The Big Idea Navigator Bulletin #27 - 23 July

The Big Idea Navigator Bulletin #27 - Thursday 23 July 2009

Film maker Roger Horrocks worked with Len Lye when he was younger and says in a sense he’s been working with him ever since - writing his biography, restoring his films, and now making a dramatic short film about him.

“He was a person hard to forget. I remember one of his artist friends (Hilary Harris) characterising Len as ‘a crazy, excited and exciting guy.’ And poet Alistair Reid described him as the least boring person who ever lived.”

The 18 minute film, Art that Moves, dramatises Len Lye’s teenage years and his “Eureka!” moment when he first came up with his idea of a new ‘art of motion.’ As part of the New Zealand International Film Festival, the Len Lye programme ‘Discoveries and Rarities’ includes a variety of little-known and in some cases completely unknown films by this great film-maker.

Mark Amery Visual Arts: Second Life at Pataka, curated by Helen Kedgley, smartly brings together five New Zealand artists’ projects by practitioners well known for their recycling of common domestic and office objects into art. “It’s not just their material and a concern for the environment that makes these five a strong grouping, but a shared interest in making the banal fantastic and animating it to create models of the natural world.”

Sets and The City: James Hadley in London talks about Rupert Goold, one of the most prolific theatre directors working in London, and his production of JB Priestley's 1937 play 'Time and the Conways' at the National Theatre.

Christchurch Arts Festival: The festival of arts, culture and entertainment is on from July 23 to August 9. Check out the insights into artists and their works, courtesy of Christchurch Arts Festival.

ENDS

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