From curated art shows and book festivals to fashion pop-ups and gigs – highlights from the capital’s cultural calendar, from the people who should know.
Springtime in Wellington is famously wild and unpredictable – a fitting backdrop for a season of artistic expression and unbridled creativity. Having completed its winter recharge, the city is readying itself for a torrent of festivals, gallery shows, theatre events and gigs. It’s an especially exciting few months ahead for music, with Aldous Harding, Cat Power, Che Fu, Anthonie Tonnon, System of a Down, and the Wellington Jazz and High Tide electronic music festivals all touching down on the shores of Te Whanganui-a-Tara over the next few months.
On the visual arts calendar, there’s one day circled in red: October 10. That’s the day City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi reopens after a two-year closedown for earthquake strengthening. The gallery is opening with a bang – a massive retrospective from UK art legend Cornelia Parker (more on that below) – and is set to further revivify Te Ngākau Civic Square, already starting to buzz again now that Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui, the Central Library, is back in business.
Personally, I’m also looking forward to my first World of WearableArt Show later this month. Now in its 39th year, the annual arena spectacle is a true icon of the Wellington events calendar and, by all accounts, one of the best nights out the capital has to offer. I’ll also be checking out Behind the Seams, a WOW-inspired event at Wētā Workshop where costumers share how they made the leap from hobbyist crafters to dressing hobbits and Na’vi for Hollywood.
But what else is on Wellingtonians’ cultural radar this spring? We asked a bunch of arts-adjacent locals for their recommendations – here’s what they told us.
Let’s get the self-promo out of the way first. He Toi Whakairo is on now at Te Papa – the biggest show Te Papa has presented on toi whakairo (Māori carving) since Te Maori in the 1980s. Over 140 taonga from the past 700 years. It’s extraordinary.
Nau mai ki He Puna Kōrero i Te Papa Tongarewa ki te whakanui i a Mahuru Māori. For Mahuru Māori we’re hosting He Puna Kōrero, a weekly speakers series on Wednesday lunchtimes. The sessions are designed for beginners through to fluent speakers.
Outside of this whare: everyone needs to see jeweller Warwick Freeman’s survey exhibition Hook Hand Heart Star at The Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt. Pātaka in Porirua is celebrating 100 years of Wellington icon Whittakers with a new exhibition, Unwrapped. And I need to get tickets for Che Fu at the Michael Fowler Centre on October 16.
– Courtney Johnston is the departing director of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
The Verb Readers and Writers festival is in the last week of September. I’m talking to Australian novelist Michelle de Krester, two-time winner of the Miles Franklin award, and I’ve just grabbed a ticket to her workshop as well. Book launches, panels, workshops, what’s not to love about Verb?
I’m also excited about Uncle Vanya at Circa. I keep rediscovering Chekhov and find him heartbreaking, wise, bleak and contemporary. Can’t wait to see what the cast do with this play.
– Kate Duignan is a fiction writer, poet, and lecturer in creative writing at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington.
I’m looking forward to Simple Animal’s album launch at Meow on November 21. They are a new band with a long legacy, drawing players from such Wellington legends as the Hulamen, the Holidaymakers and the Mockers, and their ringleader John McDougall writes great songs, full of heart and hope.
– Nick Bollinger is a writer, broadcaster and musician.
I’m not sure Wellington quite realises yet what a huge deal Cornelia Parker at City Gallery is going to be. Parker is one of the most important British artists of her generation, and some of her most iconic works are coming to Wellington – including Cold Dark Matter, for which she had the British Army blow up a garden shed before suspending the wreckage in mid-air as though freezing the explosion in time. I dare anyone to stand in front of it and not be utterly mesmerised. That’s what I love about Parker: she’s got serious art world chops, but her work is also so funny, strange, spectacular and seductive. It’s the kind of work that turns people who think they don’t like contemporary art into diehard contemporary art lovers.
The ultimate IYKYK Wellington event is SLUG Pop Up, running from September 17 to October 4. Dreamed up by Julia Palm, the darkly brilliant mastermind behind local fashion label JPalm, SLUG is part shop, part fashion clubhouse and part glorious community experiment, bringing together some of the coolest independent designers from Pōneke and beyond. Emerging and established labels sit side by side, designers share resources and knowledge, and people come to be amongst it as much as they do to shop. This is where the art curators go to buy outfits that make us look much cooler than we actually are. Prepare for the most covetous parts of your brain to light up like a million tiny, extremely well-dressed suns.
And if you’ll let me stretch Wellington as far as the Hutt, the thing I’m most excited about is Kushana Bush: Pobblebonk at The Dowse. I’m wildly biased because I’m curating it, but Kushana is one of Aotearoa’s most extraordinary painters and this is an exhibition of entirely new work – teeming little worlds of lugubrious clowns, leering rocks, lolloping frogs and nature gone deliciously awry. Imagine a fever dream that has sprouted leaves, filtered through centuries of art history, and you’re somewhere close. I’ve been watching these gloriously unhinged paintings being birthed for the past three years and I cannot WAIT for other people to meet them.
– Chelsea Nichols is senior curator at The Dowse Art Museum
I’m looking forward to Verb Readers and Writers Festival returning this September – such a great offering of events, too many to choose from in fact, but a couple of highlights are Irish writer Doireann Ní Ghríofa talking with Noelle McCarthy, and Jon Toogood talking with Nick Bollinger about his life in music (and sneaking in a couple of songs as well). Poets are back in force too with Chris Tse’s The Launch of Dance-Floor Romance and Rebecca Hawkes’ stunning HIDE manuscript launch.
– Andrew Laking is the founder and artistic director of Lōemis festival and co-founder and co-director of Verb Wellington.
What I’m amped for is the return of the Songs of Solidarity festival from 27–29 November this year at Two/Fiftyseven on Willis St. It was SO good last year and not only is the whole event FREE (show me another festival of this calibre that is genuinely accessible) but it weaves together voices from across Aotearoa and the Global South in conversations that are both urgent yet also somehow uplifting and reassuring. Did I mention the vegan and gluten free kai is also free?
The theme for this year is “anthems of resistance” and it’s about the way writing and creative expression carries resistance and solidarity across generations and borders. They also have the best independent bookshop full of writers you’d never be able to access anywhere else – it’s like candy for nerds. Keep an eye on Songs of Solidarity’s website for the programme, out soon.
– Nadine Hura (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi, Pākehā) is a writer, podcaster and activist
I’m really looking forward to taking the kids to Matilda the Musical at the St James Theatre in October! We love taking them to theatre in general and are hoping we instill the love of it that we have. We recently listened to the audiobook to set them up with the story, and they’ve just hit the age where we can share something like that. We all had such a good time listening to it together that it has stirred up family-wide excitement for the musical.
– Jade Willow Buck is the founder and director of Cahoots community workshop
I’m really excited for the return of Verb Readers & Writers Festival in September! It’s such a vibrant, interesting and invigorating programme with amazing writers from all over Aotearoa and further afield, too. Then on November 14 there’s VerbCrawl, a one-night only lit extravaganza that happens all over Wellington’s CBD. Unmissable! And, I’m biased, but there’s a pretty cool double book launch on September 9 at Unity Books… myself and the maverick Giselle Clarkson are jointly celebrating our new books, Cass and the Beast by me and illustrated by Jill Calder; and Pocket Observology by Giselle Clarkson. All welcome!
– Claire Mabey is a children’s author and The Spinoff’s books editor.
The productions that Footnote New Zealand Dance present are always exciting – smart, sophisticated, radical. Their new offering, Big Low Dream, by choreographer and performance maker Jessie McCall, is going to be a real highlight this spring.
My friend and collaborator Duncan Sarkies is about to do a show at Hannah Playhouse called I’d Love To Have a Beer With Duncan (16-19 Sept). Along with being an acclaimed writer, he’s also a hilarious and magnetic performer (a lot of people don’t know about this slightly hidden talent of his), so it will be a very fun and witty show.
Oof, there is always so much going on in this tiny town, so much innovative and rebellious art making and thinking. Look down the side streets, get off the beaten paths – that’s usually where the real work is happening.
– Miranda Manasiádis is a choreographer, director and dance educator.
