The Culture Compass
10th July 2025
While film fanatics patiently bide our time waiting for the New Zealand International Film Festival to roll around (tickets are on sale now), we must find other ways to keep dark existential musings at bay and the creative synapses firing. Here is our selection of half a dozen happenings in the world of arts and culture that are worthy of your time – and money – taking place around the motu now and in the near future.
Moving from one heritage building to another, the annual World Press Photo Exhibition is relocating from its usual home in the now-closed Smith & Caughey’s building to 131 Queen Street this year. It opens July 26 and once again provides a heartbreakingly real look at the year that’s been. The collection includes images of Brazil’s record-breaking floods; migrants braving the Darién Gap – the jungle between Colombia and Panama; and the devastating 2025 winning image by Samar Abu Elouf of Mahmoud, a Palestinian boy injured during an Israeli attack on Gaza City. It’s a ticketed exhibition, open daily until August 24, and is always incredibly moving, albeit requiring some steeling of the soul on entry.
Mahmoud Ajjour, Aged Nine
© Samar Abu Elouf, for The New York Times
Mahmoud Ajjour (9), who was injured during an Israeli attack on Gaza City in March 2024, finds refuge and medical help in Qatar. Doha, Qatar, 28 June 2024.
When Banksy paints controversial images in public places, he is lauded as an artistic genius and multi-million-dollar unauthorised exhibitions – like the one that opened in Auckland this week – travel the world celebrating his work. When Te Wehi Ratana did it to the English text in the Treaty of Waitangi Exhibition at Te Papa, he was sent to prison. ration the Queen’s veges is a one-man play inspired by his experiences as the only member of activist group Te Waka Hourua to receive prison time for painting over the English text so it read: “No. Her Majesty the Queen of England the alien. ration the Queen’s veges.” Co-written by Ratana and Tainui Tukiwaho, the play – which despite its prison setting is described as an uplifting story about “the quiet voice of defiance” – opens at Circa Theatre in Wellington next month for a four-week season (August 16 – September 13).
The July school holidays may be drawing to a close, but inconveniently the children remain entertainment junkies year-round. One way to please the little punters is to put the Agrodome on their reward chart. For the remainder of this year, Rotorua’s iconic agricultural attraction is celebrating 30 years of Shaun the Sheep (Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave, 1995) with some high-tech and low-tech fun. An interactive AR trail is on now until the summer holidays, where visitors spot markers to gather their flock and complete a checklist of activities. The September holidays are set to have daily “Championsheeps Live” including interactive games like cabbage keepie-uppie and Shirley’s pie-athlon. And, save the date November 9 for Shaun’s birthday bash with cake, face-painting, mini-tours with Shaun and Bitzer.
Along with a desire to incorporate more feathers into your wardrobe, if there’s one thing the new Diva exhibition at Auckland Museum will awaken within you, it’s an appreciation for opera. Maria Callas’s ethereal rendition of Casta Diva is the first thing you hear through the accompanying headsets as you enter the immersive exhibition that contains fashion masterpieces, accessories, photographs, posters and more from divas throughout history. Running the gamut from Victorian opera singers to Judy Garland to Beyoncé and Rihanna, the exhibition has very carefully traversed the globe from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and will be on display here until October 19, with the special addition of Dame Kiri te Kanawa’s Millennium Dawn Concert coat.
Photograph of Maria Callas taken as Violette in La Traviata, 1958; Houston Rogers
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
And finally, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra along with Signature Choir are reprising Mana Moana for two concerts in the capital on July 24 and 25. A stirring fusion of symphony and songs of the Pacific, it was a roaring success when it debuted in 2022 and has been consistently gaining momentum, with Signature Choir having just performed two sold-out shows with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at Sydney Opera House. Mana Moana 2025 includes both traditional and contemporary songs from Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau, adding some brand new arrangements to this year’s repertoire. It’s a spectacularly moving evening of music and cultural synergy that, with comedian Tofiga Fepulea’i hosting, is bound to also include some quality belly laughs.
Opening in the capital later this month is Ungeographic, a stunning exhibition by Australian South Sea Island artist Jasmine Togo-Brisby. Australian South Sea Islanders are the descendants of people brought to Australia as part of the Pacific slave trade, primarily for cotton and sugar plantations. Togo-Brisby’s ancestors were brought to Australia from Vanuatu and her work, which has recently appeared in the Asia Pacific Triennial, the Busan Biennale, the Bangkok Biennale and the Adelaide Biennale, is drawing attention to the complex identity question for ASSI who, according to Pātaka Art+Museum curator Ioana Gordon-Smith, are connected to many nations but “are often not seen as belonging to any.” Togo-Brisby’s impressive large-scale pieces that include installation, video, photography and sculpture are being displayed throughout all the galleries at Pātaka from July 26 – November 9.
