Category: Art

  • Iceland and the poetry of weaving

    The Nordic nation of Iceland sits on the Mid Atlantic Ridge, midway between Europe and North America. Wild, windswept, beautiful, bleak and filled with fire and ice, the country is a romantic’s dream, an island of Vikings and sagas,… and art. While the music of Iceland is well-known, and it boasts a fine pedigree in…

  • Conversation and Cloth

    The next in the series of Conversation and Cloth talks will be on the 6th December 2024 at 10am in the Regent Theatre Cafe in Greymouth Māwhera. After a hiatus of a few months while the studios in Shetland were being sorted out and the new studios in Greymouth have been getting underway, the series…

  • Timelines

    Myriam Dion’s work, currently on show in New York, uses repurposed paper and ephemera to tell stories about women. In this exhibition, the artist has used paper to explore and highlight the rights of women and those who have fought for them. Cutting newspapers, reports, handmade papers, textile designs and photographs and weaving them together…

  • This week’s Spotify playlist

    Each week a playlist of audio is compiled and curated to go with the articles in the blog. The tracks have something to do with the blog entries and you can read about the links in a separate article on the blog. To listen to the playlist click on the player above or head over…

  • DY Begay’s Sublime Light

    The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian is currently hosting a show of tapestries by fibre artist DY Begay. In these works the artist explores her birthplace and home of Tsélaní on the Navajo Nation reservation through beautifully rendered land and skyscape interpretations in colour and texture. Sublime Light is on until July 13th…

  • The spectacular art of Khatija Possum

    The third generation of painters in her family, Khatija Possum is the granddaughter of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, a founding artist of the contemporary indigenous art movement in Australia. The artist uses Aboriginal ancestry as influences in her work, portraying the landscape through concentric circles that represent human activity, small dots and circles standing in for…

  • You’re Still Here

    It is a commonality, losing someone, but we all experience that loss uniquely. Sometimes that experience is celebratory, joy for a full life. Sometimes it is not. Sometimes it is quiet and peaceful. Sometimes it is not. Whatever the circumstances we often want to mark the occasion. In this project, You’re Still Here, Rebecca Godderis…

  • Iris van Herpen

    Iris van Herpen, the Dutch fashion designer, has just completed a show in Brisbane: Sculpting the Senses. The original show in Paris in 2023 provided the inspiration for the Australian exhibition, which included film, visual art, sculpture, photography and installations as well as the designer’s interpretations of the surrounding worlds around her. Thanks to a…

  • This week’s Spotify playlist

    Each week the blog features a playlist that relates to its entries. The playlist is hosted on Spotify and you can listen to the audio on the player above or by heading over to Spotify on the Web or in the platform’s app. A search for “Music to read a blog by” will bring up…

  • Brides by Yvonne Todd

    Yvonne Todd, a New Zealander who works in photography, has just ended a show at the Dowse Art Gallery in Pōneke Wellington: Brides. In this exhibition the artist has created portraits of brides that look like real wedding photographs. Close inspection however reveals that they are anything but. Instead they are surreal and witty takes…