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WellingtonMarch 26, 2024

CubaDupa review: A glimpse at the future of Wellington

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The CupaDupa street festival is a vision of Wellington we can all get behind, writes Preyanka Gothanayagi.

CubaDupa began at midday Saturday, with a mihi whakatau at Ngā Toi O Te Aro Stage. It wasn’t a standout crowd – those would appear as the day went on – but it was a veritable who’s who of the lefty political scene (I was hoping to meet Chris Bishop’s dogs, but alas).

Like a journalistic meet cute, the first person I bumped into upon arrival was Mayor Tory Whanau. She was “absolutely fizzing,” she told me, because “CubaDupa really shows exactly what the future of the Wellington CBD should be.” 

 

“When we think about the Golden Mile project, we’ve got outdoor acts, outdoor dining, we’ve got these beautiful lights, flowers all over the place – that should be a permanent fixture. We could have this every weekend.”

This idea soon turned into a bit of a theme. Wellington Central MP Tamatha Paul highlighted the “potential of the city, when we prioritise people over cars.” Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick told me she was straight-up jealous of what we have in Wellington. “I want this for Tāmaki Makaurau,” she said. 

Just like that, the festival for me suddenly became less about “Finding My Wild” (this year’s theme), and more about the future of our city. Maybe it’s the circles I run in, but three different people messaged me to say how nice it was not being run over by traffic. I found myself dawdling on the roads, taking up space, and enjoying the ebb and flow of the crowd as we wandered collectively through the self-proclaimed “most creative and diverse free arts festival in Aotearoa”. 

 

If you’ve never been to CubaDupa, take all stories you hear with a grain of salt; there’s no one defining CubaDupa experience. There’s so much to see and do that how you engage with it is completely up to you. Eight main stages, 42 separate areas, nine different parades, countless food trucks, and the regular Cuba Street venues spilling out their doors. It’s a lot. Everything competes for your attention. The entire precinct becomes a playground, and all that’s familiar is made new. Pushing this metaphor beyond its limits, someone even removed all the water from the iconic bucket fountain, and hung random bunches of fruit all over it instead. 

I spent my weekend literally running from section to section, from one soundscape to the next, trying to soak it all in and eat all the dim sum I could lay my hands on. There was almost too much of something for everyone. A Pasifika choir singing pitch-perfect Disney? Absolutely! Three different batucada and samba groups? Vibrant! A very British man who climbs into a giant balloon, removes most of his clothes, and climbs out again? Why not! Well, I could think of a few reasons why not for that last one, but who am I to be the arbitrator of art?

There were acts spanning the suspenseful to the surreal, the peaceful to the profound. A Korean street artist climbed a ladder mounted on a steel hemisphere, which carried him in a graceful arc high above our heads. “Are we going to watch a man die today?” a woman behind me whispered, while my friends debated the meaning of balance. In the Hannah’s Laneway courtyard, a small French woman accidentally escaped the bounds of gravity while a bass clarinet droned atmospherically in the background. Two owls pushed a pram containing a globe down Cuba Mall (I didn’t get that metaphor).

In Jack Hackett’s Irish Pub, we listened to a Carnatic/jazz fusion band. Even the owner seemed surprised about it. “This isn’t something we’ve ever had here before, but there you are,” he said, just before the band, Idhayam, blew our collective minds.

At Te Aro Eats, where community food groups offered kai for koha, we made our own smoothies by pedalling a bike hooked up to a blender. A girl behind us in a black corset and lace skirts wanted to have a go, but couldn’t because she was “slaying too hard”. We caught local Bollywood legends Shivam Dance Academy breaking out bhangra in a car park, before getting distracted by a parade of nude models wearing nothing but body paint. Next thing you know, I’m pulling my friend out of the way before she gets trampled by a small man riding a giant chicken. It went on like this for almost 18 hours straight.

But what stood out above all the chaos was the implicit invitation of the festival, to simply just be. Stand out from the crowd, or lose yourself in it. Stick to what you know, or seek out the unfamiliar. Break down barriers, be bold; it’s the Wellington way. Like the elderly couple, dressed in bright pink, dancing to an eight-year-old DJ mixing DnB on Lower Cuba (cue the Fred Again memes on Vic Deals). Or the toddlers, teens, and adults who danced together, united, to the Footloose soundtrack. Or the many people who set foot in Valhalla for the very first time.

CubaDupa is a product and an extension of Pōneke. You can’t have a festival like this without the city that gives it life. It’s a distillation of a lot of what makes Wellington Wellington; intensely local, yet still surprisingly international, welcoming, kind, generous. Maybe I didn’t quite find my wild, but I found something better: some new favourite local artists (shoutout MOHI), and a vision for the future I can get behind.

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Lyric Waiwiri-Smith
— Politics reporter
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Camille Paloma Walton, a rising star in the jewellery world.
Camille Paloma Walton, a rising star in the jewellery world.

WellingtonMarch 24, 2024

The Kāpiti jeweller taking on the world

Camille Paloma Walton, a rising star in the jewellery world.
Camille Paloma Walton, a rising star in the jewellery world.

Camille Paloma Walton has quickly emerged as a rising star in her industry, with international exhibitions and a feature on the Amazon series Rings of Power. 

Camille hugs me at the gate, calling off her whippet who has been jumping up for a smooch. Leading me along a sun drenched deck of heaving planter boxes into a garden of dahlias, she welcomes me into her newly-built studio. From the street, you can’t tell this is the heart of a thriving jewellery business with eight stockists in New Zealand and one in Australia. 

Walton casts multi-coloured gems in silver, gold, and platinum in hand-carved settings. She carves forms in wax, sending them to a foundry who casts them in molten metal. This has become one of her signature techniques. “Working in wax is so freeing, and creates a handmade look I love,” she says. 

In the studio, her workstation is festooned with bowls of wax rings and necklaces and pieces that have already been cast waiting for stones to be set. Some wax rings still clutch their stones, ready to be shown to some of her many custom clients. Variously-sized ceramic pots hold the tools of the trade – files and polish and handfuls of sparkling sapphires in peach, apricot, green, and baby pink.  

Walton and her partner built this studio at their Kāpiti property over summer to be the centre of a jewellery business she started four years ago. She studied contemporary jewellery at Whitireia Polytechnic between 2010 and 2012, a course focused on making art pieces, rather than “wearable stuff”, as she puts it. After graduating, she nannied full-time in Wellington until the pandemic struck, and she decided to take her jewellery craft seriously. “I lost my nanny job and decided to go out on my own. I had tinkered throughout those years and some shops stocked my work, but I never took it seriously.” 

Walton in her studio. (Photo: Camille Pamola Walton)

 

Walton got her “big break” when KAUKAU, the Wellington concept store and gallery, started representing her, after she approached them via an Instagram message.

“For a lot of creatives, it takes someone like that to get you going. To believe in you and jumpstart your career.” KAUKAU and Instagram helped her connect with other stockists, many of whom are concept or design stores who embrace Camille’s artistic side whilst also allowing her commercial success.

Raised by a sculptor mother and painter/art teacher father, Camille’s primary motive is making art. “I always struggle when people ask me why I make things or the meaning behind a piece. I have no idea. There’s no grand meaning, I just know it’s what I have to do to stay sane.” 

While she takes inspiration from everywhere, Walton says she’s always had an obsession with sparkly things. “When I was little I used to dress up in my grandma’s jewellery and loved beads and anything that resembled treasure, so getting to work with these gemstones every day is very exciting. A lot of inspiration just comes from how I can show off the gemstone.” 

Walton in her studio. (Photo: Camille Pamola Walton)

“I’m interested in other creative mediums, but there’s “something about jewellery that feels extra special,” she says. I ask if that’s because people – like me – wear it. She says no; it’s more about making a piece of treasure. In the same way she marvelled at the shiny knick-knacks she found inside little pots in her Nanna’s pottery studio, she liked to imagine “a kid seeing their mother’s engagement ring and being like ‘wow’.” 

Custom engagement rings take up most of Walton’s time. “It keeps me up at night more than anything I do, but it’s a thing I really love and that is really special. The trust people put in you is a big thing,” she says, especially when she has been asked to use use people’s heirloom gemstones.She loves hearing the stories about why people’s prospective fiancées/fiancés would like a certain gemstone or style. “I like how they talk about it, you really get to know them, and it’s a fun little secret.”

Another fun secret was making rings for Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequel series, Rings of Power. She had to wait two years between signing a non-disclosure agreement and the show coming out. A costume designer found her work at Public Record gallery in Auckland and the show ultimately purchased ten rings to use in the show. It was a “proud moment”, she says humbly. 

The Irene Ring, based on a ring Walton made for the TV series The Rings of Power.

Walton said she’s found a supportive community of jewellers in New Zealand over the last four years, connecting with many of them online. “During study [at Whitireia] there was an air of competition which I hated. But, this time, I’ve found the opposite.” 

Jewellers can be tight-lipped about their gemstone stockists. “Other jewellers sometimes ask me, but they have to go on that journey themselves”. That’s because good, ethical stockists are hard to find and build relationships with, she said. “Clients often have very specific requests” and, with limited supply of stones, jewellers want to make sure they’re first in line. Walton said she is planning a trip to South-East Asia to find new suppliers.

She’s grateful she doesn’t have to think of herself as a brand, or drop passion projects for commission. “The business side is wonderful for paying my mortgage and allowing me to come to my studio every day and not be distracted by other work, but the main thing is that I get to do my art every day.”

Meeting Walton, I was struck that she’s living the life every creative dreams of: making a living from losing herself in her studio every day. “I still feel a bit impostor-y that this is what I’m doing full-time,” she admits. “I can’t quite believe it, I’m not sure I ever will. I make because I need to make, I’m just lucky because the things I love, people tend to love also, so it’s translated into making a living.” 

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Gabi Lardies
— Staff writer