Imaginary Friends

Listener – May 31 2008

Femmes fatales and animal-human creatures mingle in the other worldly landscapes of Séraphine Pick.

“Is the baby crying or yawning?” a woman asks Séraphine Pick at her exhibition of paintings After Image. It’s hard to get a word in edgeways as we walk around Waikanae’s Mahara Gallery.… More,,,

In Kim Hills Den

The Dominion Post, February 21, 2004

On a Saturday morning Kim Hill is in her element (“They say I have a good face for radio”) doing live interviews on her weekend show. Lindsay Rabbitt drops in to capture the mood on and off air.

It’s 9am on St Valentine’s Day at Radio NZ House and Kim Hill’s producer Chris Bourke and studio operator and “dog handler” Andrew Dalziel are calmly going about their business.… More,,,

The Survivor

The Dominion Post, January 17, 2004

Poor sales, even death, couldn’t stop Geoff Cochrane.
“When I go to church nowadays, I find it disappointing,” Geoff Cochrane says while we eat lunch at his mother Patricia’s house in Levin. “You never went as an adult,” Patricia retorts. “But I did want to join a monastery .… More,,,

Tougher Than The Rest

Listener, October 18, 2003

As the Rugby World Cup kicks off, former All Black and current All Black selector Mark Shaw explains the new team’s philosophy and what it takes to impress him.

“I got dropped for 1987 World Cup,” says Mark Shaw. “Like Oliver, Randall, Cullen and Merhtens: exactly the same thing happened to me.… More,,,

Served Rare

Listener – May 25, 2002

The market for rare and collectable New Zealand books is booming. 

Whether they’re worth reading is neither here nor there, but there is good money to be flogging rare, collectable New Zealand books. Peter Trewern, manager of Otaki-based Bethunes Rare Books, the country’s largest book auctioneers, knows a guy who recently bought a hand-coloured botanical book at auction.… More,,,

They Came to the City

Listener – November 10, 2001

How Ngati Poneke created a new kind of Maori kinship.

Two weeks before the publication of The Silent Migration, an impressive new book that recalls the great urban migration of Maori in the middle of the 20th century, Agnes “Bubs” Broughton had a stroke which was probably brought on by trying to catch the postman to post off a list of the people she wanted to attend the launch of the book at Wellington’s Pipitea Marae.More,,,

Sex and the City Gallery

Listener – June 9, 2001

Cult, crap and culture mix it up in Wellington.

What is it about 1950s and early 1960s popular culture that twenty- and thirtysomethings want to replicate? The style without the boring bits, perhaps. Watch Sex and the City and you’ll see sex-savvy starlets wearing 50s-style stiletto heels and drinking martinis, with lounge music notating their sexual escapades.… More,,,

A Wahine Christ

Listener – September 9, 2000

A reinvention of the 14 Stations of the Cross.

Above the altar at St Luke’s Anglican in Waikanae, images of early patriarchs Wi Parata Te Kakakura and missionary Octavius Hadfield flank an image of St Luke in stained glass. Wi Parata, who was elected to Parliament as the member for Western Maori in 1871, gifted the land for St Lukes to be built.… More,,,

First XV

Listener – August 26, 2000

A new novel credits the legendary 1905 All Blacks, “The Originals”, with the birth of a nation.

“Our industry was football and experiments with space. 

What we knew 
what we understood 
had no beautiful language at its service 
lacked for artists and sculptors 
what we knew was intimate 
as instinct or memory .

More,,,

The New Jerusalem

The Sunday Star Times – March 28, 1999

Dancer Michael Parmenter and his team are on a pilgrimage, touring a work inspired by James K Baxter. Lindsay Rabbitt hits the road to Jerusalem.

It could be a screamer for a Hollywood epic. “From the Bible to Blake to Baxter! From the Middle East to Jerusalem – on the Whanganui River!” … More,,,