BLOW 2011 creative arts festival breezes in
Coinciding with Guy Fawkes Night, the opening of Massey’s creative arts festival BLOW 2011 offers up an explosive mixture of design innovation.
From November 5 to 11, the College of Creative Arts in Wellington and Albany will present numerous events featuring art, fashion, music and design.
The festival features the end of year Exposure exhibitions of work by graduating students from the School of Design, and the School of Fine Arts, the highly anticipated annual fashion show and an invitation-only gala dinner in which illustrious alumni are inducted into the College of Creative Arts Hall of Fame.
This year’s inductees are fashion designer Collette Dinnigan, industrial designer Mark Elmore, typographic designer Joseph Churchward and School of Design founder Arthur Riley.
The BLOW 2011 festival brings the curtain down on a year of celebration marking the School of Design’s 125th anniversary.
Both the Auckland School of Design – with work by graduating students in the disciplines of transport, industrial and graphic design – and the Wellington campus will be staging exhibitions where photographic, textile and fashion design and fine arts are among the disciplines highlighted.
In addition, the School of Fine Arts is holding a curated group exhibition celebrating a decade of painting, drawing, performance, video, sound, photography, sculpture and text work by students who have studied across its Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts programmes.
Head of School, Associate Professor Heather Galbraith, describes the selection of work being exhibited as “judicious and incredibly lively.”
“It gives an insight into the variety of contemporary art practices that have been fostered through the School of Fine Arts,” she says.
College Pro Vice-Chancellor Professor Sally Morgan says the BLOW festival has become a popular forum for creative practitioners to network with each other, contribute to the learning environment and support the next generation of creative talents entering into design and art industries.
The event coincides with the New Zealand School of Music hosting a music therapy conference for practitioners and researchers investigating the benefits of music for groups including the intellectually disabled, the elderly and those in palliative care.
10:13 an exhibition of work by 13 alumni from the first ten years of the School of Fine Arts, curated by Jonathon Titheridge and Kate Adolph, November 3-19: The Engine Room, Entrance C, Wallace St, Wellington
Exposure exhibition, November 5-19, Museum Building, Buckle St, Wellington; Design Exposure, 10am-6pm November 9-November 11. Telecom Building Atrium, Victoria St West, Auckland.
New Blood: A catwalk show of graduating fashion design students’ work 8pm November 11, 3pm and 8pm November 12, Great Hall, Museum Building.
New Zealand School of Music, music therapy conference, 9am-5pm November 11-13, lecture theatre 4B06, Wallace St, Wellington. Entry fee required.