 Christchurch poets, Fiona Farrell, Bernadette Hall, Ben Brown, Jim Norcliffe, Danielle O’Halloran, and Tusiata Avia are coming together to support the Samoan tsunami relief effort. Their one off show will be MC-ed by prominent Christchurch playwright, Victor Rodger, on Thursday 5 November, 5.30pm, at the Madras Café Bookshop, 135 Madras Street. Tickets will be available at the door for $10. All proceeds will go to the Samoa tsunami relief effort.
(Tusiata Avia. Image from the Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive.)
 ART (Arts Regional Trust | Te Taumata Toi-a-Iwi) and The Big Idea | Te Aria Nui warmly invites interested individuals to attend a unique, forum, expo and networking event: “Survive & Thrive: sustaining creative projects, organisations and businesses in challenging economic times.” Participants will hear from leading creative entrepreneurs, their success stories, and their views on present and future opportunities. The forum presents an opportunity to connect with peers and other influential people from a variety of backgrounds and sectors. Organisations that are the supporters, motivators and the backbone of the Auckland region’s creative sector will be on hand to help artists, producers, makers and doers to deliver. Entry is free. However, places are limited, so registration is essential. Contact details: RSVP to margaret.lewis@thebigidea.co.nz by 2 November with each person’s name, email, creative discipline and whether you require lunch.
- When: Monday 9 November 2009 – 11.00 am – 4.00 pm (expo, networking and lunch from 11am, forum starts at 1pm)
 Artists have come together to organise an Art Auction in aid of victims of the recent tsunami in Samoa and Tonga. The auction on Tuesday 20th of October 2009 at Webb’s in Newmarket features more than 70 pieces of art from some of New Zealand’s most renowned artists. This artist-initiated project is being coordinated through the Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust. Works have been promised from Lonnie Hutchinson, Niki Hastings-McFall, John Ioane, Suzanne Tamaki, Fatu Feu’u, Edith Amituanai, Jim Vivieaere, Johnny Penisula, Michael Hight, Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi, Deborah Crowe, Chris Charteris, Tracey Tawhiao, Nathan Pohio, and many more. Also included is an eclectic mix of novel works which include signed memorabilia of Bro’Town, a T-shirt and CD package from King Kapisi, a DVD package of Sima Urale films, a photographic series by Steven Ball, as well as book packages from writers. The event also features live performances by dancers, musicians and poets. The auction is at Webb’s auction house, 18 Manukau Rd, Newmarket from 6 pm. Viewing times are from 9 am – 6 pm. The catalogue can be viewed at www.webbs.co.nz.
(“Masina” by Edith Amituanai (2008). A2 Giclee museum quality print. 420mm x 580mm. Image from the Webbs Auction website.)
 Waitakere City poets Selina Tusitala Marsh, Serie Barford and Doug Poole speak to the art of “Spirit of the People” on Wednesday 16 September 2009 at the Okaioceanikart Gallery. “Spirit of the People” is significant because it is the first exhibition of Contemporary Melanesian art with a regional wide focus to show in Auckland. Inspired by a visit to writers in the Solomon Islands and then blown away by the colourful bold Papua New Guinea paintings at Okaioceankart, Selina Tusitala Marsh wanted to write poetry to honour her fellow Melanesian artists. Together with Serie Barford and Doug Poole, all three of Samoan heritage, the reading will create a ‘spacific’ oceanic dimension to the show. “Spirit of the People” features contemporary art from Fiji, Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, as well as work by artists from the Melanesian diasporic Pacific communities in Australia and New Zealand. The Artspeak evening starts at 7pm at the Corban Estate Arts Centre, Mt Lebanon Drive, Henderson. The “Spirit of the People” exhibition continues at the same venue until 27th September 2009.
(Image courtesy of Okaioceanikart Gallery)
Niuean playwright Arnette Arapai’s new 10 minute theatre piece “Tangimama’s 21st” is a feature of Victoria University’s “Writers on Mondays” programme for 2009. “Writers on Mondays” is organised by the International Institute of Modern Letters to showcase writers who are active in and around Wellington, as well as guests from overseas. The month of September is dedicated to an exciting and varied line-up of writers for screen, page and stage. These writers of the future are currently enrolled in the prestigious Masters of Creative Writing (Scriptwriting stream). Arnette Arapai is the only Pasifika student currently enrolled in the course. Her piece shows at the Te Papa Museum Marae (Level 4 of the museum) in Wellington on Monday 28th September 2009, from 12.15pm to 1.15pm. Free entry.
 Artists Shigeyuki Kihara and Rosanna Raymond have received the honour to exhibit their work at the October Gallery in London. The exhibition is titled “ethKnowcentrix – Museums Inside the Artist” and will run from 10 September to 10 October 2009. Kihara is a multimedia and performance artist of Samoan and Japanese descent who uses photography to explore themes of representation, spirituality, performativity, and gender. In 2008, she held a solo exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and won the distinction of having her work acquired by the museum for its permanent collection. She is the current Artist in Residence at the Campbelltown Arts Centre in Sydney. Raymond is a poet, performer, costume designer, dancer, and jewellery-maker, and curator. She is of Samoan and Pakeha descent and was a founding member of the acclaimed art collective Pacific Sisters. She was co-curator and artistic director of the Pasifika Styles festival in Cambridge (England) between 2006 and 2008. In “ethKnowcentrix”, she continues her exploration of the Pacific dusky maiden motif. Using poetry, performance, costume, body adornment, film and photography, the work produces a resounding celebration of the Pacific female spirit. Exhibiting with Kihara and Raymond are George Nuku, an internationally celebrated Maori sculptor and multimedia artist, and Lisa Reihana a Maori artist who comments on gender politics, cultural agency and museological interventions, through film and multimedia art. An Artists’ Forum, an Artists’ Talk, and a Poroporoaki (farewell) have been scheduled for 12 September 2009, 10 am – 7.30 pm (£15/£10 conc); 15th September 2009, 6.30 pm (free); and 10th October 2009, 3 pm (free) respectively.
Alistair Campbell, the celebrated Cook Islands and New Zealand poet, playwright and novelist has died, aged 84. Campbell was born in Rarotonga in 1925, shifting to live in a Dunedin orphanage at the age of eight after his parents died. As a young man, Campbell moved to Wellington where he joined the Wellington Group, writing alongside the likes of James K Baxter, Louis Johnson and W. H. Oliver. He had early success with his first book Mine Eyes Dazzle in 1950. In 1961 he wrote a novel for children The Happy Summer before writing a series of six plays for radio. The best-known of them was Bough Breaks (1970), which was later turned into a stage version and published in McNaughton’s Contemporary New Zealand Plays in 1974. He tutored creative writing nationally and internationally, and was president of the writers’ organisation, PEN, for a year. In 1997, Campbell was awarded the Pacific Islands Artist’s Award and in 1999, he received an honorary doctorate in literature from Victoria University of Wellington. He received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement for poetry in 2005 and was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the same year. (Content adapted from One News).
The Auckland public will be treated to a veritable feast of Tongan artistic creativity on Saturday 15 August 2009. The day starts off at 11 am with an Artist Floor Talk by Vivesio Siasau who will speak about his current solo exhibition “Ahoeitu – Dawn Break” at the Fresh Gallery Otara. At 1pm, three bilingual Tongan children’s books will be launched by Kula-’Uli Publishing at Fale Pasifika, University of Auckland. Kulimoe’anga Stone Maka’s solo exhibition Faka’ahu – Contemporary Fumage opens at 5 pm at the McCarthy Gallery in Parnell. This exciting exhibition runs until September 3, 2009.
Members of “Banana Boat”, a collective of Pasifika Writers based in Auckland, will this month hear about Victoria University’s Creative Screenwriting Course. The presentation will be led by Niuean playwright Arnette Arapai. Arnette is the only Pasifika student currently enrolled in the course. The course is offered by the Institute of Modern Letters and has previously served as a launch pad by Pasifika writers such as Tusiata Avia. The Banana Boat collective is comprised mainly of Pasifika playwrights and meets once a month to hear presentations and to read and discuss new scripts. The next meeting is on Thursday 25 June 2009 from 7:00pm to 9:00pm at the funky Toi Ora Live Art Trust Studio, 6 Putiki Street, Grey Lynn. For more information, see the collective’s websites at http://www.bebo.com/pasifikawriters and http://bananaboatnz.blogspot.com/.
Christchurch-based playwright, Victor Rodger, is the 2009 Ursula Bethell Writer in Residence at the University of Canterbury. “I’m the first of Pacific Island descent to have this residency, which is pretty wicked, particularly with me being a Christchurch boy,” he says. Taking his writing from the stage to the page, Victor will use part of his residency to adapt his fourth play, My name is Gary Cooper, into a novel. The comedy-drama was produced by the Auckland Theatre Company in 2007, and starred Robbie Magasiva of Sione’s Wedding fame. It received rave reviews and was described by Metro magazine as “a darkly witty demolition of palagi fantasies about Polynesia”. Victor will work on a couple of other play projects including Village People, a Creative New Zealand commission about four Samoan siblings who each live in a different country and are reunited in Samoa to watch the youngest become a matai (chief). Being of Samoan and Scottish descent, Victor says the themes of race, racism, race relations and identity inspire most of his work. His first play Sons won four Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards in 1998, including most outstanding new writer and most outstanding new New Zealand play. In 2001, he won the Sunday Star-Times Bruce Mason Playwriting Award. Since 2000 he has been a storyliner and now dialogue writer for the long-running television soap opera, Shortland Street, a “bread and butter” job which he says helps him “flex (his) writing muscles” and was a great way to pay off his credit card.
 Victor Rodger. (Image courtesy of the University of Canterbury)
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Christchurch poets, Fiona Farrell, Bernadette Hall, Ben Brown, Jim Norcliffe, Danielle O’Halloran, and Tusiata Avia are coming together to support the Samoan tsunami relief effort. Their one off show will be MC-ed by prominent Christchurch playwright, Victor Rodger, on Thursday 5 November, 5.30pm, at the Madras Café Bookshop, 135 Madras Street. Tickets will be available at the door for $10. All proceeds will go to the Samoa tsunami relief effort.
