In 2021 artist Isabella Loudon returned to her family home in the town of Marton Tutaenui in the lower North Island to recover from glandular fever. Loudon has since stayed on, making the most of a vacant commercial building owned by her parents as studio space. The building is due to be demolished, so she’s been busy turning it into one giant installation project to create what is being dubbed an “unsettling, immersive sculpture”.

Raro Research Collective's passion for earth pigments

The buiniga is a traditional Fijian unisex hairstyle. Similar to the afro, but more sculpted, it’s become a source of national pride. Increasingly young women in Fiji are bucking Western trends and refusing to straighten their hair.  

Fijian born and raised, artist, poet and fashion designer Natasha Ratuva’s exhibition at  Aratoi museum in Masterton is called Buiniga, named after the  iTaukei (Indigenous Fijian traditional practice).

A New Zealand jeweller has won big at the XIV Florence Biennale Exhibition and Awards, taking first prize for Jewellery Art and Design.

Actor and star of The Brokenwood Mysteries Fern Sutherland has just wrapped her 10th season on the television detective drama. A feat for any show in New Zealand to last this long.

The black stilt or kakī is one of the world's most endangered birds. It is central to the latest work of Kāi Tahu Otepoti artist Madison Kelly’s new work in a major exhibition Spring Time is Heartbreak: Contemporary Art in Aotearoa just opened at Christchurch Art Gallery.

On the back cover of his recently published first book of poems, Crackle in the Rain, Ciaran Fox describes himself as a whisky-chasing sensualist, poet, father and born-again skateboarder. 

He is also an ardent supporter of emerging writers: a regular co-host of Poetry Slam and a cofounder of the long-running open mic night and literary journal Catalyst, now in its 21st year.

Arts news this week as read on the show.

Prayas Theater is bringing the masterpiece, The Clay Cart or Mricchakatika to stage in an adaptation for modern audiences.

A panel with Michael Bell, Steph Walker and Kiri Jarden. It’s almost 13 years since the devastating earthquake of 22 February 2011, which forced 70 percent of the Ōtautahi Christchurch CBD to be demolished.

While the rebuild has been a slow and often difficult process in visions meeting reality, there is also much to celebrate in the city taking up the opportunity, through art and design, to remake it as a place for all.