Cultural Elsewhere
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Essays and interviews in the world of the arts, architecture, design, journalism, politics and culture. And more, which appeal to the curious spirit of Elsewhere . . .
JOHN PULE IN NIUE (2013): The homecoming
John Pule pushes aside another tangle of thick branches, steps through the ankle-grabbing undergrowth, scans the ground which is strewn with coconuts then peers closely into the green canopy above. We're in thick and humid bush but he pushes on across the slippery limestone, further and further away from the narrow track which has lead him here. After more fruitless searching he... more >>
Added: 12 May 2013
YVES SAINT LAURENT (2013): Our man in Marrakech
While there's no argument about the genius of fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, the jury is still out over his artwork. In my family, at least. After a visit to Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech – one of his former homes with partner and business manager Pierre Berge – I observed his posters in the Galerie Love (heavily laden with the word “love”) looked like... more >>
Added: 3 May 2013
CARAVAGGIO, MAN AND MYSTERY (Arts Channel doco): The cut and thrust of art
Few 17th century artists engage the modern audience in quite the same way as the man known as Caravaggio. He was, by contemporary accounts, an aggressive knife-carrying and swaggering figure, an innovative but volatile painter who spent time in prison for various assaults and profanities. Then – while painting some of the most exceptional work of his period – he murdered a... more >>
Added: 13 Mar 2013
VIKY GARDEN INTERVIEWED (2013): See me, feel me . . .
For more than 20 years Auckland artist Viky Garden has worked away from the mainstream of the New Zealand art world. Hers isn't a name that crops up regularly in general arts coverage and yet her self-portraits in solo exhibitions and group shows have won her a dedicated following. She has gallery representation in New Zealand, Britain and the US, and in 2011 she was a finalist in the... more >>
Added: 11 Mar 2013 
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CURATOR GAIL BUCKLAND INTERVIEWED (2012): It's not only rock'n'roll
Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders – appropriately wiry and driven, often in black, her signature fringe below her eyebrows – once said, “presentation is half of it in rock'n'roll. It's not just the music – there's music and there's attitude and there's the image”. From the uninhibited Elvis Presley captured by the camera when lost in the moment on stage in... more >>
Added: 11 Nov 2012
MONA GALLERY, HOBART: Outsider and irritant art
The afternoon I arrive in Hobart to visit the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Germaine Greer is at the Queensland launch of the Brisbane Writers Festival claiming half of those in the state couldn't read a newspaper of follow the instructions on a medicine bottle. Twitterworld gets frenzied, writer Les Murray says he wouldn't “turn aside from a good urination to listen to... more >>
Added: 7 Oct 2012
HENNING MANKELL'S WALLANDER: A man out of time and place
So this is where the killings took place. All around here the bloody brutalities were acted out under this vast sky hanging like an ever-changing canopy over these golden fields of rape plants in bloom, tall pine forests and the dramatic, wind-blown coastline. Lone wolves and serial killers walked through this photogenic landscape and along these orderly streets of tidy, well-kept... more >>
Added: 17 Sep 2012
AUCKLAND ROCK VENUES (2003): Pull down the shades
It was Joni Mitchell who said it first - and Counting Crows thought it bore repeating: "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." It wasn't exactly paradise which disappeared under the wrecking ball in Auckland city, but for rock fans plenty of places that took them pretty close to heaven. When it comes to knocking down buildings, Auckland has an impressive track... more >>
Added: 2 Sep 2012
HISTORY IN A HANDBAG: The Museum of Bags and Purses, Amsterdam
Behind a rather ordinary door off a quiet canal-street in Amsterdam is one of the city's most extraordinary museums, and this in a city which isn't short of museums. From the Rembrandt-stacked Rijksmuseum and the enormous Van Gogh collection to the ever-popular Sex Museum and one given over to tattoos (more interesting than you may think), Amsterdam seems awash with collections,... more >>
Added: 10 Aug 2012 1 Comment
WILD IRON; NEW ZEALAND POETRY ADAPTED TO SONG by LORENZO BUHNE
New Zealand poetry has mostly existed on the margins of available technology. In the days of records, James K. Baxter had some of his poems on the Barney Flanagan EPs, there was a 1974 collection of contemporary poets in a striking Pat Hanly-painted beer bottle cover and Sam Hunt's Bottle to Battle to Death album. But not much else, until Auckland University Press weighed in with... more >>
Added: 27 Jul 2012
THE ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE CRITIC (Essay)
Since I first seriously reviewed an album about 40 years ago (the George Harrison triple set All Things Must Pass) I guess I have written in excess of maybe 6000 records/CDs/tapes etc -- and of course I have heard many, many more than that. Some people are well-read, I am well . . . Hmmm, there must be a word for it. In that time I have also reviewed hundreds of books, maybe a few... more >>
Added: 9 Jul 2012
RIGOLETTO REVIEWED (2012): The chill of the familiar
If any opera can successfully be relocated into our own time it is Verdi's grand sweep through corruption, avarice, lust, power play and venality that is Rigoletto. Here are familiar elements of contemporary political life played out in broad sweeps, and so it was entirely apt the New Zealand Opera production should be located in a chillingly crass world that bears strong resemblance... more >>
Added: 9 Jun 2012
PHOTOGRAPHER ALFREDO BINI PROFILED (2012): Point and shoot, and be shot at
As a career change, it couldn't have been more dramatic or life endangering. In a few fast years Alfredo Bini went from being a factory manager in Italy to a freelance photojournalist being shot at by Gaddafi's troops in the Libyan uprising. Bini was among the few journalists in Misratah and his photographs were the first the outside world would see of the nascent revolution which... more >>
Added: 9 Jun 2012
NZ OPERA'S BUNGA-BUNGA VERDI: Rigoletto in Berlusconi's Rome
Ten days out from Christmas and little more than a fortnight before the 2012 Sydney Festival opening night and director Lindy Hume seems almost unnaturally relaxed. Might have been the massage, she laughs. At this point, aside from the usual crises which hit at the last minute, she admits there isn't a lot she can do but let things play out for this – her third and final... more >>
Added: 4 Jun 2012
DAMIEN HIRST: THE DOLLARS AND SENSE
Say what you like about British artist Damien Hirst, and everyone from international art critics to London cabbies do, he certainly pulls a crowd. At the Tate Modern in London, the queue of those waiting to see his famous For the Love of God – his 2007 platinum cast of a skull encrusted with diamonds, teeth model's own – was of Disneyland length. And those attending... more >>
Added: 23 May 2012
BALI: Island of art, music and entrancing dance
Music seems inescapable in Bali. Not that you want to flee from it. In the more discreet bars and restaurants, around the hotel pool or in shops and village temples, somewhere in the background is a low and unobtrusive sound which sits between the hypnotic sound of the traditional Indonesian gamelan and the vacuous ambient trickle of New Age music. It almost requires you to slow... more >>
Added: 18 Feb 2012
A WALK OF ART IN SYDNEY: Art and about in Australia
We know Sydney is for shopping. But it's also a city where you can take a walk of art and come away excited, impressed, perhaps bewildered and always stimulated. So here are some suggestions for an arty but leisurely day out in Sydney (during which you will pass other galleries and points of interest), with some dining suggestions added. MORNING After breakfast somewhere down by... more >>
Added: 18 Feb 2012
PABLO PICASSO, A RETROSPECTIVE (2012): Macho minotaur and old goat
In his final few years, Picasso painted over 400 canvases. Few people however would argue all these works were the equal of his early provocative masterpieces in the three decades after 1907. Many were crass, scribbled daubs filled with self-referential jokes, and his etchings of time -- while remarkably assured in execution -- were filled with earthy sensuality bordering on the rude.... more >>
Added: 10 Feb 2012
JOHN WILLIAMS INTERVIEWED (2001): Has guitar, will travel
Consider these snapshots from his remarkable career: at the age of 17 he was announced to the world by his teacher, classical guitarist Andres Segovia, as "a prince of the guitar [on whom] God has laid a finger"; a decade later he was touring with Julian Bream; in '69 he was playing at Ronnie Scott's jazz club in London; there were rock gigs with his group Sky in the early... more >>
Added: 30 Nov 2011
RICHARD NUNNS INTERVIEWED (2003): The questions are blowing in the wind
The late Hirini Melbourne, who died of cancer in January '03 aged 53, opened a window on the past which has allowed others to see a future. Through his work with fellow musicologist Richard Nunns, Melbourne -- of Tuhoe and Ngati Kahungunu descent -- brought traditional Maori instruments back into the spotlight through performance, teaching and recording. His legacy is too vast to... more >>
Added: 27 Aug 2011
