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Blogs / February 2009

March 2009 | January 2009
    • Adam Page Solo finishes this weekend ...
      • ... and if you haven't seen his show at Downstage, you should get your tickets now! Find out more hereAdam page SoloThat's what our patrons say about Adam Page Solo:"I look forward to another series of Adam Page's performances! He's such a funny and multi-talented musician, making music improvisations on the spot. A must-see show!""Awesome!""Hands down, the best show at Fringe this year! Adam Page
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        • Hannah Playhouse, 12, Cambridge Terrace, Mount Victoria, Wellington, Wellington City, Wellington, 6011, New Zealand (OpenStreetMap)


    • For Shortness
      • Following on from the previous post, where the power of the mighty telephoto reduced tall buildings to flatness in a single bound, we here at the Fish thought that it might be time to try that trick on other streets.  Flattening out perspective, as shown here in the classic (but I’ve always thought, slightly dodgy) example of Albrecht Durer from 1525 “Draughtsman drawing a recumbent w
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    • Puni accomodation
      • Looking up Vivian St, past the closed down peepshows and the sadly tacky brothels, a new building can be spied on the hill.  It’s the new student accommodation block called Te Puni, and the neighbours on the hill are in trepidation - apparently 375 horny 18 year olds are inside. Yes, it will be noisy - expect lots of puking in the bushes for the first few weeks, and then they’ll settl
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    • Identifying maidenhair spleenwort ferns.
      • The maidenhair spleenwort is a spleenwort fern (Asplenium) that (supposedly) looks like a maidenhair fern (Adiantum, see below). The 600 or so of the world’s spleenworts are characterised by having their reproductive structures in lines away from the margins of their fronds’ undersides. The reproductive structures (the sori, made up of the sporangia which contain the spores, and their
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    • Not just hot air...
      • When I first arrived in NZ a couple of years ago, my friend and I were driving north when we happened upon the myriad of turbines dotting the lanscape of the Tararua Wind Farm. We thought it was the coolest thing we'd ever seen. It was like something out of a sci-fi movie, but in a good way, not an alien-is-gonna-burst-out-of-your-guts way. How cool it would be to look out at that skyline every
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        • Hannah Playhouse, 12, Cambridge Terrace, Mount Victoria, Wellington, Wellington City, Wellington, 6011, New Zealand (OpenStreetMap)


    • Coralline red algae
      • Botany has recently acquired a unique collection; a special group of calcified red algae known as the corallines. Coralline algae are abundant and ubiquitous throughout the world’s oceans, playing very important roles in marine ecosystems. The encrusting, or crustose, species can form unusual lumpy, warty-looking layers in the intertidal, sometimes completely covering rocks. Perhaps you have
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    • Transit’s tasteless menu
      • The latest iteration of what was once Transit, now called the NZ Transport Agency, (obligatory maori moniker: Waka Kotahi) is now into publishing. Edition no. 3 of Pathways is glossy and cheerful, and like most of the recent publications from recently re-organised public service departments, entirely full of bumpf and platitudes with nothing much useful to say at all. One article however was wors
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    • Dark Waters
      • If you head on over to fish central, we’re diving deep into the murky depths in order to protest S92A. We’re sure you’ve heard all about it, so we’ll spare the diatribe. However, things arent all gloomy. Check back in a day (or two) to find a newly re-emerged fish - things will have changed…
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    • And what is faith?
      • Ian Prior, noted epidemiologist and arts patron died earlier this week. Luncheon under the ash tree, an exhibition organised by Aratoi which celebrated Ian and Elespie Prior’s art collection, toured galleries around New Zealand a few years ago. Regan Gentry, Green Islands, 2007 Wellington Sculpture Trust’s Four Plinths Temporary Sculpture Project A couple of works on show in and near Te Papa stand
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    • It’s Showtime!
      • Cuba Carnivale is upon us once more. But will the showers hold off for us today, or is it time to think of the perhaps inevitable: do we need a SambaDome ? Carnival night parade is all about being hot and sweaty and (so it seems, near-naked), along with the inevitable music, rhythm and hypnotic samba music beats. Will the crowd break into spontaneous dance and applause this time, or merely look a
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    • Blow me away
      • Newsflash: Mill Creek Wind Farm approved, almost all intact - just 2 turbines short of the full picnic. We blogged about it before, back in June last year when it was announced and publicly notified - and we thought that the residents of Ohariu Valley might put up a bigger stink than the residents of nearby Makara did when they were confronted with Project West Wind.
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        • Makara, Wellington


    • Honey pot
      • In case you’re a new visitor to Eye of the Fish, and are looking for some of the particular posts on certain subjects, here’s a quick summary of some links that you can click on and take you straight there. Please do feel free to add your comment on any of the subjects. For instance: Discussing the proposals for the National Library Debating the proposed Flyover at the Basin Reserve Ta
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    • Little Fishes swim upstream
      • When I was younger, I sometimes thought it would be good to be a black woman, so that I could qualify as a backing singer for Talking Heads: they always seemed to have the best dancers / singers / ass-shakers in the business, and they could get so close to the Master Byrne himself. Perhaps that’s just me.  I never viewed it as a comment on society that perhaps they were pigeon-holed into tha
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    • Latrodectus Love Bites
      • St Valentine's widow spider   In honour of Valentine’s Day this post will look at the wonderful world of courtship in the spider genus Latrodectus, more commonly known as the widow spiders. Readers of my previous post will recall this genus includes species such as the American black widow (Latrodectus mactans), the Australian redback (L. hasseltii) and the New Zealand katipo (L. katipo), all
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    • Stimulus package
      • Much as we’ve always enjoyed a good stimulus package up here at Eye of the Fish world headquarters (beaming at you tonight from way up on the Majestic Tower because, to be frank, we’re sick of all that cloud down there at ground level): we’re left a little unstimulated by the whip of our new master. He’s cracking, but I don’t hear no jumping.  Yes, today (well, actua
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    • Valentines day: roses are what?
      •   Margaret Stoddart, Roses, 1920s In Europe during the 1300s February 14th was thought to be the day when birds paired off to mate. This date was originally an ancient Greco-Roman pagan festival, and was later called St Valentines Day Feast by the Church. Since the 1300s, on February 14th each year, roses (and flowers in general),  have been widely accepted as gifts and Saint Valentines Day is now
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    • Beagle boys
      • Conrad Martens, Kororareka in the Bay of Islands, 1841 In honour of Charles Darwin’s birthday today, here’s a work by one of the artists from HMS Beagle. Conrad Martens painted this view of Kororareka, the site of modern Russell, in 1841. It’s based on sketches which he made during on a brief visit there in 1835. Martens had left the Beagle by this point, but the ship passed through New Zealand la
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    • Fellow travellers
      • Nicholas Chevalier, Cook Straits, New Zealand, c 1884 Reading about American artist James Luna’s travels around the country brings to mind of a couple of earlier artistic visitors to New Zealand.   Nicholas Chevalier, the Russian-born, Australian-domiciled Swiss painter made two visits to New Zealand in the 1860s. The first, in 1865, was sponsored by the Otago Provincial Council. Not to be outdone
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    • Adam Page Solo The Big Idea Q & A
      • below is a Q and A I filled out for the website www.thebigidea.co.nzi was feeling extra silly when filling it out. had alot of fun though!! here 'tis During what hours of the day do you feel most inspired?During the sleeping hours   How would a good friend describe your aesthetic or style? Aesthetically bare footed and stylishly unstylish   What aspect of your creative practice gives you th
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        • Hannah Playhouse, 12, Cambridge Terrace, Mount Victoria, Wellington, Wellington City, Wellington, 6011, New Zealand (OpenStreetMap)


    • Indoor Sports Centre
      • The Eye of the Fish has tried to keep away from the whole sorry saga of the Sports Centre, but recent developments deserve a forum for comment. The entire Sports Centre fad has escaped by the Fish, for whom the idea of 12 courts full of screaming netballers sounds more like a living hell than a place we’d ever want to go to. Apparently even 12 courts is a small number, claim the supporters,
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        • Cobham Park, Wellington


    • Skin deep differences don’t matter in Katipo
      • Skin Deep Differences Don’t Matter in Katipo Katipo female and eggsacs. Image ©Te Papa Having spent my last two postings dealing with butterflies and moths, it’s time to move on to the animals I love the most – spiders! The subject of this posting is the katipo spider (Latrodectus katipo), New Zealand’s only endemic spider known to be dangerous to humans. Katipo is a Maori word meaning ‘night stin
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    • Waitangi
      • Around 8 years ago, the city of Wellington was in a turmoil. The aged forces of Waterfront Watch, an elderly bunch of Wellingtonians with time on their hands, decided to take on the Wellington City Council over their proposals for the waterfront land. The public was stirred up into a paroxysm of hatred for Variation 17 - what were portrayed as proposals by the WCC to allow building all over the waterfront. Waterfront Watch were largely successful, forcing the hand of the Council to reduce the scope of their ambitions, and lobbying hard for the creation of what is now Waitangi Park. And well done too - the park is great. But now there’s another proposal on the waterfront.
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    • On the road with James Luna
      • Since I posted introducing One Day Sculpture and visiting artist James Luna, who is developing a project to be presented at Te Papa, Megan, James and I have been to Auckland and back. James Luna, End of Acoustic, 2005, from a faux rock & roll multimedia installation - All Indian All the Time    In Auckland James gave a talk at the Auckland Art Gallery’s Art Lounge as part of their Easy L
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    • The deluge and the ark
      • Recently, a group of researchers in New Zealand suggested that the absence of fossils between 25 and 22 million years ago indicated that the islands completely disappeared under water, and then later re-emerged. But a newly discovered fossil reptile suggests this theory does not hold water. Alan Tennyson, Curator of Fossil Vertebrates at Te Papa, and colleagues, found the remains of a fossilized
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    • More masking tape
      • Colin McCahon, Mondrian's last chrysanthemum, 1976 Mondrian’s last chrysanthemum, the Colin McCahon painting we bought at the end of last year, arrived at Te Papa recently. It’s great to see it again. Like most paintings, there’s a lot about this work that you don’t get until you see it in the flesh. There’s beauty of the painting itself, its amazing combination of subtlety and urgency.
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    • Windows to the world
      • Time to get back to talking about architecture. One of the things that the construction slow-down may give us, incidentally, is more time to actually think about architecture - the hectic pace that the architects in our city have been working at, with barely time to pause between designs, has led to a plethora of work of (at times) dubious quality. The designs for one multi-storey apartment buildi
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    • A Tiger with Crimson Wings
      • A Tiger with Crimson Wings  This post is inspired by Smiv’s reminiscences about cinnabar moth caterpillars when commenting on my previous blog entry: http://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/2009/01/26/a-menu-for-monarchs/#comments Also, as adult cinnabar moths are on the wing this time of year in New Zealand summer and sightings always generate a number of calls to Te Papa’s entomology department, I thought t
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