Organic as mechanic
Auckland artist Lisa Black mixes taxidermy with machinery some sites calling her method “steampunk” modifying a fawn, a turtle, a duckling and a baby crocodile, transforming the once dead into the “cyborg-seeming”. According to…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Voice like hot treacle
New Zealand-raised jazz sensation Leila Adu is returning home to perform a series of nationwide concerts throughout May, her first in five years. Of Ghanian descent, Adu is touring to support her most recent…
Taite for Milne
Lawrence Arabia has been crowned the first winner of New Zealand’s equivalent to the annual UK Mercury Prize, the Taite Music Prize. UK-based Lawrence Arabia ó whose real name is James Milne picked up…
Cast for glass
“Internationally respected doyenne” of glass casting Aucklander Ann Robinson is profiled in the Spring 2010 issue of German/English magazine Neues Glas. With no one to consult and no recipes to follow, Robinson was as…
In killer frocks
Anna Paquin “vamps it up” on the cover of the March edition of Marie Claire UK in an exclusive grocery store shoot by photographer Frederic Pinet wearing Alexander McQueen, Prada and Chanel amongst other…
Not twee in Sydney
New Zealand popsters The Brunettes — that’s Heather Mansfield and Jonathan Bree — dress up in vintage at iconic Sydney store Grandma Takes A Trip for Australia’s Yen magazine. When a band is described…
Sprites by Leibovitz
Director Peter Jackson and Lovely Bones star Saoirse Ronan were photographed at New York’s Time Warner Center by Annie Leibovitz for the March issue of Vanity Fair, in a photographic shoot for the magazine…
Laughter in Waihau Bay
Taika Waititi’s Boy recently won the Best Feature Generation Film award at the International Filmfestspiele in Berlin. The festival’s website describes it by saying – ” difficult…
Division Debate
“There has always been sense in New Zealand and Australia being one country,” writes the Anthony Mason Professor of Law at the University of NSW George Williams in an opinion piece called, ‘A nation…
Irish Influx
Thousands of Irish are flocking to New Zealand shores for a “less hectic” yet familiar way of life, though a simultaneously exotic one too. In the past 10 years almost 30,000 Irish people have…
Breathe with blackcurrants
Researchers from New Zealand’s Plant & Food Research (PFR) have found a compound in blackcurrants that may ease breathing in some types of asthma. The compound, a known antioxidant called epigallocatechin, was found in…
Children Allowed
At the “sophisticated” Poronui Lodge near Lake Taupo The Sydney Morning Herald’s Max Anderson is relieved to find there is also room for his six-year-old boys. “It’s a little-known fact that most of New…
Mangum for Knox
As part of a benefit for musician Chris Knox, who suffered a stroke last June, indie’s “reclusive demigod” Neutral Milk Hotel frontman Jeff Mangum will perform a very rare acoustic set at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge…
Technophobe Now Twit
Auckland mother and self-confessed technophobe Lisa Etheridge, 39, is now an unwitting international Twitter celebrity. Etheridge — @lisatickledpink — was asked to sign up to Twitter for a Unitec design course, and her first…
Neill the Menace
Sam Neill recently starred as the “diabolically” corrupt president of a human blood farming corporation alongside Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe in the Spierig Brothers sci-fi/horror film Daybreakers. Neill “dominates the screen”…
Compelling qualities
Crowded House will release their first studio album Intriguer in June through Universal Music worldwide. The ten-track album Intriguer, recorded in Auckland, is the follow-up to Time on Earth, which hit No. 1 in Australia and New…
From Top to Bottom
Paeroa ultra-marathon runner Andrew Hedgeman, 22, has run the length of New Zealand in 28 days, averaging 80km a day, to become the first ever to complete the distance in under 30 days. He…
Team NZ Win Trophy
Emirates Team New Zealand has beaten Italy’s Mascalzone Latino Audi on Waitemata Harbour in Auckland by 56 seconds to secure a 2–0 win in the best-of-three final of the Louis Vuitton Trophy. Faultless crew…
Best Northern Beaches
The North Island’s top beaches are named by The Sydney Morning Herald’s Bruce Elder, who writes that those suggested are so good that no trip to New Zealand would be complete without visiting them….
Tributes Flow for Moth
New Zealand camerawomen Margaret Moth, renowned for her fearlessness and international career, died of cancer aged 59 on 21 March in the US. Starting her career in Dunedin, she was one New Zealandís first…
Rakaia Salmon Dance
Canterbury’s Rakaia River will be the setting for an intriguing Native American Indian ceremonial dance, which is to centre on an apology, to be relayed to the river’s salmon asking them to return to…
We’ve Got a Problem
The three men responsible for the 2008 attack on the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) base at Waihopai — a schoolteacher, a Catholic priest and a farmer, who openly admitted to the crimes —…
Gandalf’s Return
The Hobbit, produced by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, will begin filming in New Zealand in July with Sir Ian McKellen once again taking the role of Gandalf the Grey. The film, and its…
Oceanic psychedelic goodness
The Ruby Suns’ album Fight Softly is reviewed by Will Dean of the Guardian who gives the indie group four stars for their latest effort. Dean concludes: “Like a best-of 2009 mixtape, The Ruby…
Rehearsal makes list
Cantabrian author Eleanor Catton’s debut novel The Rehearsal, has been longlisted for this year’s Orange Prize for Fiction, to be announced on June 9. Catton, 24, began writing The Rehearsal, about teenage life, when…
Space Man Saluted
New Zealand space scientist Sir Ian Axford, who worked on American and European space probes, such as the Voyager and Giotto designing robot craft and calculating orbits, has died at his home in Napier,…
Maori Across the Tasman
More Maori live in Australia than in New Zealand according to leading population expert Australian Professor Peter McDonald. Studies show there are about 110,000 Maori in Australia, representing about one in four of all…
Heart-stopping Gold
Wanaka-based Adam Hall, 22, paralympian gold medallist alpine skier, never had any special treatment says his father dairy farmer Lindsay Hall upon Adam’s win in Vancouver at the 2010 Winter Games. “He never got…
Texan challenges
James Milne, who goes by the performance name of Lawrence Arabia, is one of a number of New Zealand acts playing at the SXSW in Texas this month. He talks to the Austinist about…
Gender Balanced
New Zealand women are the most promiscuous in the world, according to a global survey on market research website onepoll.com which found that women in this country had an average of 20.4 sexual partners…
Part of the corps
Actors Temuera Morrison and Taika Waititi both star in the Martin Campbell-directed 3D film Green Lantern which began production in New Orleans in mid-March. Morrison is playing Abin Sur – a member of the interplanetary…
Jammin’ in the Air
The 2010 Farm Jam, New Zealand’s premiere bike jumping event, was recently held on Dan Frew’s land near Winton and included FMX, MX, BMX and MTB (mountain bike riding) spectacles. Riders were split into…
Guava Crumble Please
Gisborne-born, London-based chef Peter Gordon writes in The Independent on Sunday that he has “a sense of a growing tide of culinary xenophobia” and that the British “love affair with home-grown ingredients is killing…
Moa Eggshells Tell All
Scientists in New Zealand and Australia have extracted the DNA from the fossil eggshells of 3000-year-old moa. It is the first time that scientists have succeeded in extracting ancient DNA from the fossilised eggshells…
Quincey Does it Solo
Tasman rower Shaun Quincey, 24, has become the second person to successfully paddle across the stretch of water since his father did the same, though in the opposite direction, in 1977. Hundreds of family…
Funding the Flagship
“The turf in Auckland’s Eden Park stadium is freshly laid and verdant green, but three floors up, the corporate hospitality suite remains unfinished,” writes the Financial Times’ David Fickling. “Martin Snedden, chief executive of New Zealand’s…
Making her mark in LA
New Plymouth-born actress Melanie Lynskey, 32, talks to the Wall Street Journal about being a working actor in Hollywood, her big break in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures and about Up in the Air co-star…
Developing football
Wellington property developer Terry Serepisos, “who decided three years ago to save professional football in New Zealand, is the talk of his home town” writes The Sydney Morning Herald’s Michael Cockerill. “Wellington Phoenix are…
Strange Dealings
The “ghosts” of a man and a woman exorcised from a Christchurch woman’s home have been sold in phials of holy water on Trade Me for $2830. The auction attracted more than 200,000 page…
Top of their game
The Kathryn Bigelow film The Hurt Locker, which earned her a best director and best film Oscars, featured Auckland Isaac Hamon, 33; the scene depicting Hamon running away from an…
Like it or loathe it
Wellington Airport-owned land on the hills of Miramar Peninsula could soon sport a Hollywood-style sign with the word ‘Wellywood’ erected in 3.5m high letters, that is, if it isn’t in violation of Hollywood’s trademark….
Courtesy code a model
In an article entitled, ‘New Zealanders’ code would help health debate’, Ron Eachus for the Oregon-based publication Statesman Journal ponders why this country, with its “way of treating people with respect … and common courtesy, untainted…
Oscar for Kim Sinclair
Auckland production designer Kim Sinclair won the Academy Award for Art Direction on Avatar with American colleagues Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg. “Each virtual set had trees and plants that were moveable, like real…
Hartley Locks Ears
New Zealand-born English hooker Dylan Hartley, 23, talks to The Independent on Sunday ahead of the team’s biennial trip to Edinburgh to play Scotland, which England meets once more before a “supremely crucial” World Cup pool…
Qatar seeks NZ company
New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) recently held an advisory board meeting under its Beachheads programme in Qatar. Through this two-year programme New Zealand companies are provided with faster access to better international networks….
Adrift on Lush Rakiura
“It’s from the air that Stewart Island reveals itself,” describes The Independent’s Ben Ross on a trip to Rakiura, or ‘Glowing Skies’. “All but one-sixth of the land is protected by national park statues,…
Taste for Trout
New Zealand’s trophy trout fishing is popular with anglers from all over the world who travel to the North Island for lake fishing and to the South Island for sight fishing, and for often…
Birthday at Broward
In late February, Soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa performed works by Handel, Debussy, Vivaldi and others at Fort Lauderdale’s Broward Center for the Performing Arts, her first performance in the state of Florida in…
Relaxed and Recumbent
Creator of Rotorua’s human-powered monorail, the Schweeb, Geoffrey Barnett, “combined a laid-back, recumbent bicycle with monorail technology” and came up with the idea while living in Tokyo. Barnett worked on the design for six…
Twomey triumphs
Artistic director of the New Zealand International Arts Festival Lissa Twomey has “put together a triumphant programme of calculated risk-taking”. Guided by her long experience with the Sydney Festival and her now shrewd understanding of…
With a Hiss and a Roar
Nelson hovercraft inventor Rudy Heeman is auctioning his unconventional vehicle on TradeMe for a reserve price of $20,000. Heeman’s machine is a hovercraft in the conventional sense, but with the addition of detachable wings,…
Kauri Acoustics
Bay of Islands-based luthier Christian Druery makes guitars from ancient swamp kauri and last year created two instruments commissioned for the Musical Instrument Museum in Arizona. “Essentially, I was asked to design and build two…
Hooligan comes clean
Otara MC Karlos Diamond, aka Mr Sicc, who performs at SXSW 2010 in Austin, Texas on March 19, talked to US music site Spinner about his musical influences — including Marvin Gaye, Prince and…
Win for NZ in Napier
New Zealand outran Australia by two wickets to win the opening Chappell-Hadlee one-day international at Napier’s Maclean Park. Scott Styris and Shane Bond were the unlikely heroes for New Zealand; chasing 275 for eight,…
Solid selection
Porirua-born sculptor Michael Parekowhai has been selected to represent New Zealand at the 2011 Venice Biennale. Parekowhai, 42, received the Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award in 2001 and works as an associate…
Designer royalty
Prestigious industry magazine Architectural Digest has named New Zealander Sandra Nunnerley in its annual AD 100 directory which represents a “selection of the top architects and interior designers whose work has featured in Architectural…
