Concert between two cities
A concert of Renaissance music by the Schola Cantorum of Christchurch and the Canterbury-Otago Consort of Viols will be given at the Hampden Presbyterian Church on Sunday at 2pm.
The Christchurch choir, which specialises in medieval and Renaissance music, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year and the viol players from Dunedin and Christchurch meet three times a year. Viols (viola da gamba) are Renaissance string instruments in varying sizes which are held between the legs when being played with a bow.
People will be able to call into the rehearsal sessions in the morning if they wish and attend the concert in the afternoon.
Besides its Renaissance repertoire, the choir will give a performance of Patrick Shepherd's recent piece Elegy for a fallen city, about the Christchurch earthquakes, and the first performance of a spoken fugue arranged by Roger Buckton, the choir's conductor, entitled 26 reasons to love Canterbury.
Following the concert and afternoon tea, there will be a "Big Hampden Sing-in".
Calling all embroiderers
Embroiderers of all abilities are being asked to help prepare an exhibition celebrating the Otago Pioneer Women's Hall in Dunedin.
The print and textiles studios at the Otago Polytechnic Dunedin School of Art will present the exhibition, "Indignation", next month, part of which will include an embroidery project in which members of the public are invited to participate. At a sewing bee tomorrow at the school's textiles studio, anyone can embroider their name as a pledge of support for the hall. The embroideries will later be assembled into a series of textile art works. The sewing bee runs from 11am to 2pm.
Leaving traces behind
In her latest collection, artist Liz Rowe has painted images of electronic and technical appliances from around the home on ceramic wall discs. Rowe says a recent trip to Mexico highlighted the place of ceramics in explaining the past.
"Without ceramics, the anthropologists would have to do a lot more guesswork about what the ancient Aztec and Mayan peoples got up to.
"We might think that none of today's cultural and technical artefacts need preserving, but who knows, in a thousand years' time someone might be very curious to discover images of the kind of day-to-day equipment we were using in 2012 and these ceramic discs might be all they have to go on."
Rowe's exhibition is at Hullabaloo Art Space, Cromwell, and runs from Sunday until June 2.
Back to the beginning
Dunedin artist Brian Alexander unveils his debut solo exhibition at the Dunedin Community Gallery this week.
"A New Beginning" features 31 abstract acrylic works, with motifs ranging from Maori symbolism to eclipses and coronas of the sun.
"I'm interested in the thin veneer that covers society," Alexander said.
"Once you cut through that fabric, what lies behind it?" "A New Beginning" is on at the Dunedin Community Gallery from 11am until 5pm until Saturday.
