Photojournalist Awarded Grant for Condemned
01 November 2013 – New Zealand photojournalist Robin Hammond, 38, is the recipient of this year’s W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography, a US$30,000 prize in support of his…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Taking His Own Passions into New Sydney Role
Senior curator at the Christchurch Art Gallery Justin Paton has been named as the new head of international art at the Art Gallery of NSW and will take up the position in January. Paton has…
Kiwi Making YouTube Waves with ‘Royals’ Cover
As Lorde goes from strength to strength, covers of her number one song ‘Royals’ are sprouting like mushrooms on YouTube, and now a second Kiwi is finding fame with his take on the world…
Hobbit Global Fan Celebration Event Planned
Director Peter Jackson has announced plans to preview footage from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug at a “global fan celebration” on 4 November that will be simulcast in theatres and feature…
Letting Go of NZ Essential for Artists
If artists get a chance to leave New Zealand, says Thom Powers, co-founder of The Naked and Famous (TNF), then they must seize the opportunity. Los Angeles-based Powers is in the US with TNF…
Introspective New Album for LA-Based Singer
New Zealand-born singer and songwriter, Los Angeles-based Ted Brown has released his second album, An Unwide Ride; “an elegantly spare and tenderly introspective record”, recorded at Roundhead Studios in Auckland. In 1993, Brown…
Oscar Foreign-Language Submission a Battle of Wills
Based on the novella Medicine Woman by Witi Ihimaera, New Zealand’s 2014 foreign-language Oscar submission, White Lies (Tuakiri Huna) is a period drama about three women drawn together in conflict. David Rooney, reviewer for the…
McKenzie Stars in Austenland Though More a Brontë Man
Bret McKenzie, 37, one half of the comedy duo Flight of the Conchords, stars opposite Jane Seymour in the new romantic-comedy Austenland, which opened in the UK in September. “I’m not a crazy Jane Austen…
Lorde’s Bid for the Big Time
Lorde makes it into the New Yorker this week, the subject of a profile by contributor and music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, who conducted several conversations with the 16-year-old about, amongst other things, how important…
Katherine Mansfield Interacts with Google
Google commemorated the birthday of writer Katherine Mansfield on 14 October with an interactive doodle on its homepage, marking the 125th anniversary of the New Zealander’s death in Fontainebleau, France, aged 34. The first
Booker Winner Sells Luminaries to Spooks-maker
The makers of the critically acclaimed Spooks TV series have bought the rights to Eleanor Catton’s Booker prize-winning novel, The Luminaries. Catton, at 28-years the youngest ever Booker winner and her 832-page book the…
US$120 Street Stall Bargains Worth US$500K
It was not quite the million dollar masterpiece found in a garage but a New York-based New Zealand woman has potentially netted herself artwork worth half a million dollars – and it only cost…
Men of a Certain Age Rile Booker Winner
Sexism in the literary world is thriving, Man Booker prize winner Eleanor Catton says. The youngest-ever winner of one of the world’s most prestigious writing award says her book, The Luminaries, received a “bullying”…
Kiwi Eleanor Catton Wins Man Booker Prize
New Zealand writer Eleanor Catton has won the prestigious Man Booker Prize. Ms Catton’s novel The Luminaries was shortlisted among six other titles for the fiction writing award. The Duchess of Cornwall…
Pop Sensation Unfazed by Impending Global Stardom
Lorde, 16, who says she chose her stage name because she wanted an aesthetically feminine aristocratic title, tells the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis that the record company “got straight away that I was a bit…
Dropping Sentimentality with Print Paywalls
“Last November Mike Darcey, then a top executive at BSkyB, a British satellite-television company, received a phone call from Rupert Murdoch, the boss of News Corporation,” The Economist writes. “Murdoch wanted him to run…
Close up with Cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh
Acadamy Award-nominee New Zealander Stuart Dryburgh is interviewed in the August issue of American Cinematographer magazine as part of the “Close-Up” section of the publication which each month features a member of the American…
Fraser a Classical Dance Convert with New Film Giselle
New Zealand director and playwright Toa Fraser admits he wasn’t much of a dance fan before setting out to make Giselle, a new full-length film of the 1841 Romantic ballet of the same name,…
Neill Recalls Camping Catastrophes and Culinary Havens
Star of 1920s-set gangster drama Peaky Blinders, New Zealand actor Sam Neill, talks about culinary havens, camping catastrophes, and fishing in Scotland in a Telegraph travel piece. “This year, I’ve been to New York, Sydney,…
South Pacific Star at Home in Sydney Opera House
Christchurch-born operatic baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes, 47, shows Sydney Morning Herald journalist Tim Elliot around the Opera House, which is open 363 days a year – closing only Christmas Day and Good Friday –…
Rihanna Gets a Maori Tribal Tattoo the Traditional Way
In order to mark her recent trip to New Zealand, Rihanna decided to get a permanent reminder by having a traditional Maori tattoo added to her already vast collection of inkings. The tattoo was done…
New Age Sensitive Guy Brings Heart to the Beast
Auckland-born Jay Ryan, 32, “brings a deep-voiced sensitivity to Vincent”, in his role as the “Beast” in the CBS remake of the 1980’s TV show Beauty and the Beast starring Ron Perlman and Linda…
Plans to WOW the World on the Global Stage
Fashionistas first scoffed at Suzie Moncrieff’s displays of bizarre bras and out-there attire, but 25 years on international designers are clamouring to be part of Wellington’s annual World of WearableArt (WOW) show,…
Safari Photographs to Be Exhibited in Pall Mall
Award-winning nature photographer, New Zealander David Lloyd’s “stunning safari photographs” are part of an exhibition called “Bronze, Black and White, a Joint exhibition with Sculpture”, on from 18-30 November at the Royal…
Life on the Ice Makes for Award-Winning Viewing
A beautifully shot documentary about a year in the life of a New Zealander living in Antarctica was the big winner at the Calgary International Film Festival, snapping up two of the major awards…
Soprano a Splendid Feather in Downton Abbey’s Cap
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, “one of the greatest opera sopranos of the past 40 years”, has joined Downton Abbey for a single episode to play Australian soprano Nellie Melba. The Telegraph’s Laura Thompson meets…
Evocative Portraits of LA Homeless in Close Up
Hamilton-based photographer and graphic designer Michael Pharaoh’s gripping series of portraits “The Homeless of LA” evoke, in tremendous detail, the identity of Hollywood’s homeless population in a series of muted yet stylistically…
Lorde Number One in the US
Sixteen-year-old singer, Lorde has become the first New Zealander to top the US Billboard charts, following the release of her first album, Pure Heroine, in the US at start of this month. Her single…
When Zipper Met Kanye at No 3 Abbey Road
“It’s always going to be an entertaining proposition when American hip hop star Kanye West grants someone an interview opportunity” Pedestrian TV says, and this time, New Zealand-born broadcaster BBC Radio 1 host Zane…
Gracefully Addictive San Francisco Gig
“The Portland-based (though one-third New Zealand-born) trio finds a delicate balance between lo-fi minimalism and swirly, disoriented pop songs heavy on themes of isolation, which they translate gracefully into a live…
How The Naked and Famous Will Make It In America
Though alternative rock bands of the last few decades have oozed cool by rejecting the music industry and pretending not to care, The Naked and Famous didn’t move 19 time zones and nearly 7,000…
Channelling His Ancestors from Canada
New Zealand author Witi Ihimaera is currently in Alberta teaching eight indigenous Canadian writers at the globally respected arts, cultural, and educational institution, Banff Centre. The last time he was there, he began writing what…
Silent Treasures from the NZ Film Archive on DVD
Over one hundred long-vanished films, including movies by John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Mabel Normand, were quietly residing in the New Zealand Film Archive when Brian Meacham, an archivist for the Academy of Motion Picture…
Connan Mockasin Swims Upstream
New Zealand psych-funk oddball Connan Mockasin hasn’t listened to anyone else’s music for 10 years; he shuns record labels and recorded his bewitching new album in a Tokyo hotel room, Ben Arnold…
Urban Branches out with Billboard-Topping Fuse
New Zealand-born country singer Keith Urban, 45, has been branching out musically – playing with the Rolling Stones and others, and fresh collaborations on his latest album, Fuse, which debuted on Billboard’s 200 Albums…
Misfits Making Mayhem in Chicago
Bay of Plenty writers James Morcan and Lance Morcan’s international conspiracy thriller, The Orphan Trilogy is set in Chicago at the site of the Pedemont Orphanage, where 23 orphans acquire the skills to become…
Baltimore-Based Artist Reminisces on Dog Days
Before he was an artist, New Zealand-born Hugh Pocock, 50, sold hot dogs in the heyday of Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. Desperate times called for desperate measures. “Selling hot dogs was my first experience with real,…
Shout-it-to-the-Heavens Inspiring
“Xena: Warrior Princess, which ran for six years before it ended in 2001, was a show that charmed even as it taught its audience a thing or two,” American former model and actress Jennifer…
Black and White Exhibition Opens in Berlin
Work by New Zealand artists Gordon Walters (pictured) and Judy Millar features in a new exhibition at Berlin’s Hamish Morrison Galerie, which opened 13 September and runs through 19 October. Walters and Millar are…
Freeze Frame in the Alaskan Wilderness
New Zealand director Scott Walker, who is currently promoting his first feature film The Frozen Ground, talked recently to KFTV about all aspects of the production, from development and casting right through to getting…
Home is Where the Beer Is
A house where every tap pours cold beer? Yeah, right. Tui – the beer brand which created the Yeah, Right advertising billboards and commercials – has teamed up with a bunch of New Zealand…
Moa Bones Kill Dino DNA Dream
The dream of resuscitating dinosaur species – a la Jurassic Park – has been dealt a death blow in a new study examining the decay rate of DNA in the bones of the extinct…
Rolling out Their Second Album from LA
Naked and Famous singer-guitarist Thom Powers says Los Angeles was the perfect environment for the New Zealand synth-pop outfit to make their second album, In Rolling Waves. “That side of living in Los Angeles is…
NZ Does Do-Good Ads Better than Anyone
Public service announcements, or PSAs, are a tough nut for the advertising world to crack, particularly when tackling drink-driving or the dangers of drugs. Too often a worthy cause is “laughably ineffective preachy”…
Fashion Shoots for Couture Clad Canines
New Zealander Paul Nathan, has become a kind of society photographer for the doggie couture crowd and has documented furry fashionistas in his book Couture Dogs of New York, which came out…
Alberta Landscapes in Hyper-Realism
New Zealand-born artist David Scott exhibits with Canadian Marilynn Jeffrey at St Albert’s Visual Arts Studio Association in a show called Between Earth and Sky: Portraits of Rural Alberta, which runs through 27 September. Scott…
Arnett Features in New AP Vietnam War Book
Distinguished New Zealand war correspondent, Pulitzer Prize-winning Peter Arnett is one of a number of well-known journalists whose text will be included in Vietnam: The Real War, a photographic history by the Associated Press,…
New Zealand Author Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize
New Zealand writer, Eleanor Catton’s book, The Luminaries, has been short-listed for the illustrious Man Booker Prize, becoming the youngest person to ever make the list. The 28-year-old’s book, about the New Zealand goldrush…
Beyond the Edge Premieres in Toronto
“In 1953, no one even knew if it could be done,” says Auckland-based Leanne Pooley, director of the 3-D documentary Beyond the Edge, which chronicles Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay’s…
Lorde Lands Cover of Billboard Magazine
New Zealand singer, Lorde, has graced the cover of Billboard magazine, while saying in the accompanying interview that in a perfect world she would never do interviews. The comment, according to the magazine, stems from…
Pages Seethe with Misfired Bullets and Opium
“Eleanor Catton didn’t set out to write an enormous book,” Guardian correspondent Kira Cochrane begins. “When she started her second novel, the Man Booker longlisted The Luminaries, she expected it to be about the…
Royals Makes Top 10 and Selena Gomez Covers
Auckland singer Lorde, 16, has made it into the United States Billboard Top 10, with her “debut alternative/pop hit” Royals, which pop star Selena Gomez covered at the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam on…
Kiwi Band Wins Top Prize at US Music Competition
New Zealand band, Streets of Laredo, have taken a top spot in the US indie music competition, Unsigned Only. The New York-based band, made up of brothers Dan and Dave Gibson, and Dave’s wife,…
Lorde Single Breaks into Billboard Top 10
Sixteen-year-old New Zealand singer, Lorde, has had continued success the US, with her single ‘Royals’ currently sitting at 8th place on the Billboard Hot 100 List. The single has also been sitting atop of the…
Unearthing a Personal History
Is an actual, physical, deadly and devastating earthquake too obvious a metaphor for personal upheaval? Sydney Morning Herald journalist Sally Pryor asks New Zealand author Lloyd Jones. Perhaps, he says, but in his case…
Cormack on Remand in Wentworth Drama
Auckland-born actress Danielle Cormack, 42, has said she jumps at the chance to play strong women, this time in the lead role of Bea Smith in Wentworth Prison, a contemporary reworking of Prisoner:…
