Back to the galleries…

During this year’s symposium – nearly a month ago already, yikes – several of the presentations highlighted upcoming exhibitions by our talented CTANZ members. These will be opening in various places over the next couple of months, and we’ll keep you posted here and on the Facebook and Instagram accounts. But there are other openings and closings around now.

For those in Wellington who couldn’t make it to Dunedin, we missed you, but a little bit of Dunedin has made its way to the Dowse, with the opening of Margery Blackman: Weaving, Life, which first showed at Dunedin Public Art Gallery last year. It’s an impressive survey of an impressive body of work, and at the Dowse now until early October. Following quickly behind is another new Dowse exhibition, Well-heeled: Shoes with Personality, which shares some favourite footwear of stylish artists. Its opening weekend was marked with an RNZ interview with Nigel Borrell and Karepa Wall about some of the shoes that are on display.

The first of the exhibitions prefigured during the symposium is about halfway through its time at Te Atamira, Queenstown’s arts and culture centre. Michelle Mayn’s work using inaka and wharariki seed is part of the mothermother collective’s Unifying Threads group show, which closes on 8 June.

Up in Auckland, a couple of exhibitions are also nearing the end of their runs. At the end of the month, PUPURITIA: Storytelling and Contemporary Textiles will be concluding its array of 18 textile artists with a weekend of events. Arielle Walker’s mini loom workshop has sold out, but Sione Tuívailala Monū will be leading a kafu couture workshop on 31 May. Before then, on 29 May there’s I wish I’d made that: Five textile lovers on coveted projects, in which Christopher Duncan, Doris de Pont, Jane Groufsky, Lela Jacobs and Whiro Walker will share specific inspirations.

Meanwhile across the way at the Corban Estate Arts Centre until 7 June is By Hand: Weaving and Fibre Craft Today, which celebrates Handweavers & Spinners Guild Auckland’s 70 years of creative practice in weaving, spinning, felting, tapestry weaving, knitting, crochet and dyeing.

For those who can’t get to any of these, there’s some new streaming and movies to keep us occupied until the next changeover The Great British Sewing Bee is back on TVNZ, with another creative batch of challenges and contestants. On Netflix, The Quilters is a short doco about a group of maximum security prisoners in the US who make personal quilts. And there are a couple of upcoming festival films. DocEdge has Full Support, the conversations from an Israeli bra fitting room, while the Resene Architecture and Design Film Festival 2025’s fashion film is Jacquemus: the Prince of Today’s Fashion, working through 10 years of the designer’s rise. Schedules are available on the festival websites.