 | Film Society Evening
Wednesday 28th July 5.45pm
Tickets $10 from Regent Cinema
Join us for coffee and discussion at the Ashburton Art Gallery following The Secret in their Eyes (Regent Cinema)
THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES - Benjamin is an honest cop in a corrupt society. With retirement pending, Benjamin sits down to write a memoir, and finds himself immersed again in the case that came to define his career. In 1974, with Argentinian society tearing itself to pieces on the streets, a particularly brutal murder shocked the cynical investigator. But 30 years later, something about the case still rankles, and Benjamin takes another look at the files, at his own personal history, at a love affair that might have been and at the society that shaped him.
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 | Author's Afternoon
Featuring: Ans Westra, Adrienne Jansen, John Perriam, Owen Marshall and David Elliot
Saturday 7th August 1.15 - 4.14pm
Tickets $20 from the Ashburton Art Gallery
Adrienne Jansen
Adrienne Jansen is a novelist, poet, non-fiction writer and teacher. She has worked for many years with immigrants to New Zealand, teaching English and publishing two books documenting immigrant women's experiences.“I have a particular interest in working alongside migrant communities, to ensure that their stories are heard,” she writes.
Commissioned by Asia:NZ, author Adrienne Jansen and renowned documentary photographer Ans Westra traveled to New Zealand to create The Crescent Moon: The Asian Face of Islam in New Zealand. They met, interviewed and photographed an ethnically, culturally and theologically diverse group who were disarmingly honest.
Ans Westra
“The main body of my work consists of documentary photography, the documentation of people in their everyday existence; life in all its facets”. Born in 1936 in Leiden, Holland, it was her stepfather’s camera that sparked Ans’ early interest in photography. In 1953 she moved to Rotterdam and studied at the Industries school voor Meisjes. Ans traveled to New Zealand after graduating in 1957 with a Diploma in Arts and Craft Teaching. A year later, Ans joined the Wellington Camera Club, and worked in various local photographic studies.
Ans received a Certificate of Excellence from the New York World’s Fair The World and its People and has since received several Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council grants for the practice and publication of her work focusing on New Zealand and its society. She was the Pacific regional winner of the Commonwealth Photography Award and traveled to the Philippines, Holland, America and the United Kingdom. She has had several exhibitions and has taught and tutored throughout the world.
John Perriam
Shrek may be the star of Bendigo Station, but the back-story of the station is fascinating, from its earliest days as the scene of New Zealand’s richest gold strike in the 1860s to its establishment as a 11,000 hectare sheep station of New Zealand’s highest quality top price Merino clips. As well as this it has several leading Pinot Noir vineyards, public walkways, a historic reserve and game hunting. None of this recent development would have come about if it weren’t for entrepreneurial and innovative owners, John and Heather Perriam.
Publishers Random House approached Mr Perriam to tell his family’s tale after they featured on the TV show Country Calendar. “It was so easy to write about Shrek but the book is much bigger than that—it’s about Cure Kids, strength from struggle, and stepping outside your comfort zone.” he said. His book royalties will go to charity Cure Kids, which has benefited from more than $150,000 generated by Shrek’s celebrity status since the merino was discovered in 2004 and shorn for the first time.
Owen Marshall
Novelist, short story writer and poet Owen Marshall has written, or edited, twenty four books, most recently a collection of poetry, `Sleepwalking In Antarctica.' His work, has been published and broadcast in various countries overseas. Awards for his fiction include the New Zealand Literary Fund Scholarship in Letters, The American Express Short Story Award, Fellowships at the universities of Canterbury and Otago, and the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship in Menton, France. He received the ONZM for services to literature in the Queen's New Year Honours, 2000.
His novel `Harlequin Rex' won the Montana New Zealand Book Awards Deutz Medal for Fiction in the same year, and was later translated and published overseas. In 2002 the University of Canterbury awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters, and in 2005 appointed him an adjunct professor. In 2003 he was the inaugural recipient of the Creative New Zealand Writers' Fellowship (since renamed the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writers' Fellowship). He was President of Honour of the New Zealand Society of Authors 2007/8, and is presently on the Board of the New Zealand Book Council. Marshall has spent almost all his life in South Island towns, and has an affinity with provincial New Zealand.
David Elliot
David discusses his new book due to be released by Random House later in the year The Moon & Farmer McPhee A heart–warming story — with lots of fun wordplay — about a grumpy farmer whose animals keep him awake at night singing and dancing by the light of the moon. Eventually he is won over by the moon and the animals and learns how to be happy. Classic Margaret Mahy and utterly inspirational illustrations and innovation from Ashburton’s own David Elliot!
David Elliot was born and raised in Ashburton before moving to Christchurch to study a Diploma in Visual Arts at the University of Canterbury. After he graduated, David worked as a designer for a couple of years before travelling to Antarctica, through Asia and Europe, and onto Scotland where he became gatekeeper at Edinburgh Zoo. It was during this time that David became increasingly interested in writing and illustrating books for children. David has provided illustrations for numerous New Zealand children's books, including Janet Frame's only book for children, Mona Minim and the Smell of the Sun. He has also written and illustrated five picture books of his own. David’s work is increasingly in demand overseas and he has illustrated books by UK author, Brian Jacques (Redwall series) and US author TA Barron (Great Tree of Avalon series). David currently teaches drawing part-time, as part of a visual arts course in Dunedin. The rest of his week is spent on his own work, in his Port Chalmers studio.
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 | Film Society Evening
Wednesday 25th August 5.45pm
Tickets $10 from Regent Cinema
Join us for coffee and discussion at the Ashburton Art Gallery following The Girl Who Palyed With Fire (Regent Cinema)
THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE - Lisbeth Salander (again played by Noomi Rapace) is a wanted woman. Two Millennium magazine journalists about to expose the truth about the sex trade in Sweden are brutally murdered, and Salander's prints are on the weapon. She returns to Sweden, after a year abroad, with the authorities after her. Meanwhile, Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), editor-in-chief of Millennium, will not believe what he hears on the news. Knowing Salander to be fierce when fearful, he is desperate to get to her before the police, and before she is cornered.
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| DETOUR
New Work by Sam Foley
4th September - 3rd October 2010
Opening & Artists Talk Saturday 4th September 2010
In early 2010 Foley made a research trip to Ashburton, “The urban landscape is a subject that I have been focusing on now for a number of years and the combination of painting and projection lend itself particularly well to night scenes and street lights — the intersection of West and Moore Street was the first thing that came to mind. It wasn’t until I spent some time in Ashburton that I was drawn to the other aspects of the town, often unique and with character, that have found their way into this body of work.”
Extract from essay by Peter Entwisle
“It was said of Monet ‘He was only an eye. But what an eye!’ As a summary of Impressionism this compression leaves out the transition from narrative — every picture tells a story — to observation, which in Monet’s case was focussed on light. Foley is similarly engaged with the processes of seeing and picture-making and how you render complex experience. Visual perception is conditioned by memory and imagination. We don’t just see things; we remember them and have anxieties and expectations about how they will be. This makes seeing fraught. Foley re-creates that and fleshes it out with his ghostly, moving phenomena. Some of this is observation. It represents what actually happened at the site while the artist waited with his camera. Some of it is staged, the interventions being contrived by Foley. All of it registers as completely ordinary, yet disturbing.”
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 | Need Gifts for loved ones
The Word Witch: The Magical Verse of Margaret Mahy
Honour Award Winner at the New Zealand Post Book Awards 2010!
$44.95
Finally, Margaret Mahy’s much-loved poems and stories in rhyme have been collected together by her biographer, Tessa Duder, for the first time ever in the wonderful new book, "The Word Witch: The Magical Verse of Margaret Mahy". With each of the 66 pieces accompanied by poignant illustrations by one of New Zealand’s best, David Elliot, and packaged as a beautiful hardcover addition, The Word Witch is set to delight generations of readers who have grown up with Mahy and enchant newcomers to her work for many years to come. Included in The Word Witch are such classics as "Bubble Trouble", "Down the Back of the Chair", and "Dashing Dog", as well as other gems from Mahy’s School Journal days and her own childhood, and some previously unpublished works.
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