Otago Festival of the Arts

The Otago Festival of the Arts will again envelope Dunedin in a whirlwind of captivating music, thought-provoking theatre, magical dance, avant-garde opera and much, much more. Otago’s major cultural event presents a stellar array of international and New Zealand performers - along with Dunedin’s finest artists. With no less than six premières of new works, and guest artists coming from eight countries, the Otago Festival promises to be a startling celebration of creative endeavour. The Festival programme will be rich and varied. For eleven dynamic days and nights, there will be something for everyone, from vocal ‘pop art’ to rare indigenous music; from our country’s finest ballet to cutting-edge contemporary dance-theatre; from side splitting comedy to stimulating theatre. The city will be infused with festival fever as churches and museums are turned into theatres, and an enticing medley of lunchtime concerts and late-night cabaret is on offer. Once again, the Otago Festival of the Arts will confirm this region’s passion for the arts. The Festival programme will be officially launched at 6.00pm Friday 6 August. The full Festival programme will be available on line and in the official brochure from 7 August 2004. Check out the Festival’s website www.otagofestival.co.nz for full details.

Runs Until 9 October 2004

Contact for enquiries: Jessica Garland, phone (03) 477 7600 or 021 504 524

Contact for Bookings: NZ Ticketek outlets

Dunedin Fringe Festival 2004

The Dunedin Fringe Festival takes to the streets with a programme of innovative art and street performances every day in the Octagon, an arts trail of installations in shop windows, a drive-in short film festival and the ever popular and amazing Suburban Circus - a devised human circus which tours Dunedin’s suburbs to sell-out shows. A festival within a festival of experimental music, Lines of Flight, presents 16 hours of free noise and improvisation by New Zealand’s leading exponents of this genre. International guests include a dance troupe from Nepal and three world-class comedy acts from Melbourne. The three artists will arrive at the Dunedin Fringe fresh from sell out shows at Melbourne Fringe where they won best solo and best comedian choice. The trio will make their New Zealand debut at the Dunedin Fringe Festival. Well known Christchurch multimedia theatre group The Clinic will also attend this year’s Festival to perform The Peculiar Case of Clara Parsons. National Radio’s Off the Wire live recording will be on location at the Fringe Club. Add to this over 80 other events by New Zealand artists from all over the country and you have one hell-of-a festival you won’t want to miss! For further information check out the Festival’s website at www.dunedinfringe.org.nz

Runs Until 3 October 2004

20+ venues throughout Dunedin

Contact for enquiries: Carmen Wilson, phone (03) 477 3350; 021 178 1782 ; info@dunedinfringe.org.nz

Fortune Theatre - 30 anniversary season 1974-2004 proudly providing 30 years of excellent professional theatre for the Otago community.

Homeland, directed by Martin Howells

Commissioned by the Fortune Theatre for the Otago Festival of the Arts as part of their 30th anniversary celebrations, the world premiere of this pay will be a highlight of the Festival programme. Ken Taylor knows this land intimately, every stream and gully, every smell, every mood. He farmed it for 40 years. He coaxed a living out of it and raised a family here. Now Ken is 80, a widower and ailing. His children think it’s time for a new kind of home, drowsy afternoons and smiling caregivers. They gather to help shift the old man… but Ken is not going gently. This is a story about Home - why we need it, why we have to leave, and why we must always return.

1 - 23 October 2004

Fortune Theatre, 231 Stuart Street, Dunedin

Contact for enquiries: Lisa Scott, phone (03) 477 1695

Contact for Bookings: Box Office, phone (03) 477 8323

University of Otago - Lunchtime Theatre: Bite size Shows

Lunchtime Theatre is a twenty-seven year old innovation of Theatre Studies at the University of Otago and has been pleasing audiences since its conception. There are a huge variety of performance styles - from improvised theatre to naturalistic plays, to simply the most bizarre material encountered.

Lucky Dip Theatre

Showcasing the talent of THEA 301: Directing students. Different selections each day from playwrights Sam Shepard, Dylan Thomas, Samuel Beckett, Terence McNally and more, so just come along and have a lucky dip…

1, 7 & 8 October 2004, 1.00pm

Finale by Ekarin Teng and Angela Hannah

Finale is an original piece exploring the language and minds of today's youth. Do you hate death and sadness? Or do you love life and happiness?

14 - 15 October 2004, 1.00pm

Allen Hall Theatre, University of Otago, Union Street, Dunedin

Contact for enquiries: Fiona McLaughlin, phone (03) 479 8896

Contact for Bookings: Allen Hall, phone (03) 479 8896

Cleveland Living Arts Centre

Cleveland Art Awards - $9,000 prize pool

Established in 1993, The Cleveland Art Awards and Exhibition continues to seek to celebrate the diversity of the art process rather than the promotion of a particular trend or discipline. Past award winners include Ralph Hotere, Inge Doesberg and Thomas Elliot.

Each year a different Judge is invited, changing the flavour of the Award Exhibition from year to year. Judges for 2004 are Marcella Currie, Exhibitions Officer of the Southern Eastern Gallery, (Gore) and Cressida Bishop, Director of the Millennium Public Art Gallery, (Blenheim) selecting the Exhibition entries and Award winners.

The Awards are held in two categories: Painting and Works on Paper by Otago Southland and South Canterbury artists; and Sculpture/Ceramics/Jewellery/Applied Arts by South Island Artists. The 11th Annual Cleveland Art Awards will again be held at the Cleveland Living Arts Centre in the Historic Dunedin Railway Station.

In association with the Dunedin City Council and the Otago Festival of the Arts

1 - 17 October 2004; Daily 10.00am - 4.00pm

Children’s Art Exhibition

Responding to the theme “Your vision of Looking after our world” this exhibition is sure to entrance and amaze. Primary and Intermediate Schools from the greater Dunedin area are invited to contribute to this annual exhibition celebrating the creativity of Children.

In association with the Children’s Issues Centre

22 October - 5 November 2004 ; Weekdays 10.00am - 4.00pm; Saturdays 10 . 00am-2.00pm

Cleveland Living Arts Centre, 1st floor, Dunedin Railway Station, Anzac Avenue, Dunedin

Contact for enquiries: Kari Morseth, phone (03) 477 7291

Dunedin Centre

Lemalu’s NBR Homecoming Tour

The NZSO celebrates the exceptional voice and star quality of New Zealand’s Jonathan Lemalu, now on the threshold of the kind of career most can only dream of. The Dunedin concert will be a televised event.

2 October 2004, 8.00pm

Dunedin Town Hall, Dunedin

Contact for enquiries: Hannah Evans, phone (04) 801 3833, or cell: 0274 300 680

Contact for bookings: Regent Ticketek, phone (03) 477 8597

Vienna Piano Trio

Lovers in the moonlight inspire Schoenberg's intense portrayal of human emotions, preceded by a genial and youthful work from Schubert, and followed by a poetic and atmospheric piece from New Zealand composer Maria Grenfell and the grandeur and spacious measured textures of Beethoven's last piano trio.

6 October 2004, 8.00pm

Glenroy Auditorium, Moray Place, Dunedin

Contact for enquiries: Regent Ticketek, phone (03) 477 8597

Refuel - DaHawnayTroof (USA) +Die, Die, Die (Auckland)

Since 1997, Hawnay Troof has been playing shows to people across the globe. Hawnay Troof is a collective of several artists and programmers, featuring 900 Dixxx (Birmingham), Baby Donut (Washington, DC), Der Cobra (Germany), Lil' Jenny (Oakland) & Soft Pink Truth (San Francisco), among others. But it all revolves around 18-year-old Vice Cooler. Since he was eleven, Cooler has been creating bedroom beats for the anxious dancing legs of today’s youth. Aggressive lo-fi rhythms layered with twisted analogue synth sounds. Fist in the air rise against the status quo. Hawnay Troof’s first release was 2003’s CDEP Who Likes Ta? Also in 2003, HT could be heard lending lead vox on the track Gutter Butter on Gravy Train!!!!’s album Hello Doctor. On Get Up! Resolution: Love , his first featured full length, Vice uses his 16-piece band to the maximum. Aggressive lo-fi rhythms layered with twisted analogue synth sounds decorate this record from beginning to end. 18-year-old vocal chords pushed to the maximum from start to finish. Fist in the air rise against the status quo.

2 October 2004
Refuel Bar, Underground, University of Otago
Contact for enquiries: Scott Muir, phone (03) 479 3875

Dunedin Public Art Gallery

Jeffery Harris

This exhibition highlights a unique journey through the extraordinary career of Dunedin painter Jeffrey Harris. This survey exhibition highlights major themes and charged episodes from Harris’s three decades of art-making, reaching from razor-sharp etchings to jewel-like ‘icons’, from sumptuous triptychs to a group of unflinching recent self-portraits.

2 October 2004 - 13 February 2005

Frances Hodgkins: Daughter of Dunedin

Daughter of Dunedin is the second exhibition in the gallery permanently devoted to the works of one of New Zealand’s most highly regarded artists, Frances Hodgkins. The exhibition offers the viewer an insight into the artist’s early life and work.

A Dunedin Public Art Gallery exhibition

Runs Until 31 October 2004

Megan Dunn: The Tragedy

New video artwork by Megan Dunn “ Something old, Something new, Something borrowed, Something blue…”

Runs Until 5 December 2004

Stephen Mulqueen and Erwin Brinkman: Tiwai Project

Tiwai Project exhibition is a collaboration between sculptor Stephen Mulqueen and photographer Erwin Brinkman in response to the nature of place.

Runs Until 5 December 2004

Truth’s Mirror

Truth’s Mirror is a witty and thought-provoking juxtaposition of treasures from the Gallery’s permanent collection. Tony Green, formerly Head of the Department of Art History, University of Auckland curates the exhibition.

A Dunedin Public Art Gallery exhibition

Runs Until 10 October 2004

Sara Hughes: Love Me Tender

Sara Hughes brings colour and life to the Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s Otago Daily Times Gallery with her distinctive variations on the Paisley patterns that Scottish settlers brought to Dunedin. Cut from pre-painted sheets of sticky vinyl, Hughes’ Paisley shapes stretch and flex as if manipulated on a computer screen - nineteenth century forms refreshed by twenty-first century technology.

A Dunedin Public Art Gallery exhibition

Ongoing exhibition

Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 30 The Octagon, PO Box 5045, Dunedin

Contact for enquires: Tim Pollock, phone (03) 474 3243

Otago Museum

Otago Wildlife Photography Exhibition

Following the conclusion of the competition, the Otago Museum is hosting an exhibition displaying photographs from all five years of the Otago Wildlife Photography Competition.

Special Exhibitions Gallery, Runs Until 3 October 2004

Sir Edmund Hillary: Everest and Beyond

The Otago Museum will be the final worldwide venue for the special exhibition Sir Edmund Hillary: Everest and Beyond. Developed by the Auckland Museum in partnership with National Geographic, curated by Alexa Johnston with the full support of Sir Edmund and Lady Hillary this is a wonderful exhibition that the Otago Museum has secured for the Otago community.

Everest and Beyond is an outstanding exhibition, which brings into sharp focus the life and achievements of one of New Zealand's icons. Sir Edmund Hillary not only climbed the world's highest mountain more than 50 years ago, but has gone on to explore the icy expanse of Antarctica and beyond. Very importantly, Sir Edmund has spent over 40 years working with the Sherpa people of Nepal to bring schools, hospitals and health care to their remote villages, and improve their lives through the building of bridges and airstrips. The many New Zealanders who have worked with Sir Edmund on these projects agree that their lives have also been enhanced through their involvement with his Himalayan Trust. Sir Edmund has worked to preserve the Himalayan mountain environment and has contributed to many other environmental groups. His commitment encourages us all to make a positive contribution to others in our lives. The exhibition is the final chance for viewers to see some amazing things, which played a part in Sir Edmund Hillary's successes, including the ice axe he used on that most famous climb. Sir Edmund Hillary: Everest and Beyond is a celebration of an amazing man and his life, and a reminder to each of us reach for great heights in our own human endeavours.

Special Exhibitions Gallery, 16 October 2004 - 20 March 2005

Guided Tours

Take a ‘Highlights of the Museum’ guided tour and learn some inside knowledge about various aspects that the Museum has on offer and/or take a guided tour of ‘Southern Land, Southern People’ and gain a greater understanding, of the Southern region. ‘Highlights of the Museum’ guided tours are available at 11.30am and ‘Southern Land, Southern People’ guided tours are available at 3.30pm (and other times by prior arrangement).

Ongoing Service - 11.30am and 3.30pm daily

Lunchtime Music

A range of musicians will liven up the atrium with live performances each week. This is now a regular fixture but is subject to change according to function demands.

Museum Foyer, Fridays and Saturdays between 12noon and 1.30pm

Discovery World Science Shows

These excellent shows are now run by the Museum’s Science Communicators.

Discovery World, Saturdays & Sundays at 11am, 1pm and 3pm

Communicator Presentations

Each day, the Otago Museum Communicators present fascinating 15-minute presentations on objects or themes of particular interest from the Museum's galleries.

Ongoing Service, 2.00pm Daily

Search Centre

Otago Museum’s Search Centre research facility provides an inviting opportunity for visitors to engage in further research on objects or themes in the galleries of interest to them. It will also be the first stop for the identification of items members of the public bring into the Museum, a service that annually attracts a huge number of objects or specimens. Well resourced, with swift new computers, microscopes, modern journals and a great variety of new books, the Search Centre offers a variety of options for seeking further information. Set in a comfortable and relaxing environment the Search Centre is the perfect place in which to think, read , study, or research.

Ongoing Service

Ongoing Exhibitions

The Museum’s timbered Victorian gallery, the Animal Attic , houses an extensive collection of natural history specimens from around the world, re-displayed as they would have been in the late 1800s. A ‘museum within a museum’, this gallery is unique in New Zealand. Explore the Tangata Whenua Gallery with its impressive displays of Maori Cultural artefacts, including a stunning collection of Southern Maori material. The Pacific Culture Galleries display outstanding collections from Polynesia and Melanesia. People of the World has world archaeological treasures including ancient Greek pottery; a mummy and other fascinating artefacts from Ancient Egypt; a striking collection of swords; exquisite decorative arts from Asia and Europe and a superb array of costume and textiles. Walk the length of the giant Fin Whale in the Maritime Gallery , and then take in the intricate detail of a wealth of nautical artefacts. Come face to face with the extinct giant moa in the Extinction and Survival area and see one of the few complete moa eggs in the world.

Otago Museum, 419 Great King Street, Dunedin

Contact for enquiries: Ryan Helliwell, phone (03) 474 7474 ext 845

Blue Oyster Gallery

Douglas Rex Kelaher

Originality can be such a dilemma. In this exhibition, Kelaher presents a recent body of work that is based entirely on various other artists’ practices. The artists selected by Kelaher are those whose work has been taken on by him as inspiration in the past, those whose art has already made a dramatic impression on his own practice. However, instead of simply quoting these earlier artists, Kelaher will combine representations of these artists’ aesthetics together, to create a new breed of ‘sculptural hybrid’

5 - 23 October 2004

Blue Oyster East side

Hamish Pettengell lab102

This Melbourne based artist brings to the Blue Oyster Gallery an installation that deals with the world of biology, delving into the microcosmic world of viruses and bacteria, and focusing on disease. As well as a strong aesthetic quality, this exhibition has implications as a metaphor for the wider world, cellular constructions being controlled and defined by text, in much the same way that scientists attempt to control and define organics.

26 October - 13 November 2004

Blue Oyster West side

Cathy Helps

The contemporary world is dominated by an abundance of information and events and Marc Auge warns that our dependence on the “world system” of information threatens to rob individuals of a sense of meaning. If we take our cell phones to the movies, the mini TV to the bach, the laptop to the café and on camping trips, when or where can we find time and space to really get away from it all? Or do we not want to anymore? Are even our spaces of leisure constructed of and dependent on this excess of information? Helps explores these questions in an installation of painted texts.

26 October - 13 November 2004

Blue Oyster East side

Tessa Giblin

Having realised five different artists installations literally in the streets as a part of Gridlocked On Tour in Dunedin earlier this year, Curator Tessa Giblin is excited by the prospect of doing an outreach project at Blue Oyster. She plans to realise a group show with a number of exterior/interior works. Giblin says, “I am quite interested in a number of young artists who are working convincingly in the dealer scene as well as being interested in incidental positioning on the true verge of art world practice. Artists such as Rohan Wealleans, Reuben Paterson, Ri Williamson, Joanna Langford and Eddie Clemens.” The exhibition will be a dual showing in the gallery as well as the streets ( Gridlocked style).

26 October - 13 November 2004

Blue Oyster West side

Blue Oyster Gallery, 137 High Street, Dunedin

Contact for enquiries: Ali Bramwell, phone (03) 479 0197

Peter Rae Gallery

Beyond
Beyond explores where contemporary art practice and Christianity meet. The exhibition is curated by Susan Frykberg through the Chrysalis Seed Trust and features Chrysalis Seed Trust members: Claire Beynon, Sister Mary Horn, Shelly Johnson, Maria Kemp, and Stephen Mulqueen.

2 - 26 October 2004

Electro-acoustic music installation by Susan Frykberg

This words and music event features local poets and musicians

8 October 2004, 6.00pm

Kwang-Soo Jeon - Ceramics

Currently visiting Professor at the Otago Polytechnic’s School of Art, Kwang-Soo Jeon was most recently Associate Professor at the Department of Fine Art Education, Busan National University of Education, in Korea. His specialist areas of research are Korean Pottery and contemporary ceramics. Kwang-Soo’s stunningly unique ceramic works have exhibited widely in Korea, also in China, Japan, and Finland, and are held in Public Collections in Japan and Korea.

29 October - 18 November 2004

Peter Rae Gallery, 215 Stuart St, Dunedin

Contact for enquiries: Peter Rae, phone (03) 470 1022 or 0274 585 424, peterraegallery@xtra.co.nz ; www.peterraegallery.co.nz

Artsenta - Arty Pants 004 - The Man with the Golden Pants

The Creative Arts Trust and Artsenta will host its very own creative clothing awards, Arty Pants , as part of celebrations during national Mental Health Awareness week. This year the show, now in its fourth year, is titled Arty Pants 004 - The Man with the Golden Pants . This year’s show has a James Bond angle, and the organisers have secretly filmed a pre-show video starring (amongst others) the Prime Minister of New Zealand, the evil Jellysponge Gold Pants, his side kick Cod Piece, Miss Moneypants, and of course, Mr James Bond himself. The categories for entries for this years awards are ‘It came from Arty Space’, ‘Reptilian Nites, Mammalian Daze’ and Rocking Frockerella, you will go to the Ball’. The event will include a prize for the overall winner, “The Creative Arts Trust - Supreme Arty Pants Award”. The hard job of judging this year will be carried out by Hon Judith Tizard MP, Associate Minister Arts, Culture, Heritage; Ms Bridie Lonie, School of Art, Otago Polytechnic; Mr Malcolm Macpherson, Mayor Central Otago District Council and Otago; and District Health Board member Ms Fieke Newman, a Dunedin based fashion designer. The Awards are an opportunity for people involved in mental health services across Otago and Southland, to show their creative skills, and wonderful energy, off to the rest of the community.

Sponsors for this year’s awards are the Creative Arts Trust, Dunedin City Council Creative Communities, Otago Polytechnic, Like Minds Otago, Public Health South, and Fuji Xerox. Funding has also come from the Dunedin Casino Charitable Trust.

15 October 2004
Dunedin College of Education auditorium, 145 Union Street, Dunedin
Contact for enquiries: Robert West, phone 03 477 9566

Globe Theatre - American Buffalo by David Mamet, director Andrew Morrison

Mamet’s skill with words is to the fore in this black comedy about a man who considers that he has been cheated by the dealer who had purchased a nickel coin from him, knowing it to be the rare American buffalo and thus worth a great deal more than he had paid. The junk shop owner, with two of his friends, plots to rob the dealer and thus make him pay - but things do not go to plan…

21 - 30 October 2004 (excluding 25 October)
Globe Theatre, 104 London Street, Dunedin
Contact for enquiries; Rosemary Beresford, phone (03) 479 7273 (day); (03) 478 0248 (evening)
Contact for bookings: Globe Theatre Box Office, phone (03) 477 3274

Hocken Library

George D. Valentine, A 19th Century Photographer in New Zealand curated by Ken Hall, and toured by the Christchurch Art Gallery. Serious ill health and the need for a warmer climate brought leading Scottish photographer George Valentine (1852-1890) to New Zealand in 1884 (on a visit to Dunedin he was heralded as 'a noted home photographer and art critic'). Despite his illness, and spending just six years here before his untimely death, Valentine produced a remarkable body of work. In 1885 his photographs of Te Kapuarangi and Te Tarata (the celebrated Pink and White Terraces) won him immediate acclaim. Following the eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886 (and the loss of the Terraces) Valentine returned to the devastated region to complete a series that was unmatched for its quality and drama. This compelling exhibition includes many classic, iconic photographs of an earlier New Zealand. These include geyser studies in the Thermal Region (using the newly-invented 'drop shutter' photographic technique) and celebrations of New Zealand bush and waterfalls in the Waitakere region. Background into George Valentine's life and work, the famed Rotomahana Terraces, and events surrounding Tarawera's eruption are provided by a video and interpretive displays, together with curator Ken Hall's book that accompanies the exhibition.

Runs Until 23 October 2004

Gardens of Erewhon: Photographs by Paul Thompson toured by Idiom Studio, Wellington

Both this exhibition and Paul Thompson's earlier series The Illustrated Erewhon draw on the nineteenth century English writer Samuel Butler's sojourn in New Zealand. Butler arrived in Canterbury aged 24, and with no previous farming experience he developed the ideas for his most famous novel, Erewhon. Thompson's photographs show details of sub-alpine landscape marked out by a rectangle of yellow nylon cord, which he says instantly transforms a natural feature into a garden or cultured space. " Erewhon was inspired by the South Island high country, but in fact it's an imaginary place. Gardens of Erewhon creates imaginary gardens, given a brief existence by inserting boundaries into a seemingly natural landscape."

Runs Until 23 October 2004

Glenn Busch: My Place , toured by the Centre of Contemporary Art

This exhibition of photographs, oral histories and documentary writing celebrates identity and a sense of place through 68 photographs and commentaries by people living in Christchurch who have been photographed in places "of special significance to them." The accompanying text with each image reveals not only a "window on a community" but a window on all communities.

Runs Until 23 October 2004

Talking Back: Six Dunedin artists respond to history in the Hocken Pictorial Collection
Curated by Bekah Carran and Douglas Kelaher. Artists: Scott Eady, Violet Fagan, Philip J Frost, Seraphine Pick, Douglas Kelaher and Bekah Carran.

Six artists from early to mid career; a mixture of painters and sculptors, male and female have been asked to choose an original art work from the Hocken Pictorial Collections to respond to. The works will be displayed together. What will this pairing result in and what will these choices be based on? The choice of works is individual and telling but, whether by way of curiosity, nostalgia or historical significance, ones with relevance to each artist will be chosen. Creating new work with the collection as a catalyst reiterates the presence of art history. Individual works brought back into the light in new context continue to generate thought and meaning. Simultaneously contemporary art is re-established; not a bizarre phenomenon, but with foundations, a steady development from what came before. Responding to a work enables the artist to express how they feel about this history; their artistic forbears. The works in the collection are telling how it was and the artists get to talk back.

29 October 2004 - 22 January 2005

Hocken Library, cnr Anzac Avenue & Parry Street, Dunedin

Contact for enquiries: Pennie Hunt, phone (03) 479 5648

The National Bank Dunedin Rhododendron Festival - 21 Years

The National Bank Dunedin Rhododendron Festival is an annual event, which has become a much-enjoyed part of the Dunedin spring calendar. The Festival appeals to a broad spectrum of the community and provides an opportunity to see a diverse range of open gardens, participate in the associated leisure activities and increase knowledge with an assortment of educational workshops. A highlight is Festival guest, Lynda Hallinan, who is the editor-at-large of Weekend Gardener magazine, the Sunday Star-Times' gardening editor and one of the presenters on TVNZ's new gardening show, Ground Rules. Lynda will present two workshops during the Festival, ‘How to get the Garden you Want’ and ‘Design Trends - What’s Hot and What’s Not’.

28 - 31 October 2004

Contact for enquiries: Annemarie Mains or Victoria Bunton, phone (03) 467-7241

Otago Settlers Museum

Dovetails and Davenports: Colonial furniture and furniture makers in Otago

This exhibition of furniture from the Otago Settlers Museum collection is more than just a visual record of what the furniture of our forebears looked like. Rather it is the story of the lives of our Victorian settlers told through the pieces of furniture that they made, owned and loved. Dovetails and Davenports also charts the development of the Dunedin furniture making industry from early artisans chipping away in their workshops to the emergence of large furniture companies catering to a mass market.

30 October 2004 - 12 February 2005

Across the Ocean Waves

What was it like crossing the oceans to come here in a sailing ship? The core of this new display is an accurate recreation of the steerage quarters of an immigrant ship bound for Otago in the days of sail. Visitors are welcome to climb into a bunk or sit at the central table and imagine what life would have been like cooped up for 100 or more days at sea. Short video presentations bring the era to life. Death and disaster, fun and romance, the misery of seasickness and the excitement of arrival are all showcased. A baby dies, fighting breaks out among the single girls, and there is dancing and a stolen kisses. This is an interactive exhibit, which will seize the imagination and transport you back to the epic voyages made by Otago’s nineteenth century ancestors. “Climb aboard” and see for yourself what their great migration was all about.

Ongoing Exhibition

On the Move: Road Transport in Otago

One hundred years ago Thomas Sullivan invented the tea bag, Charles Menches invented the ice cream cone and vehicles were becoming increasingly familiar sights on Dunedin streets. To find out more about local motoring and transportation milestones check out On the Move: Road Transport in Otago - an exhibition of vehicles, photographs and memorabilia recalling not only the dawn of motoring in Otago but also the heydays of horse-drawn coaches and drays, tramcars and cycles. Be sure not to miss a ride on our penny-farthing.

Ongoing Exhibition

The Smith Gallery

The ‘Otago Early Settlers Museum’ opened in 1908 with just one room for displays. Now known as the Smith Gallery, it was a memorial to Otago’s Scottish pioneers. Stern Presbyterian faces glowered down from rows of photographic portraits amidst artefacts of daily life from Otago’s early days. Today, the Smith Gallery emphasises the importance of the Early Settlers in the story of Otago. The portraits on the walls have been rearranged in order of arrival; and a variety of furniture and other artefacts, all drawn from the pre- gold rush era, add character to this historic gallery.

Ongoing Exhibition

Otago Settlers Museum, 31 Queens Gardens, Dunedin

Contact for enquiries: Tim Pollock, phone (03) 474 3242

NOVEMBER 2004

Cleveland Living Arts Centre

Muka Youth Prints - No Adults Allowed!

Original litho prints from leading New Zealand, Australia and Europe on display for sale or simply to view, by children under the age of 18 only. Muka Youth Prints is a two-day exhibition only.

3 & 4 November 2004; Wednesday and Thursday 10.00am - 5.30pm

Friederike Schmaltz - drawings

Retrospective collection of work created over the past 15 years showing the development of stylistic changes of Friederike Schmaltz. Known for her work with colour, this time Friederike presents black and white, still life, ink and pencil drawings.

9 - 20 November 2004; Weekdays 10.00am - 4.00pm; Saturdays 10 . 00am-2.00pm

Aids Awareness

Timed to link with International Aids Awareness this exhibition invites members of the community to contribute art that responds to the ongoing impact of this disease.

23 November - 4 December 2004 ; Weekdays 10.00am - 4.00pm; Saturdays 10 . 00am -2.00pm

Affordable Art Fair - nothing over $300

An ideal chance to start an art collection, add to an existing one or pick up an original gift for Christmas. In true art fair style - once a work is purchased it is taken away and a new one is put in its place - ensuring the show is always changing.
Gems from experienced and emerging artists contribute to this popular event.

29 November 2004 - 17 January 2005 ; Weekdays 10.00am - 4.00pm; Saturdays 10 . 00am-2.00pm

Cleveland Living Arts Centre, 1st floor, Dunedin Railway Station, Anzac Avenue, Dunedin

Contact for enquiries: Kari Morseth, phone (03) 477 7291

Fortune Theatre - 30 anniversary season 1974-2004 proudly providing 30 years of excellent professional theatre for the Otago community.

Lend Me A Tenor, directed by Martin Howells

“Black his face; Lots of padding. If we don’t tell those idiots in the audience…” What happens when a world famous Italian Opera expires in his hotel bedroom prior to his Gala performance as Verdi’s ‘Othello’ in Cleveland, Ohio? With 1000 tickets sold and 50 pounds of shrimp mayonnaise getting warmer by the minute, the luckless producer has no choice; his gauche assistant must black up and take to the stage. Add the mayhem and a volatile Italian wife, an outrageous bellhop and swooning female fans, and what follows is a chain of hilarious events in epic proportions. Brilliantly funny and masterfully written, this farce is a night at the opera to rival the Marx Brothers.

12 November - 11 December 2004

Fortune Theatre, 231 Stuart Street, Dunedin

Contact for enquiries: Lisa Scott, phone (03) 477 1695

Contact for Bookings: Box Office, phone (03) 477 8323

Botanic Garden - HortTalk Presents - Dunedin’s First mainland island - the latest progress on Orokonui Nature Sanctuary

Ralph Allen, an experienced ecologist and chairperson of the Otago Natural History trust, will update participants on this very exciting urban conservation project that plans to reintroduce kiwi, kaka and perhaps kakapo to within a 20-minute drive of the central city.

12 November 2004, 12noon

Botanic Garden Centre, Upper Lovelock Avenue, Dunedin

Contact for enquiries: Clare Fraser, phone (03) 474 9649

Blue Oyster Gallery- Jan C. Wilson - The Gift and the Proper - Frothing the Synaptic Bath

The act of knitting in public is often seen as a contentious act resulting in vitriolic protests and publicity beyond that which one would expect from what seems such a harmless act. The Honourable Judith Tizard’s act of knitting in parliament had Winston Peters complaining that she was “arrogant and disrespectful” and that the act was typical of her “contempt and arrogance.” Similarly Richard Prebble allowed that “knitting needles were a device” and should be banned from Chambers and Bill English equated the act to ‘text messaging’. Yet while in that instance knitting was seen as something rebellious, generally when a woman is told to “stay at home with her knitting” that charge sarcastically places her in a No Mans Land of domesticity. So apparently a knitter can be a subversive or she can relegate herself to a position beyond individuality and only be useful in terms of the needs of others, effectively liquidating her selfhood. Wilson explores these problematic and opposing feelings by provocatively fetishising “infantilism” through an over abundance of knitted booties. Booties are a ‘proper gift’ and often the first received by the new Mother-to-be. In this way, Wilson also opens the dialogue surrounding the experiences of women artists who take time out from their artistic careers to venture into Motherhood. The impact that the parasitical needs of child rearing have when the artist experiences it, it is symbolised by the placement of the booties in the gallery context. She is refusing to knit in private.

16 November - 4 December 2004

Blue Oyster West side

Emma Bugden

Artist and curator Emma Bugden and film-maker Colin Hodson team up to produce a series of video projects which look like reality TV mixed with home movies. Presented as a series of large-scale video projections mixed with smaller wall based monitors; this work is part of an ongoing project which will ultimately become a narrative feature film. Real-life partners, both have been known to delve into their inner-most secrets in their individual auto-biographical projects, and together here they prod and probe at their own relationship, offering up to viewers teasing glimpses of truth, reality, and a certain amount of fascinating fiction to boot

16 November - 4 December 2004

Blue Oyster East side

Blue Oyster Gallery, 137 High Street, Dunedin

Contact for enquiries: Ali Bramwell, phone (03) 479 0197

Dunedin Public Art Gallery

Jeffery Harris

This exhibition highlights a unique journey through the extraordinary career of Dunedin painter Jeffrey Harris. This survey exhibition highlights major themes and charged episodes from Harris’s three decades of art-making, reaching from razor-sharp etchings to jewel-like ‘icons’, from sumptuous triptychs to a group of unflinching recent self-portraits.

Runs Until 13 February 2005

Megan Dunn: The Tragedy

New video artwork by Megan Dunn “ Something old, Something new, Something borrowed, Something blue…”

Runs Until 5 December 2004

Stephen Mulqueen and Erwin Brinkman: Tiwai Project

Tiwai Project exhibition is a collaboration between sculptor Stephen Mulqueen and photographer Erwin Brinkman in response to the nature of place.

Runs Until 5 December 2004

Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 30 The Octagon, PO Box 5045, Dunedin

Contact for enquires: Tim Pollock, phone (03) 474 3243

Otago Settlers Museum

Deeds, delinquents & death: the legal profession in Otago 1879-2004

Lawyers are essential to the smooth running of our society. Their specialist knowledge is vital at crucial points of our lives - buying a house, negotiating family break-ups or facing criminal charges. We might not love them but sometimes we really need them. This is the story of the law in Otago from dusty old deeds to macabre murders and everything in between. Step into the dock and feel the weight of the law bearing down on you!

Runs Until 12 February 2005

Dovetails and Davenports: Colonial furniture and furniture makers in Otago

This exhibition of furniture from the Otago Settlers Museum collection is more than just a visual record of what the furniture of our forebears looked like. Rather it is the story of the lives of our Victorian settlers told through the pieces of furniture that they made, owned and loved. Dovetails and Davenports also charts the development of the Dunedin furniture making industry from early artisans chipping away in their workshops to the emergence of large furniture companies catering to a mass market.

Runs Until 12 February 2005

Across the Ocean Waves

What was it like crossing the oceans to come here in a sailing ship? The core of this new display is an accurate recreation of the steerage quarters of an immigrant ship bound for Otago in the days of sail. Visitors are welcome to climb into a bunk or sit at the central table and imagine what life would have been like cooped up for 100 or more days at sea. Short video presentations bring the era to life. Death and disaster, fun and romance, the misery of seasickness and the excitement of arrival are all showcased. A baby dies, fighting breaks out among the single girls, and there is dancing and a stolen kisses. This is an interactive exhibit, which will seize the imagination and transport you back to the epic voyages made by Otago’s nineteenth century ancestors. “Climb aboard” and see for yourself what their great migration was all about.

Ongoing Exhibition

Otago Settlers Museum, 31 Queens Gardens, Dunedin

Contact for enquiries: Tim Pollock, phone (03) 474 3242

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