Billy Apple an Artist Who Was His Own Life’s Work
“Over his long, provocative career, the artist Billy Apple changed his name, registered it as a trademark, branded products with it, had his genome sequenced and, finally, arranged to have his cells…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Mothers of the Revolution Unexpectedly Gripping
The third feature from New Zealand-based filmmaker Briar March is the “gripping documentary” Mothers of the Revolution, which celebrates the women protesters of Greenham Common. Wendy Ide reviews the film for Screen Daily. “The British…
Variety’s Power of Women Issue Features Lorde
For Variety’s 2021 Power of Women issue, the magazine spoke with several women in the entertainment industry, including New Zealand pop singer Lorde, who are using their voices to benefit worthy causes. After grappling with…
Alien Weaponry Standing Up for Māori Culture
The New Zealand metal band Alien Weaponry have gone global thanks to their forthright Māori-language songs, which confront colonial history and ongoing inequality, Matt Mills writes for a feature in The Guardian. Once named “the…
Musician Kaylee Bell Lights up Times Square
New Zealand country pop artist Kaylee Bell burst into tears when she was told her face is the cover of a new global playlist, Stuff’s Esther Ashby-Coventry reports, with Bell’s image plastered on a giant…
Rob Tennent’s Ode to Male Friendship and Summer
Summer in New Zealand can be a special kind of magic; the days of long ocean swims, covered in sand and sea salt and fingers dripping with fish and chip grease. It’s a feeling…
Lorde’s Album in Te Reo Reflects Us down Here
As an accompaniment to her latest work, Lorde has taken a different kind of leap: In homage to the history and landscape Aotearoa, she recorded a set of songs in Te reo Māori. Celeste…
Director Jessica Hobbs Wins Emmy for The Crown
At the recent International Emmy Awards, held in New York, Christchurch-born director Jessica Hobbs won for best directing of a drama series, for her work on The Crown. Eva Corlett reports on the win…
Flatiron Triplex Balances Elegance with Comfort
Architect David Howell and interior designer Steffani Aarons have reimagined a Flatiron District penthouse for a young New York family, reports Pilar Viladas in Introspective, the magazine of the design marketplace 1stDibs. The apartment…
Webtoon Creator Rachel Smythe Busy and Paid
When graphic design graduate, Rachel Smythe, 35, tried to get a foot in the door of New Zealand’s creative industry in 2008, she was rejected at every turn. But in 2016, the BBC’s Mary-Ann…
Kinetic Façade Brings NZ Pavilion To Life At Expo 2020
“A pioneering feat of engineering and craftsmanship, the New Zealand pavilion’s innovative façade made from a unique architectural mesh called Kaynemaile pays homage to the Māori way of life,” according to a report in…
Hairy Maclary a New Zealander with Scottish Roots
Despite being one of Scotland’s most iconic children’s books, it has been revealed to the Scots that Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy is actually from New Zealand, Lisa Hodge reports for Edinburgh Live. “The beloved…
Berlin-Based Poet Hinemoana Baker on Connections
Ahead of her recent reading at Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin (ILB), mould-breaking poet Hinemoana Baker talked English-language magazine Exberliner through her new book, the New Zealand-Berlin connection and why Germans should stop doing the haka. Christchurch-born…
You don’t need physics to appreciate Katherine Mansfield
In an entertainingly self-deprecating essay for Oxford University’s independent student newspaper Cherwell, Ben Jureidini apologies to the ghost of New Zealand short story master Katharine Mansfield for almost submitting a terribly pretentious theory about…
Giant of Cinema Jane Campion Wins in Venice
New Zealand’s Jane Campion has “underlined her status as one of the leading film-makers of her generation, taking home the best director trophy at the Venice Film Festival”, AFP reports. The Power of the Dog,…
Spectacular David Howell creation is “the best furnished in New York City”
A spectacular apartment designed by NZ-born, New York-based architect David Howell and his team at DHD Architecture + Interior Design has been featured on Bravo TV’s Million Dollar Listing New York. The 4,116…
Behind the Blissed-Out Comeback of Lorde
With this year’s release of her third studio album, Solar Power, pop star Lorde, 24, lights up the cover of the October issue of US Vogue, in nothing but a Schiaparelli breastplate. Grammy winner Lorde, who…
Jane Campion Returns to Film with Locally-Shot Western The Power of the Dog
The Power of the Dog marks a homecoming for Wellington-born Oscar winner Jane Campion – with a career-first twist, David Canfield reports for Vanity Fair. Campion’s last feature was the 2009 romantic drama Bright Star; she…
Jordan Bartlett’s YA Fantasy Novel Cover Released
The cover of New Zealand-born author Jordan Bartlett’s young adult fantasy novel, Contest of Queens, has been revealed, Elise Dumpleton reports for entertainment site, The Nerd Daily. Bartlett, a speech language pathologist and certified…
An Excerpt From After the Tampa by Abbas Nazari
Fulbright winner Abbas Nazari was one of 433 refugees rescued by New Zealand from the Norwegian cargo ship, Tampa, in 2001 after leaving Indonesia in an unseaworthy boat with his Afghan family. Twenty years…
Rose Matafeo Wants More Diversity in Rom-Coms
While shooting Season 2 of Starstruck, London-based New Zealander Rose Matafeo, 29, spoke to Harper’s Bazaar about its origin story, her dream guests, and how the stereotypes of rom-coms could do with a shake-up. “I…
Andrew Dominik on 20 Years of Chopper
Few would be unfamiliar with Chopper – both the criminal, and the movie. The former is Mark Brandon Read, the notorious Australian gangster, bestselling author and serial shit-spinner, who committed many crimes and claimed…
Journalist Charlotte Bellis Questions Taliban
New Zealander Charlotte Bellis was the only female journalist at the Taliban’s first official press conference in Afghanistan last week and her bold question to the group of armed men who took over the…
Lorde’s Latest Album Too Complex to Be Basic
“Ever since people started slinging around the word basic as an insult, delights as disparate as pumpkin-spice lattes, the music of Lizzo, and sunsets have gotten a bad rap. The diss refers to pleasure…
“Genius” Katherine Mansfield’s “frantic creative flourishing” collected in ‘Strange Bliss’
“One of the genuine, if frequently under-recognised, geniuses of 20th-century literature, Katherine Mansfield wrote the majority of her short stories during a frantic creative flourishing between 1920 and 1922 while suffering from the tuberculosis…
Taika Waititi Behind Triumphant Reservation Dogs
Oscar-winning writer-director New Zealander Taika Waititi is co-creator of the “unforgettable (and caper-filled)” television series Reservation Dogs, a “portrait of a modern-day Native American community”, Inkoo Kang reports for The Washington Post. “From the pilot…
Philip Roche’s Palm Springs ‘Desert Dreams’
Former Wellingtonian Philip Roche and his iconic Palm Springs Mid Century Modern feature in September’s issue of NZ House & Garden. His design and restoration of the ranch-style house tells a story of care,…
Xena’s Lucy Lawless and Renee O’Connor Reunite
One of the most shipped couples in TV history, Xena and Gabrielle, are finally getting back together, Dominic Corry writes for Entertainment Weekly. New Zealander Lucy Lawless and American Renee O’Connor, who co-starred on…
Pianist Ben Wilcock’s Fond Edinburgh Connections
When Hamilton-born Ben Wilcock signed up for a Fringe run with New Zealand’s Indian Ink Theatre Company in 2003, he had no idea that Edinburgh would play a recurring role in his career as…
Connan Mockasin and His Dad Make an Album Together
“New Zealand psych rocker Connan Mockasin’s collaborative album with his dad, Ade, has bad jokes, stream-of-consciousness poetry, and an odd, undeniable appeal,” Pitchfork Raphael Helfand writes in a review of, It’s Just Wind. “It only…
Deep Dive into Peter Jackson’s Beatles Doco
“It’s the Beatles as none would ever see or hear them again – their last live performance as a group, 30 January 1969. It’s also the Beatles as none of us, 52 years on,…
Conductor Gemma New Returns in Demand to US
New Zealand-born conductor Gemma New and Malaysian pianist Tengku Irfan, “among the leading young lights in the international classical music world”, worked together in July as guest artists at the Aspen Music Festival. Irfan performed…
HUM Ups Visibility of New Zealand Artists Abroad
New Zealand doesn’t have a dedicated cultural diplomacy wing like the British Council or the Goethe-Institut. To help amplify New Zealand visual art on the global stage, Pauline Autet established online platform Contemporary HUM….
Obscure Podcast Get Flushed Rated Highly
“Many is the podcaster who talks crap, but New Zealander Pete (perhaps understandably, he prefers not to share his surname) gets down and dirty with actual effluent in Get Flushed,” Fiona Sturges writes in…
Wellington-Made Jemaine Clement Comedy Explained
New Zealand-born comedian Jemaine Clement breaks down Wellington Paranormal for Vanity Fair and gives the Americans a crash course in New Zealand humo(u)r. The series will also introduce American audiences to the Māori language, Brian Ng…
Lorde Sings Solar Power atop Ed Sullivan Theater
New Zealand pop singer Lorde, 24, was the musical guest on a recent episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert where she performed the title track from her forthcoming album Solar Power, NME’s…
NY Gallery Exhibits Susan Te Kahurangi King
“A small feast of King’s extraordinary drawings is currently part of an absorbing and knowledgeably assembled group show at the Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York,” Sanford Schwartz writes…
Authors Like Mansfield Found Solace in S France
“The shimmering azure of the Mediterranean, the dark green of the cypress trees, the scent of thyme, the sound of cicadas on the terrace at dusk … don’t we feel the pull of the…
Local TV Shows Enlightening US Audiences
New Zealand and Australia “have long been in the business of making excellent television that American audiences really would dig,” Alexis Gunderson reports for entertainment news site, Vulture. “Never before have there been so…
Māori-Influenced Umurangi Generation Compelling
“Umurangi Generation is as much a game of hide-and-seek as of photography: just as much time is spent exploring the warren-like scenes in order to locate the next item in the brief,” The Observer’s…
First Look at Sam Neill in The Portable Door
Good news for fans of magic, adventure, and comedy: ArtsHub now has its first look at The Portable Door, Stan and Jim Henson Company’s comedic fantasy-adventure, which stars New Zealander Sam Neill and Austrian-German…
Lorde’s Just Scratching the Surface of Her Powers
Lorde is back and the world’s media is clamouring for interviews. This latest is from The Guardian’s deputy music editor, Laura Snapes, who speaks with the pop star about her forthcoming third album Solar Power,…
Artist David Boyce Exhibits in Hong Kong
Hong Kong’s Karin Weber Gallery has announced a joint exhibition by New Zealander David Boyce and China’s Hiu Tung Lau, two artists in dialogue who between them cover a multitude of artistic expressions and…
Photographer Robin Hammond Hands Camera to Refugees
New Zealander Robin Hammond has spent two decades crisscrossing the developing world and telling other people’s stories, Guardian correspondent Lizzy Davies writes. For his latest project the award-winning photographer has embarked on a paradigm…
Starstruck Another Triumph for New Zealand Comedy
“Australians have known for decades that New Zealanders are the funniest people in the world: we’ve been claiming hilarious Kiwis as our own since John Clarke crossed the ditch in the ’70s,” Ben Pobjie…
Apple’s Zane Lowe the Great Communicator
When Apple launched its music streaming service in 2015, it hired New Zealander Zane Lowe to be, effectively, its face and voice. Apple Music may not do Spotify numbers but, in Lowe, they have…
Chalmers Brothers Promote Band With Car Wash
Originally from Hawkes Bay, the Los-Angeles-based Chalmers brothers, who perform as indie rock band Emperors Night, are promoting themselves by washing cars for free in exchange for a follow in their Instagram page, Richard…
Ballroom Culture Transforms QTPOC Community
Safe spaces for QTPOC communities in a country seen by the rest of the world as progressive are rare, but trans women are finding space and solace in Auckland’s balls, Beatrice Hazlehurst reports for…
Lorde’s Sunny New Single a Lesson in Patience
“Lorde has said she was ‘waiting for the right moment’ to release her comeback single, Solar Power, and opted for 11 June to coincide with the year’s only solar eclipse,” Laura Snapes writes for…
Meg Mason’s First UK-Published Book Well Received
New Zealand author Meg Mason’s “moving novel”, Sorrow and Bliss, “about mental illness and sisterly love finds hilarity and wisdom in anguish, without ever diminishing pain”, Clare Clark writes in a review for The…
Crowded House Is Back and Loving It
With this month’s release of Crowded House’s latest album, Dreamers Are Waiting, journalist Russell Brown interviews the “reconstituted” band for The Sydney Morning Herald at Neil Finn’s Roundhead Studios in Auckland. They’re fresh from a…
Ladyhawke Bites Back with Guilty Love
Ladyhawke, aka Pip Brown, 41, has been through some tough times, but she’s come out on the other side, Robin Murray writes for music and fashion magazine, Clash. The New Zealand alt-pop force took…
Dive into Your Superconscious with Chris Duncan
If you’ve felt like you’re at a psychological plateau lately, relief may be only a page turn away, Forbes contributor Serenity Gibbons writes. Gibbons has put together a list of books, including You’re Not…
Al Jazeera’s Elizabeth Puranam Reports from India
In the beginning it was a shock, people dying around her while desperate families begged hospital officials for help. Auckland-raised Al Jazeera anchor and journalist Elizabeth Puranam, 37, wouldn’t say she’s used to it,…
Ten of the Best from The Chills Back Catalogue
Dunedin-formed band The Chills is releasing a new album, Scatterbrain. To celebrate, The Guardian counts down 10 of their top songs. “A singular band, The Chills are difficult to stylistically define because their diverse…
Actor Kerry Fox Looks Back at Life in Lower Hutt
New Zealander Kerry Fox, the star of Shallow Grave and Intimacy looks back at her Lower Hutt childhood, driving at 15, her parents disco dancing and an Abba fan club in her shed. “The highlight…
