The Arts Week, May 6-13

Auckland Writers and Readers Festival
May 9–13

Opening Gala Event

The highly successful True Stories Told Live format, developed by the NZ Book Council, returns to launch this year’s Festival in an hour and half of live and true storytelling, unscripted and unmediated, delivered by a selection of this year’s stellar guests.

Join Lemon Andersen (US/Puerto Rico), Eoin Colfer (Ireland), Kate De Goldi (NZ), Roddy Doyle (Ireland), Geoff Dyer (UK), Oliver Jeffers (US), Anne Kennedy (US/NZ) and Jesmyn Ward (US), for this unique session.

Inspired by the phrase “What the Dickens?”, which originates from Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, and nods to the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens, expect laughter, tears, thoughtfulness and provocation in this engaging session mirroring the storytelling phenomenon sweeping the globe.
MC: Carol Hirschfeld

Date: Thursday 10 May 2012
Time: 7pm - 0:30 p.m.
Venue: ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre

www.writersfestival.co.nz

Free Event

Dr Paul Moon is one of New Zealand’s most prolific historians having 19 books in 13 years.
He is also one of the more controversial writers on New Zealand history, having written contentious articles on various subjects including versions of the Treaty of Waitangi, Maori cannibalism and Catholic Bishop Pompallier.
In 2011 he published the comprehensive New Zealand in the Twentieth Century: The Nation, The People. It is a book which looks at each decade of the country’s history and examines the issues in a new and engaging manner often seeing history through the eyes of the ordinary citizen

He discusses the work with writer and historian Joan Druett.

Date: Saturday, May 12 
Time: 11.30am - 12.30pm
Venue: Upper NZI Room, Aotea Centre

Auckland Chamber Orchestra
Musical Director Peter Scholes
Soloist, Santiago Canon Valencia.
Raye Freedman Centre, Auckland
May 6, 5pm

Peter Scholes
Relic

Friedrich Gulda
Concerto for Cello

Richard Strauss
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme

The virtuoso cellist Santiago Canon Valencia who was a highlight of Orchestra’s 2011 season returns to perform the beautifully eclectic Gulda Concerto.

ACO Music Director Peter Scholes opens the season with one of his own compositions, Relic which was commissioned by the NZSO ensemble Stroma and features harp and rototoms portraying long lost ancient rituals.

Strauss' Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme is music for Moliere's play and has a distinct Baroque flavour with melodies by Lully.

www.aco.co.nz

Sculpture
Orexart
May 9-26.

Sculpture 3D, assemblage, cast, fired, or found, art as object, object as art, all those aspect of three dimensional work were labeled by Art Forum (Feb 2012) as “the most important contemporary art form today”.

Sculpture today takes many forms, has as many fans as it has detractors for its ability to present and represent itself from the traditional to the temporary, the sincere to the ironic.

This exhibition brings some of the traditional materials into focus, bronze, wood, ceramic, glass, to show them in a variety of ways, and to bring them into play in a way that confounds traditional usage, that ultimately demonstrates skill and beauty.

Six artists will be showing work art objects in glass, bronze, ceramic, wood and fabric in the show at Orex Gallery

Jonathan Campbell brings teacups, kettles, tea bags, chocolate biscuits, cigarettes, spoons, everything in fact for high tea … and all made from bronze cast and patinated in glorious ways

Leigh Christensen takes wood and car parts and carves standing figures that look like statues to some forgotten gods of war or protection.

Annie McIvor makes us look at ourselves as if we were large rabbits, or is that we are large rabbits posing as people. All made in ceramic.

Peter James Smith makes sculptures from books, wooden tools, rulers, and cake tins and tells us about skills disappearing.

This Australian-based artist will be attending the opening of the exhibition.

Dylan Lind puts down fabric and paint and makes a contemporary tivaevae.

Evelyn Dunstan presents cast glass as if it was as light and easy as leaves and vines made into vessels and crowns.