Jenna's just read Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu and highly recommends it. If Charles' work on HBO series, Westworld, isn't enough to entice you to read this book, perhaps winning the Fiction prize in the National Book Awards for 2020 will.
India visits Sanctuary Gardens Mahi Whenua, a community garden and food forest that faces an uncertain future, as Unitec - the owners of the land - look to create a new housing development.
Lachlan speaks with with Universities NZ Director Chris Whelan about the 2% increase in fees across Aotearoa. Then, Ben spoke with AUSA President WIll Matthews about the recent vote by the University of Auckland to increase their fees.
This week the arts community has been remembering Nanette Cameron, who passed away aged 95. She's been dubbed "Aotearoa’s preeminent interior designer" by arts organisation Objectspace, "instrumental in the flourishing of interior design practice in Tāmaki Makaurau and nationally." Her passing has been met with tributes, gratitude and aroha for a woman who is described by those who met her as formidable, a sweetheart and everything in between. To hear more about her life Frances caught up with retired director of Objectspace, Philip Clarke, who was director of Objectspace when they staged the major exhibition and published the publication Nanette Cameron: Interior Design Legend in 2013.
August Ward is an artist who grew up in Tāmaki Makaurau, whose primarily painting practice explores the visual signature and emblems of affluence and desire, consumption and the idealised female form – existing in the uncanny valley of womanhood, letting the contrast and intersection of imperfection and glamour lead the work both practically and conceptually.
Her current solo exhibition at Ivan Anthony, World of Interiors, sees Ward furthering her exploration in this realm of subject matter, expanding her painting and drawing practice in scale and form, bringing these sculptural qualities into the works and space surrounding. Crystals adorning the canvas to form a necklace, ledges attached at the base of others with taxidermied mice, and a cavity for a Miss Dior perfume to perch, these symbols become physical adornments to the glamour of their pictorial counterparts. Pushing and pulling each painting’s textural potential, the idea of the surface sits at the forefront of her relationship with oil paint and graphite as her primary mediums.
Sof caught up with August about World of Interiors ahead of its opening tonight.
This week on city counselling, ahead of the council's decision on weed management harmonisation, Oscar Perress speaks to Richard Hills about what the decision is and about the glyphosate chemical spraying method vs thermal weed management method debate.