harbour Board

The place of architecture in our environment and in our personal and social history is important often more noticeable when we are in foreign cities. A city’s buildings are important in defining the nature of a place. When visiting a place for the first time the visitor will map a city through its buildings. The materials, the orientation, the colours, the decoration and the forms all help create the language of the way the city is perceived.

The buildings of Auckland Wellington and Christchurch have many similarities but the accumulation of the various periods of construction and styles in each of those places has created very individual environments.

“Wellington Architecture, A Walking Guide” features more than 126 significant buildings describing their purpose and history as well as providing a background on the architects who designed them. The buildings are grouped into five self-guided walking routes, each with a map together with itineraries which collectively create a portrait of the city.

A church with a tall steeple AI-generated content may be incorrect.St John’s

The building are a mix of colonial, nineteenth century Gothic, mid-century modernism and buildings of the last fifty years illustrating the changing nature of the architecture along with the changing nature of New Zealand and the city. The buildings are banks, businesses, government departments, churches, apartment buildings libraries, hotels, apartments, and a few private houses.

One of the tours features several of the government institutions surrounding Parliament including the Old Government Building (now the Victoria University Law School) and one on the largest wooden buildings in the world, all those other buildings I passed on the way to school along with the more recent  brutalist National Library and the modernist Freyberg Building.

Several architects feature with a number of buildings such as Gummer & Ford, Thomas Turnbull and Ian Athfield who is represented by the Wellington Library (soon to be reopened) and his Oriental Parade flats as well as a few, often controversial,  additions he made to existing buildings.

Asked which building he regarded as the most interesting nee building in Wellington he has stated that it is Heke Rua the new building for New Zealand’s Archive beside the National library, both for its architecture as well its signaling a commitment to preserving the nations documentary heritage.

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PĀ – Te Huarahi ki te Kāinga  Hiria Anderson-Mita’s continuing journey

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Hiria Anderson-Mita

PĀ – Te Huarahi ki te Kāinga Finding my way Home’

Tim Melville Gallery

Until November 15

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Writing about Hiria Anderson-Mita a couple of years ago I noted that she “has never had to look far for subject matter. She only has to look around the room, out the window or down the road. Her paintings are essentially documentation of her daily life, painting what she sees, the people she encounters and her immediate experiences.”

Her domestic interiors or local views of her local environment were both mundane and intriguing.

This incongruity in many of her works give the images both a simplicity and sophistication. One could compare her paintings to the simple French Impressionist paintings as well as the recent landscape paintings of David Hockney, in creating timeless views.

In her latest exhibition the  paintings and view points have been extended, broadening out from the local to the wider area of hers and her ancestors land  so the exhibition becomes for her “a return to the ancestral landscapes that have shaped who I am.”

In the catalogue notes she writes “The tracts of farmland in these artworks hold the DNA and stories of my ancestors. Their ridges and valleys are layered with the pā sites of my tūpuna; connections that survey pegs and ownership papers can never sever.
 
In fact those pegs and papers are reference points for rediscovery.  

Through researching Māori Land Court records and field books made by 19th Century Government Surveyor William Cussen – alongside maps, archaeological files, photographs, oral histories and the living landscape itself – I am tracing the footprints of my tūpuna.

Each painting in this exhibition describes and locates a site of history and connection within the rohe of Ōtewa, Rangitoto Tuhua and the surrounding pā of Ngāti Maniapoto and Rereahu.

The pā tuna, the kohatu, the maunga, and the awa I paint were once sources of sustenance  for entire communities. I want to make them visible once more; to bring them into the light. And to reinsert our knowledge and our presence into the whenua from which we have been separated by pen and politics.

I have been guided by ancestors who still reside within me. My paintings are my journey home.”

Central to the works is the large “Ōtuaoroa” ($11,500) which is the original name for the area. The artist calls the painting “A map”, so the image is like the chart of a mythical land or a treasure map found in a children’s book with each road, farm, bend in the river all bearing a history. Many of these places are then seen in a larger format in other paintings such as “Puketarata Rd No2” ($3500) which is the view from her childhood home or “Hikurangi Pa” ($3250) a  bend in the river where her ancestors had been born and which sustained the local population with food.

There are also links to the geomorphological qualities of the land which had intrigued Colin McCahon and his study of the landforms and their history.

Puketarata Pā

This idea of discovering the history and formation of the land is seen in Puketarata Pā ($7500) where the landscape is inscribed with other information such a pre-European name, survey number, the indication of tracks or landforms as well as the Google Earth Coordinates.

Turamoe Pa Otuaoroa (Te Kooti’s Lookout)

Most of the works have personal connection to the artist and their importance and significance is made clear from their titles of the catalogue notes. So, there is the obvious “Otewa – My Mothers Ancestral Home ($3500) as well as “Turamoe Pa Otuaoroa (Te Kooti’s Lookout)” ($3250) featuring the hill site where Te Kooti spent the last years of the Land Wars.

Otwea Pa – Into the Future

Most of the works in the exhibition are landscapes but there are a few are more emblematic. One “Otewa Pa – Into the Future ($5750), a portrait of a niece where the artist envisions the future and  there is the more abstract “Hinaki a Rautawhiri / Te Awa a Tane Pa Tuns” ($4750) which looks to the past with a design  featuring netting used to trap fish and fowl.

The paintings in the exhibition paintings along with a poem she has written, “her return Home” as well as many of her previous paintings build a visual biography of her personal connections with the land, a history which is both personal, tribal and mythological.

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Trent Dalton’s “Love Stories”

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Trent Dalton, Love Stories

Based on the book by Trent Dalton
Additional Writing and Story: Trent Dalton and Fiona Franzmann
Adaptor: Tim McGarry
Choreographer & Movement Director Nerida Matthaei
Associate Director Ngoc Phan
Set & Costume Design Renee Mulder
Lighting Design Ben Hughes
Video Design and Cinematographer Craig Wilkinson
Composition & Sound Design Stephen Francis

Civic Theatre

October 17

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Before heading off to see Trent Daltons “Love Stories” a quick survey of what love is was in order. First stop would be Shakespeare, and he almost nails it with

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind” from a Midsummers Night Dream

The audience filled the Civic Theatre and on stage all we see is a panorama of the audience looking back at ourselves. All of those people who know about their own encounters with love. They are the mass of humanity who are hoping to find out the truth / answer to the eternal question. – What is love?. And each one of them knows what it is. Each one can tell their own story

And then scrolling across the screen are the answers we could give, all provided by previous audience members

LOVE IS

Lasting the distance. Even when you think you can’t do it.

The perfect coffee with crema on Sunday morning

Saying sorry and meaning it

Being confident in the silent moment

Magical; poetic, sometimes messy

And dozens more some profound, some very personal, some cliched

Trent Dalton spent two months in 2021 gathering stories on his 1960’s blue Olivetti typewriter, on a prominent street corner in Brisbane’s CBD. He had sign which read “Sentimental writer collecting love stories. Do you have one to share” Speaking with Australians from all walks of life, he received hundreds of them.

The show opened with Jean- Benoit and his drumming as he introduced the show and it closes with his taking us backstage through to a simple doorway which led us back out of the theatrical world of make believe into the real world.

The dozen actors who swarmed the stage enacting the stories, some lasting a few minutes, other only a few brief moments created a topography of love with its range of, stories, anecdotes and remembrances.

Some of the stories are profound, some of them flippant, some of them might have been written by the writers at Hallmark Cards. Other could have been written by your partner, boyfriend, girlfriend.

Director Sam Shepheard wove the various stories together, the actors changing guises as they connected and parted. Sometimes cameras made their faces balloon up large on the screen as they addressed the audience. Many of the stories are moving, rich in compassion, witty, and full of allegories.

The entire cast created impressive range of characters and encounters and there were some clever sequences – a bit of a Juliet speech, a quote from Emily Dickinson, a scientist explaining about technical aspects of dopamine

Holding much of the performance together was Jason Klarwein (the Writer / Husband) and Anna McGahan (The Wife) where the actual world of the couple seems at odds with his accounts of the people from the street with their passionate, flawed and intermingled lives.

And there are several life stories all woven together such as a film segment delivered by Joshua Creamer, a barrister and human rights activist who not only tells his personal story but also the story of land rights, family, and his identity as an Aboriginal man.

There is also the Asian woman Sakuri Tomi whose story is trapped inside a nightmare is told in several vignettes.

The video montages combined with live video feed help create a dynamic flow and the choreography of Nerida Matthaei adds to this dynamism which works brilliantly in sequences like the State of Origin game.

While it’s not in the play they could have used Marilyn Munroe phlegmatic quote about love –  “If you can make a woman laugh, you can make her do anything.

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Peter James Smith’s Zealandia

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Peter James Smith, Zealandia

Orexart

Until 27 September

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Peter James Smith in speaking about the impetus behind his landscape paintings has noted his debt to T S Eliot’s “Four Quartets” and in particular “Burnt Norton” with its notion of transcending time to achieve a sense of timelessness.

Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty

This can be seen in his latest exhibition “Zealandia” where the artist examines Zealandia, the earth’s largely submerged continent beneath the waters of the Southwest Pacific Ocean with only a few islands like New Zealand and New Caledonia breaking the surface to reveal parts of the super continent of Gondwana. 

These islands, historical remnants of an ancient time and still revealing themselves, link past and present through a process of discovery both scientific and historical.

With many of his paintings the landscape forms are often shrouded in this dim light and their shadowy forms seem to take on a substantial form, transporting them from the eighteenth century and the voyages of Capt Cook as well as later voyagers.

With “Zealandia” ($8500) there is sense that the artist is describing the underlying landscape of rocks, islands and headlands beneath the water’s surface, as though these forms are thrusting their way upwards.

Smith like many other artists with a Romantic approach to landscape see his subjects as a powerful, emotional forces, depicting the raw, uncontrollable aspects of nature such as storms, mountains, and wild, untamed places. The landscapes used to express subjective feelings and the sublime, highlighting nature’s grandeur.

Unlike many Romantic artist Smith does not include human figures to emphasis the grandeur of nature but rather includes ideas about man’s measurement of the forces of nature.

In his paintings he employs diagrammatic symbols and marks which indicate of natural forces and aspects of scientific enquiry such as concepts of the angle of sunlight, speed of tide or ocean currents.

The marks he often applies to his paintings can be cartographic indicating the outlines of landscape or the passages into harbours, they can also be the recording of rainfall or the forces of nature.

Then there are the written descriptions of the landscape giving the location, the dates of original or important events as well as a references to Plato’s concept of perception which is noted in “Rain Shadow (Lake Tekapo”) ($8,500).

With his “The Passage of History” ($15,500) the artist includes a short summary of Captain John Grono’s adventures in Doubtful sounds in 1813 where he rescued several marooned sealers. He also includes a map of the area as well as a distance indicator in sea miles.

A similar work “Wind Across Dusky Bay” ($15,500) features a map of the Dusky Bay area with a text about Capt.  Cook’s arrival in 1773 which includes the route taken by his ship “Resolution”. He has also included wispy shapes of the water being driven across the surface of the bay.

The view in this work is frames as though being seen through an observation window, emphasizing the notion of historical distance and that this was the area where Cook established an observatory so enable him to accurately fix his position in New Zealand.

The work “Leaps of the Spirit” ($10,500) which depicts the Lady Bowen Falls combines Romantic landscapes with gestural marks exploring themes of artistic intervention, history, time, and perception. 

The works full title “Leaps of the Spirit Across the Void” has something of a Miltonian flavour and reflects the artists notion of the interconnectedness of science and spirituality, where mathematical certainty meets artistic vision to create a holistic understanding of the world. 

To subscribe or follow New Zealand Arts Review site – www.nzartsreview.org.

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Roger Hall’s “End of Summer Time”: sparkling dialogue and consummate acting

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Andrew Grainger as Dickie Hart Image Andi Crown

End of Summer Time by Sir Roger Hall

Auckland Theatre Company

ASB Waterfront Theatre

Until July 5

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

What are we going to do without Roger Hall? Is this really the end of a theatrical era? Will regional theatre companies  collapse?

These are some of the questions which theatre lovers, theatre companies and Creative New Zealand will be addressing over the next few years.

With the retirement  of Roger Hall from playwriting New Zealand theatre scene will be dealt something of a body blow.

But those questions and their answers are for next week, next year. In the meantime, we have another Roger Hall play, probably his last  production with “End of Summer Time.”

With his latest play Hall gives a nod to one of the important milestones in New Zealand theatre history, Bruce Mason “End of the Golden Weather”. Even the publicity material features images of Rangitoto and Takapuna Beach which was the site of Masons play.

The play charts the problems of older people thrust into a new social  environment as well as discovering the joys and drawbacks of living in a new town.

We have met Dickie Hart before in two of Halls plays “C’mon Black” and “You Gotta be Joking”. Hart has moved to the big smoke from Wellington, moving into an apartment on the North Shore.

Dickie (Andrew Grainger) is confronted by a lot of problems in his transition to Auckland and apartment living and Hall has exploited all these situations. Dickie has to manage his wife Glenda’s new interests in the library and yoga  and he has to deal with issues around the body corporate and the South African block manager.

He also has to manage more personal issues such as getting a health check from the doctor for his driving license, particularly the cognitive test as well as trying to fill in the census form and its questions on gender. identity

There is a scary account of the Dickie’s-first time visit to inner Auckland, navigating the motorway system, the bridge and the netherworld of the Aotea Centre carpark.

Dickie has moved to Auckland partly to spend time with his grandkids – a task that is which is not all that simple but he manages educational outings to Auckland volcanic cones brilliantly by combining these trips with visits to Auckland’s great dining establishments – MacDonalds, KFC and Subway.

The play is essentially in two halves– pre and post Covid , the second half being a bit more reflective.

Hall has developed a clever approach to his characters and their comments on life politics and relationship, a style  somewhere between the misogynistic and woke, it’s a tenuous area but Hall negotiates it skilfully and Andrew Grainger pulls it off with a breezy, nonchalant style.

Hall is able to assemble his string of one-liners into a coherent, monologue which acts as political and social commentary of issues of the present day as well as providing a compelling portrait of a typical New Zealand character.

The play is a brilliant and sustained piece of comedy throughout, But at one point play turns  into tragedy with a few lines and some convincing acting which demonstrates Halls consummate writing, Quigan’s directorial skill and Grainger’s intelligent acting.

Much of Dickie’s identity is linked to rugby and throughout the play there are mentions of the Rugby world Cup as well as images of Rugby games on the TV which dominated the apartment. The local library also gets a favourable mention as Dickie manages to find a copy of Brian Turners book on  Colin Meads

Grainger  takes on Roger Halls monologue with an energetic enthusiasm, the conservative cow cocky only just managing to adjust to a new life as he prowls  the pared back apartment-cum-prison set designed by John Parker.

As with all Hall’s work this is an engaging play with sparkling dialogue and consummate acting.

To subscribe or follow New Zealand Arts Review site – www.nzartsreview.org.

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La Clique: A magical and adventurous show

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Tara Boon Image Liam Newth /Auckland Live

La Clique

Cabaret Festival

Civic Theatre

June 3 – 15

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Headlining Auckland’s Cabaret Festival starting this week is La Clique featuring a range of performers with some of them presenting at a press preview.

La Clique has been performing for many years with their performers changing over the years. It was here at the Auckland Arts Festival in 2007 and while some of the performers have changed the class, innovation  and magic is still there.

Performing in the Civic, the show is particularly magical, not just being in the Civic but being on the Civic’s stage. The lights, curtains and apparatus that we never see takes the audience into a very different space and looming over us are the seats of the stalls and balcony  and above them the ceiling of the Civic with its twinkling stars of the solar system.

Tara Boon is a foot juggler which sounds like a pretty easy trick to take to the beach  later in the year,  that is,  until you realise that some people can’t even get their shoes on without becoming a contortionist.  Boon is as dexterous with her feet as ordinary people are with their hands. Resting on her reclining chair, she initially upends an umbrella which showers the stage with red petals and with her act she is able to manipulate up to four oriental umbrellas – on the handle or on their edges.

It’s a simple  slick stylish  act performed to the song “Umbrella” by Mechanical Bride and you keep forgetting how difficult it is to manipulate an umbrella, let alone four of them.

Byron Hutton is a juggler who is as clever with his hands as Boon is with her feet. He manages to juggle with his hands as well as other parts of his body, the  clubs dancing  and cavorting around him in fluid  movements.

He showed his consummate skill a couple of times when he lost a club and instantly caught another from his offsider before moving on to the next routine.

Heather Holliday Image: Liam Newth / Auckland LIve

The act which attracted thy most gasps was the fire eating Queen, Heather Holliday. I’ve seen a few fire eaters before but never up close, so close I could feel the heat of the flames. I know they use low combustion fuels which are less dangerous than things like alcohol and petrol but even so it all looks a bit scary, especially when she takes her flaming batons and drags them across her skin

At the end of her performance, her offsider came on with a flute  full of what I thought was a celebratory glass of champagne. But no. This was a glass full of her flame throwing fluid. She drank the flute and then spouted out a flaming jet like a flamethrower which had all the audience recoiling .

We saw just three acts but on the night, there will be a dozen. It will be a night full of the  sexy, the funny and the dangerous

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Groundwork: The Art and Writing of Emily Cumming Harris

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Groundwork: The Art and Writing of Emily Cumming Harris

By Michele Leggott and Catherine Field-Dodgson

Te Papa Press

RRP $60

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Botanical painters have been an integral part of the botanical and artistic history of New Zealand since Joseph Banks accompanied Cook on his voyage to New Zealand and his publication of detailed illustrations of the exotic plant species he found here.

Since the time of Banks there have been many other artists who have devoted themselves to depicting the flora of New Zealand .A new book “Groundwork” by Michele Leggott and Catherine Field-Dodgson reveals one of the first women botanical artists in New Zealand. Emily Cumming Harris who was born in England in 1837 spent most of her life in New Zealand, mainly in the Taranaki and Nelson areas.

During this time, she painted numerous examples of plant life as well as landscapes, a number of which were exhibited locally and internationally.

Her works were exhibited at the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879, the 1880–81 Melbourne International Exhibition and the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London in 1886. At the New Zealand Industrial Exhibition held in Wellington in 1885 she won first prize and a silver medal for a painted screen.

Emily Cumming Harris, Kiekie (Freycinetia banksii), nikau (Rhopalostylis sapida), five finger (Pseudopanax arboreum) and karaka (Corynocarpus laevigata) in fruit, 1879, watercolour, 389 x 506mm. Reproduced as a Turnbull Library print in 1980. Alexander Turnbull Library,

Throughout her life she also had solo exhibitions, selling a number of works, the sales of which provided useful financial assistance to her and her family.

The book documents her career as an artist and even though this was never to be a full-time career she amassed a large collection of images many of which are in public collections. Leggott and Catherine Field-Dodgson’s research, along with other individuals reveal a woman whose work lies between the scientific, botanical illustration and artistic.

The book has been the result of a lot of detective work, research in various museums and some family history. Michelle Leggott ‘s interest came about when she was researching about Emily’s father, Edwin who had painted several views of New Plymouth at the time of the Land Wars in Taranaki. His paintings are also included in the book.

Emily Cumming Harris, Hector’s tree daisy Brachyglottis hectorii, oil on straw board, 690 x 470mm. Galpin collection, Pauanui

The authors also discovered a number of paintings Emily had done of astronomical subjects – The Total Eclipse of the Sun in1885 and a double tailed comet in 1901.

The book includes a number of her poems which range in quality but the occasional one shows some literary skills and keen observation.

Her “The mountain looks down on the river” contains some lines which indicate an awareness of the situation of Māori.

But the forest which grew by the river,

And the flowers on the mountain that bloomed

Will they gladden our hearts for ever

Or pass like a race that is doomed?

In 1890, she published three books, New Zealand flowers, New Zealand ferns, and New Zealand berries. Each contained twelve lithographs with descriptive text, and some copies were hand-coloured by Harris herself.

Emily Cumming Harris, Celmisia chapmanii – Campbell Island; Celmisia vernicosa – Campbell Island, 1890s, watercolour, 310 x 440mm. Alexander Turnbull Library

All her paintings as well as her writings and poems provide a portrait of a woman of great talent and enterprise but social convention prevented her developing an independent career and she was viewed merely as a gifted illustrator.”

This has meant she has not been well served by history but this book will do much to correct that.

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You are Here: linking language, memories and landscape

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

You Are Here

Whiti Hereaka and Peata Larkin

Massey University Press

RRP $45.00

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Most stories have a beginning, a middle  and an end. Most stories have a central idea, a kernel from which the tale expands like a sinuous river which follows a plot or a life. Other books can have a very different structure as with the new book “You Are Here”.

“You Are Here” which is the  sixth book in the “kōrero series”, edited by Lloyd Jones, features Jann Medlicott Acorn Fiction Prize winner Whiti Hereaka and artist Peata Larkin, cousins who share the same whakapapa. in a collaboration. Unlike the previous stories in the collection Larkin’s images are not merely illustrations of the text but rather complementary representations of similar ideas.

Here the story line is cyclical, expanding and contracting. Like James Joyce’s  “Finnegans Wake” the work begins and ends at the same point but with an elaborate structure in between  

The poem  starts with the line “You are here” and ends with the line – “Return to where you belong”, seemingly following the mathematical notions of the Fibonacci number sequence.

In tracing out the narrative the  narrator recalls their youth and their experiences of life. Threaded through this personal journey are images of water and the stones of a lake as well as  images of birds and journeys. like the  symbolic use of the Piwakawaka by Colin McCahon.

Language, memories and landscape are seen as linked in the development of the narrator, their memories of school and the shaping of the person through language and experiences. the physical and the metaphorically linked in this journey.

Parallel to Hereaka’s storyline are Peata Larkin’s multi-layered visual images in which ideas inherent in the structure of the story are the linked to her exploration of the DNA structure as well as images of Māori design. Drawings of tāniko and whakairo on gridded shapes are linked to European notions of embroidery and mathematical structures.

Peata Larkin says of the work “Working on this project has been very special to me …Being cut from the same cloth enables the threads of the fabric to shine through and hopefully we achieved that.

Hereaka says. ‘It is my hope that by the time you have walked that path that you are now a different reader and will read those words in a new way,’

To subscribe or follow New Zealand Arts Review site – www.nzartsreview.org.

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BLACK GRACE TURNS 30

John Daly-Peoples

John Daly-Peoples

‘THIS IS NOT A RETROSPECTIVE’

Auckland Town Hall

Saturday March 22,  7.30

Neil Ieremia is one of Aotearoa’s most astonishing and prolific home-based creatives. His ever-growing body of work has easily and unselfconsciously graced stages in many parts of the world and he is rapidly becoming a one-man export machine. In part this is because of his perfectionism that never forgets the past, stands firmly rooted in the present and yet finds time to seriously address the future – sometimes simultaneously.

His works combine different personal histories, different body shapes and abilities, and different musical and dance backgrounds.

May of his works have a strong musical underpinning that ranges from pop to hip hop, traditional to church, coupled with soundscapes that underscore the everyday concerns of young people today. It leaps from recollections of things past to things that might have been and things that are very much of the present, uses the simplest of props and creates some beautiful moments.

His latest work celebrates the company’s 30th year milestone with ‘THIS IS NOT A RETROSPECTIVE’, the ultimate interactive dance party at the Auckland Town Hall, Saturday March 22

Joining Blackl Grace will be CHE FU and THA FEELSTYLE along with the many amazing friends of Black Grace already down to party including; DJ Manuel Bundy, drag queen diva Buckwheat and the NZ Trio, working alongside a stellar production team, with Artistic Direction by Neil Ieremia, ONZM, sound designer Faiumu Matthew Salapu aka Anonymouz, internationally respected NYC-based lighting designer JAX Messenger, along with the incredible Black Grace Dancers.

But the fun doesn’t stop there, Black Grace has a number of special events planned throughout their birthday year. To be in the know join them at blackgrace.co.nz

Main event 1hr 10min, followed by a party which  will continue after main event until late

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Olafur Eliasson: The Leonardo da Vinci of our time

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Olafur Eliasson. The glacier melts series

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Olafur Eliasson, Your Curious Journey

Auckland Art  Gallery

Until March 23, 2025

Reviewed  by John Daly-Peoples

Much of the work of the Danish / Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson focusses on issues around the impact of changing climate on our lives and our impacts on the environment. In his current exhibition “Your Curious Journey” at the Auckland Art Gallery the most obvious of his works which address these issues is “The Glacier Melt series 1999/2019”. In this series of 15 paired  photographs the artist shows several; glaciers in Iceland ten years apart showing the extent of the glacier melt. The works are a clear visual documentation of the way in which warming temperatures are changing the nature of the environment. While they provide physical evidence of climate change they are also a metaphor for the issue and many of his other works are metaphorical or medications on the nature of the issues.

Eliasson is the Leonardo da Vinci of our times combining art and science with each of the disciplines informing the other providing observations and insights.

The title of the exhibition “Your Curious Journey” could be applied to the set of photographs as we witness the glaciers journeys of expansion and retraction, alerting us to the fact that climate change is part of the evolutionary journey of our past and future.

Linked to that work is  one of the newer pieces, The Last Seven Days of Glacial Ice “(2024) where the progression of  a melting block of ice over seven days has been rendered in bronze. The melted water has been captured in seven glass globes which are exhibited alongside the bronzes, The original block of ice is condensed to a shard of bronze and a globe of water but in reality the ice has disappeared, like some magic trick

While these and other works have a polemic quality to them, all his works are concerned with aspects of aesthetics -and scientific enquiry – light, structure, colour and movement. This mix  of science and art can also be seen in “Double Spiral” where a long steel tube   coils around itself creating a double helix in reference to the structure of DNA

One of the works which encapsulated all of these  aspects is “Movement Microscope” (2011), a  16-minute video set in the artists studio / office in Berlin where the everyday activities of the staff become an elaborate dance routine and simple movements are elaborately observed.  All the movements and interchanges are heighten by the inclusion of a group of “performers who move at a reduced pace, seemingly moving as though their recorded movements have been filmed at a slower speed.

We observe his designers and artists communicating ideas,  working on designs, constructing works, sharing meals, their constructed works now on display in the gallery.

His largest work :”Under the Weather” hangs above the gallery atrium and appears to flicker and change as the observer moves beneath it. The images created are like weather patterns or brain scanner. The illusion of movement is created by an optical effect of two patterns similar to the auditory intersection of the Doppler Effect. Similar effects  can be seen “Multiple Shadow House”.

Olafur Eliasson. Yellow Corridor

One of the more impressive works is at the  entrance to the show. “Yellow Corridor “is an version of a  work the artist has created in m any locations, flooding an  area with yellow light which effects our perceptions of colour and form. The almost blinding light of the lit corridor recalls the quote of Robert Oppenheimer who described the Atom Bomb as brighter than a thousand – which also links to Eliasson’s  “The Weather Project”  which featured a massive  sun located in the Tate’s Turbine Hall.

Eliasson also plays with water and in “Beauty (1993), films of  misty water, illuminated by projected light create a mini Aurora Australis and  with “Object defined by activity (then) a fountain of water is rendered as an almost solid figure by the use of stroboscopic light.

“Still River” brings the issue of climate change down to a local level with three large cubes of ices, slowly melting in the gallery. The ice is frozen water taken form the Waikato River at Lake Whakamaru. We witness the ice melting, see the drops of water falling into the collection tray and hear the sound of the ice cracking and the water melting. We can also see in the water the residue contained in the water – the chemical, effluent and soil and other contaminants.

It provides a physical reminder of the process of the natural world and the ways they can be disrupted.

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