Aratoi’s Current Exhibitions

Rita Angus, Marjorie Marshall, 1938-39/1943, oil on canvas. © Reproduced courtesy of the Estate of Rita Angus. Purchased 2019. Te Papa (2019-0012-1).

A first for the Wairarapa is Te Papa’s touring exhibition – Rita Angus: New Zealand Modernist | He Ringatoi Hou o Aotearoa. The exhibition brings together 20 works by one of New Zealand’s most iconic 20^th century artists, Rita Angus (1908–1970) with many of these never been displayed before in the region. 

The paintings span Angus’s life and career as an artist, drawing out the themes of pacifism, feminism and nature that shaped so much of her work. 

Another visiting exhibition is Dwayne Duthie’s Double Edge Sword from Taranaki. This exhibition aims to communicate ideas on human drive and desire related to the human condition, the connection to self-preservation and survival and how they can be both a benefit and liability.

These works are presented in painting, sculpture and digital forms utilising the symbolic and the abstract to highlight our desire to acquire, defend, connect, learn and largely survive.

Dwayne Duthie: Double Edge Sword 28 October- 3 December

Rita Angus: New Zealand Modernist | He Ringatoi Hou o Aotearoa 30 September- 26 November

Booklover’s Trail App launch in Wairarapa

Some 13 Wairarapa book stores have worked together to produce a Booklover’s Trail App in what is a New Zealand first, modelled on the Heritage Wine Trail across the region.

The free-to-download Featherston Booktown Booklover’s Trail App aims to connect booklovers with Wairarapa booksellers and their stories. The app provides a self-guided tour that takes listeners on a comprehensive journey of the region’s many bookstores and literary sites.

“It is certainly something we came up with, that Featherston Booktown came up with for the Wairarapa, and I haven’t seen anything like it in New Zealand … or overseas,” Featherston Booktown operations manager Mary Biggs told The Star.  

“Pre-Covid visits to Britain’s literary homes … like Virginia Woolf’s house … was part of the thinking that it’s such an interesting way to see a country.”

“It’s another way to view the Wairarapa … with more and more visitors doing literary tourism– so this is another offering.”

The App, which embraces bookstores from Featherston across to Martinborough through to Greytown, Carterton and Masterton let’s users hear the stories of these booksellers as they travel the length and breadth of Wairarapa, whether by car or bike.  … Continue Reading

‘Light Over Liskeard’ by Louis de Bernieres’

One of the perks of owning a bookshop is that you can get your hands on advance copies of books. Book reps will often bring a small stack of pending titles to our meetings and my staff and I get to read ahead. It makes us better booksellers, better at recommending books to customers. 

‘Light Over Liskeard’ is one of those advance copies which is due in stores this month, but I read it in August and loved it. I’ve been holding off reviewing it until it was available to buy.

So here goes…

Set sometime in the not-too-distant future where cars are self-driving, bots take care of most menial things, children have only virtual friends and national security is increasingly fragile, Q (not his real name) is a quantum cryptographer for the British government. 

Q becomes aware that he knows how to end the world and that if he knows, so too do a number of others scattered across the world. But he isn’t sure that he knows what it means to live and he’s running out of time. He leaves the city, buys a derelict farmhouse on the moors and begins to prepare for what is to come.

The absolute delight of this book is the light touch of the author and his introduction of weird and quirky characters already resident on the moors: a hermit, a knight, a ghost, a widowed South American environmentalist and his lusty daughter, and a range of ‘reintroduced’ species roaming at large. 

I think what I liked most is that it isn’t what you think its going to be – there’s no doom, no wailing and gnashing of teeth, just good story telling and compelling characters that leave you strangely happy to have met them.

‘Women Remembered – Jesus’ Female Disciples’

First Church community hall will be the place to be later this month if you’re interested in learning about the role of women in the Bible.

Come to what will be a fascinating lecture by Prof. Joan Taylor. She is eminently qualified for this modern topic having served in senior academic positions at Uni of Waikato, Harvard Divinity School, Kings College London and latterly at Victoria and currently Prof. at the Centre of Religion Melbourne. She has a PhD in early Christian archaeology.

Do you think Jesus surrounded himself exclusively with men?

Inspired by their popular documentary ‘Jesus Female Disciples’, historians Helen Bond and Joan Taylor explore the way in which Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Mary, Martha and a whole host of other women have been remembered by posterity, noting how many were silenced, tamed or slurred by innuendo – although occasionally they got to slay dragons.

Women Remembered digs into the biblical texts, the representation of these women in art, and the way they have been remembered in inscriptions and archaeology – exposing misogyny and offering alternative and unexpected ways of appreciating them as disciples, apostles, teachers, messengers and church-founders.

At a time when both the church and society more widely are still grappling with the full inclusion and equality of women, their book is a must-read for anyone interested in the historical and cultural origins of Christianity.

Upcoming Events:

• Two-day Kirk Fair is scheduled for 25 – 26 November with a fine array of cakes, produce, clothes and tasteful bric à brac on display. See you at the Waihinga Centre.
• Book Sale on 28 October, 1.30 – 5pm at the Church Hall. 
• Women Remembered – Prof. Joan Taylor, 22 October at 12.45pm – 1st Church Community Hall.