Let NZLive.com be your travel guide through the wonderful world of NZ art. There is plenty to look at in galleries and museums all over the country. We’ve got details of who is showing where, as well as links to artist’s sites, news and reviews.

We thought this month we would try a rundown of arty picks from around the country…..

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New Zealand architects Patterson Associates has been included as a double finalist in the World Architecture Festival, one of the world’s most prestigious architectural awards, being held in Barcelona this October. The announcement from Barcelona was made yesterday.

Auckland-based Patterson Associates has been nominated for two separate buildings, one located in Auckland and one Queenstown. Both projects draw heavily on New Zealand cultural traditions.

The World Architecture Festival (WAF) has named Pattersons as finalists in both the Private Home and Sports Building categories, for their ‘Mai Mai’ house in Auckland, and the Hills Golf Clubhouse in Queenstown.

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TheNewDowse was prepared for complaints about its exhibition, Assume Nothing.

It does, after all, feature intimate and, in some cases, naked portraits of people with alternative gender identity – exactly the sort of thing that is likely to create controversy.

But according to the exhibition curator, Claire Regnault, the Lower Hutt gallery has not received a single complaint since Assume Nothing opened in April.

“The reaction has been incredibly positive,” she says. “It’s obviously the right time for an exhibition like this – people are more open to talking about the subject.”

Read the rest of this NZLive.com featured article here.

‘Māori Language Week is a special time every year to focus on and encourage and celebrate the use of Māori language. This year it takes place from 21 – 27 July 2008.

‘The week targets Māori language speakers, encouraging them to use the language more often and in more places. Many beginners and non-speakers are becoming more and more involved in celebrating the week too…’

Check out the full featured article on NZLive.com:

• Read it in English.
• Read it in te reo Māori.

We bring poetry to the people this week with a rundown of the finalists in the poetry section of the Montana NZ Book Awards.

It’s a special week for NZ poetry, culminating in Montana Poetry Day on Friday 18 July 2008. The winner of the poetry category will be announced on Montana Poetry Day.

Montana Poetry Day is now a major occasion all over New Zealand and every year it gets bigger and bigger. It’s a fun way for people to express themselves – for published poets and for those who just want to give poetry a go. Whether it’s poetry read on buses, stand up poetry slams or multimedia poetry competitions there is bound to be an event to take your literary fancy.

This week NZLive.com is giving away a special prize pack of all the books that have made the finals in the poetry category. Make sure you get your entry into this week’s draw.

Poetry

Cold Snack by Janet Charman (Auckland University Press)

Janet Charman was born in Taranaki, New Zealand and spent part of her childhood in the Hutt Valley. She now lives in West Auckland with her partner and children.

Janet is now a secondary school teacher after a mid-life career switch and retraining. She originally qualified as a nurse before working in psychiatric hospitals and social welfare situations. She has also been among other things, a radio copywriter, a telephone operator for a TV channel, a tutor at The University of Auckland and runs occasional writing classes.

She has published poems widely in Australian and New Zealand journals and anthologies. Drawing Together, her first collection of poems, written with Marina Bachmann and Sue Fitchett was published by Spiral in 1985. She has since published five critically acclaimed collections with Auckland University Press: Red Letter (1992), End of The Dry (1995), Rapunzel Rapunzel (1999) , Snowing Down South (2002) and Cold Snack (2007).

Cold Snack brims with poems of suburbia, families, workplaces, ordinary life, from the pleasures and pains of becoming a schoolteacher in midlife to a television station receptionist’s view of the ebullient 1980s. All these poems show Charman’s ear for the spoken language and her acute awareness of the sounds, shapes, colours around us and the way they are inhabited by our emotions.

Read work from Janet Charman’s Cold Snack
More about Janet Charman at the NZ Book Council
Buy Cold Snack online

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