Yinzer in the Shire

With chilly August evenings upon us again Wellington LUX is back! LUX is Wellington's annual outdoor light festival featuring light-based artwork from 36 different artists and art collectives. We attended LUX last year and throughly enjoyed the show. This year's event was significantly more crowded and we found it a bit difficult to truly enjoy some of the art over the throngs of people. Most of the installations are placed along the waterfront, starting at Te Papa and traveling the length of the wharf to down near the Portrait Gallery. For the past two years, however, our favourite pieces have resided in the alley way of Opera House Lane and continuing across Manners onto Eva/Leeds Street. One of this year's highlights was Rube , a white and black graffiti piece tucked behind Opera House Lane. As an audience gathered, spray-paint came to life via digital projection and sound. Animated water poured down into various vessels, a snake slithered, and a light switche...

We visited Zealandia for an evening encounter with the kākāpō Sirocco. Kākāpō are large, nocturnal parrots native to New Zealand and are a critically endangered species. There are currently only 125 kākāpō in the entire world, all of which live on remote, predator free islands off the coast of New Zealand. Sirocco loves humans and generally ignores his own kind. As a chick he became ill with a respiratory illness which lead to him being hand-raised. When Department of Conservation rangers tried to release him back into the wild he kept showing up every evening at the ranger hut no matter how far away they released him. Though adorable, this behaviour was actually quite a disappointment for the species. Kākāpō need as many mating males as possible so the population can continue to grow. Sirocco has no interest in mating, well... almost. After his encounter with Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine, Sirocco went viral. In 2010 Sirocco was appointed the Official Spokesbird for...