30 kilometres west of Waihōpai Invercargill, is the town of Aparima or Riverton.

It’s the gateway to spectacular and remote West Southland, an area sitting between the mountains of Fiordland and the Takitimu mountain range, with an infamous wild ocean out front. 

Riverton is one of the earliest European settlements in New Zealand and before that  Aparima was a substantial Māori settlement, due to its proximity to the ocean and a river estuary. The area is said to be home to a surprising number of artists alongside fisherfolk, and it’s also home to a strong Aoteaora cultural advocate, writer Pauline Vaeluaga Smith.

It’s a story about sisterhood and survival against a dark backdrop but Josephine Stewart Tewhiu never set out to make a film about abuse in state care.

Artist Owen Connors is on a roll. They are one of four nominees for Aotearoa's most prestigious art prize, The Walters. Last year they won the $25,000 Rydal Art Prize, awarded biannually to a recent body of work considered by a jury to have made an important contribution to Aotearoa painting. They were also awarded one of the country’s most coveted residencies at McCahon House in the Waitakere.

Bouncing off the success from the first season, documentary Takeout Kids is back for a second season and this time, it’s venturing beyond the takeaways.

Growing up as the only boy in a family of five children, Eli Matthewson was well prepared for a career in comedy.

Dropping a sheep’s carcass from an aeroplane into the Waitemata harbour; sewing a sheep’s kidney onto your own back; yelling “get the f**k out” till the audience leaves, many razor cuts. The early, confrontational ‘70s performance work of the late Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland artist Peter Roche is the stuff of legend.  

Yet, as Night Piece, a new documentary by filmmaker Bridget Sutherland shows, Peter Roche’s artistic career also had many different lives.

Public galleries have been demonstrating our view of art history has been changing radically for years. It just hasn’t been published for a wider public, until now. 

Art historian and curator Kirsty Baker’s smart and insightful new book Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa, published by Auckland University Press, is then a major publishing event.

Arts news: Arts as a 'nice to do', Parkin prize and Electric Avenue

Each week Culture 101 puts the spotlight on a different region in Aotearoa and this week we’re in the Bay of Plenty town of Whakatāne.

The Bitches’ Box is back, and for the first time the show will be venturing to urban centres.