RobiNZ Personal Blog

Spirit of Place, A Photographic Exhibition featuring Auckland's West Coast

This appeared on our company intranet today & is worth sharing. Paul Kettle has some lovely work on his site and is exhibiting as part of the Auckland Festival of Photography

Spirit of Place – Opens Sunday, 25 May '08 at 4pm (join us for a glass of wine) for four weeks

A selection of limited edition fine art prints capturing the spirit of place many Aucklanders associate with Auckland's west coast beaches. The exhibition is incorporated within the Auckland Festival of Photography.

Signal Gallery, 505 Highway 16 (1km before Kumeu), Kumeu, Auckland  0814, Ph 09 412 7052

Reproduced with permission from www.digitallight.co.nz

Sir Fleamund Hillary - The Cardoso Flea Circus honour Sir Edmund Hillary

Todays news of Sir Edmund Hillarys death has been reported around the world. His legendary achievements have inspired many tributes but I remember seeing, several years ago, probably the strangest imaginable.

I was in Sydney and while exploring the waterfront area stumbled into the Museum of Contemporary Arts. One exhibit was a small table sized Circus tent with beautifully made machined miniature alloy apparatus. Tiny towers linked with a high wire, a miniature cannon, a high dive board above a thimble and little dumbbells.

A video showed real living fleas performing the feats of skill and daring. The one that came to mind today featured a tiny felt covered conical mountain and seen, on the video, ascending it was none other than Sir Fleamund Hillary.

I wonder if Sir Ed ever saw it? I suspect he would have liked it.

I found a two videos of The Cardoso Flea Circus. The first is the performance I saw with the exhibit and the second shows the installation in Sydney.

ross rudesch harley - Cardoso Flea Circus Video (Featuring the sequence seen in the stills below)
Cardoso Flea Circus Video, 8 min colour video, co-directed with Maria Fernanda Cardoso, 1997

ross rudesch harley - Cardoso Flea Circus Installation at the MCA Sydney
3 min colour video, 2002; Museum of Contemporary Arts, Sydney, 2002.

UPDATE 24-01-2008: Thanks to a comment I can add these Flea Circus resources!

Fleas and Circuses Blog - fleascircuses.blogspot.com
A look into the microscopic world of educated and trained fleas.

http://www.fleacircus.co.uk
Flea Circus Research Library

Tags: Sir+Edmund+Hillary, Cardoso+Flea+Circus, ross+rudesch+harley

Blogging helps people help people - Whale Rider, a Blog and a helpful Author

I received an email, via the blog, from Swedish Television regarding subtitles they are preparing for the film Whale Rider.

They queried the meaning of a couple of Maori words – one I thought was only a slang term – but I’m certainly not an expert in the language. Not wanting to be “the Kiwi who put Swedish TV wrong” I tried to find an on-line translation but didn’t have any luck.

Wondering who to ask, I decided why not start at the source. Whale Rider is a 1987 novel by New Zealand author Witi Ihimaera. The 2002 movie Whale Rider is an adaptation of the book, with the author's involvement, by Niki Caro who also directed. A quick net search found Witi Ihimaera’s contact details and, kindly, within hours he’d answered the query.

It’s great that this wonderful New Zealand story will be seen on Swedish TV. It was cool that a blog, net search, email and a very helpful author combined to provide the correct translation. I hope my Swedish readers enjoy the movie & thanks Witi!

• Whale Rider - The Novel - Bookcouncil.org.nz
• Whale Rider - Official Movie Website
• Whale Rider - The Internet Movie Database
• Whale Rider - wikipedia.org

Tags: Whale+Rider

Nude Girls Skateboarding?

I loved the line: “If Fellini did an LTSA ad…”

Nude Girls Skateboarding - Spare Room Blog Archive

 Note; It does feature, as advertised, the nude female form and skateboarding but is “work safe”.

Little People - a tiny street art project

Delightful, tiny people photographed in the big city. 

Little People - a tiny street art project
Little hand-painted people, left in London to fend for themselves

via drawn.ca

The sexiest car in the world is a Fiat!

This just has to be good news for the new Fiat Trepiuno 500 (right) which arrives early next year.

The 1957 Cinquecento, Nuova 500 below, that inspired it has just been voted the worlds sexiest car by Britains Top Gear Magazine.

Even Sally, the sexy Porsche 911 Carrera from the Pixar film Cars, only rated 10th which perhaps explains Luigi’s grin.

Top Gear crowns Fiat 500 as Sexiest Car in the World - Autoblog
Wah? Top Gear conducted a survey to find the Sexiest Car in the World, the results of which appear in the recently released September issue. The results: the Fiat 500 is the Sexiest Car in the World. We'll repeat – wah?

Fiat 500 è l'auto più sexy del mondo - www.autoblog.it
Top Gear ha realizzato un'inchiesta per scoprire quali sono le prime dieci auto pi sexy del mondo. Tra grandi berline di lusso e costosissime coupè svetta al primo posto la mitica 500.

The world's sexiest car? - World - smh.com.au 
It may be slow and stumpy, but the Fiat 500 has a "wholesomeness" that makes it the sexiest car in the world…

Jill Perrott ~ Artist

Jill Perrott is a West Auckland Artist. She captures the wild rugged New Zealand West Coast including the Waitakere Ranges & its unusual black iron sand beaches near Auckland. I have one of her works; a view of O'Neils Beach which is one of my favourite beaches in summer. You can also view a selection of her work online at Parnell Gallery where she is exhibiting until 09-05-2004.