No Language Barrier

Ko Te Ākau is a visual arts installation and curated performance programme for live and virtual spaces, created for group and solo performances, within a design accurate, site-specific installation of lighting, sound design and video projection. The project references the collaborative works of artists Ralph Hotere and Bill Culbert and serves as the inspiration for exploring the poetics of Te Ākau, the space where the ocean meets the land, where the horizon connects land, water and sky.

Opening night, spring time, longer days. What better way to celebrate than watching our city unfold after dark? Night Vision returns to kick off our 11 days of unmissable arts experiences.

NUKU: The Exhibition features a selection of larger-than-life-size images of 14 of the kickass Indigenous wāhine who appear in Māori storyteller and photographer Qiane Matata-Sipu's extraordinary self-published book NUKU, which was a finalist for the 2022 Ockham NZ Book Award for Illustrated Nonfiction.

Let’s paint the streets of Whakatū in bright colours and showcase our community’s diversity and creative superpowers! We are working with local businesses to create displays of fantastic creations old and new - and we'd love you to contribute. Submit your own creations for the showcase or send us photos - we’d love to share them with far and wide!

Experience selected works from Te Papa’s summer exhibition - Rita Angus: New Zealand Modernist | He Ringatoi Hou o Aotearoa - alongside contemporary Aotearoa painter Selina Foote this Spring.

For this installation, led by their Artistic Director Karolina Serrano (from Colombia), the creative community weaves connections and create a space-filling installation of thread and hands coming together in the spirit of community, hope and unity. Watch it evolve over the course of the Festival.

In te ao Māori, tāne and wāhine once lived in balance with each other, and all other beings who originated from Ranginui and Papatūānuku. Gender and sexual diversity were normalised but colonialisation brought a strict gender hierarchy and static sexual identities. With the power of pūrākau and whakapapa, this exhibition attempts to draw forth mātauranga Māori of gender and sexuality.

We have an all-new Sculpture Symposium for you! Our friends at the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary are hosting Sculpt Nature, celebrating human connections to nature through the sculptural arts. The event has a strong conservation theme, with the participating sculptors creating works which use only natural materials and fiber and reflect on their relationship with nature.

We’re thrilled to collaborate with this inspiring kaupapa and host a second Viewfinder Window in our Festival office at Morrison Square, in addition to their other home on Bank Lane, between Trafalgar Street and Montgomery Square. 

Come see the view change in a street near you - unexpected experiences in otherwise familiar spaces! 

Want Whakatū to have more public artwork which speaks to what matters to our rangatahi in this moment in time? We may have just the thing for you!

In partnership with Nelson College, artist Nerys Ngaruhe will work with local rangatahi to co-create a mural on Broads Field, celebrating toi Māori, street art and youth voices in our community.

Does the time of day bring out different capacities of our human spirit? Tui-winning jazz bassist Umar Zakaria presents the Sun Song Suites, four concerts exploring the human construction of time through our relationship with the sun.

High above the harbour, suspended by a crane on 2.7 tonnes of ice, a figure - isolated on a melting platform - struggles for balance. As sunset approaches what will be left? We are confronted and inspired by their determination to adapt and survive. There's no time to waste.

Over eight hours in one day, Legs On The Wall brings death-defying beauty to the current climate crisis, with THAW.

In 1968, legendary Aotearoa-born composer and deep listener Annea Lockwood set fire to an irreparable upright piano on the banks of the River Thames in London.