Dropping in to Colours of India allows you to escape into an imaginary world of luscious and vibrant sensuality, a place where you can dream of hot climates, the scent of spices and being the princess surrounded by handknotted carpets, inlaid marble and jewels. Gorgeous!
The courtyard out the back of the French Tart is light and airy and was surprisingly warm on a late winter’s day.
My business colleague chose the fish pie and said it was delicious. Love the fish-shaped pastry garnish.
I find it hard to go past my regular favourite, the lamb shank pie. It’s such a Kiwi dish for a French restaurant, luscious lamb smothered with a pumpkin topping. Yes – I know the rest of the world feeds pumpkin to the cattle (or makes Thanksgiving pumpkin pie). As a Kiwi, I enjoy pumpkin regularly as a vegetable.
Right by the Fairfield Bridge in Hamilton, and almost a neighbour of VaVaVoom boutique, The French Tart is in a handy central location. If you can’t park right outside or straight across the road, just drive round to the back. Being easy to access is certainly a great start in a cafe.
Through changes of owners, the menu and excellent coffee have remained consistent – and very good! An added bonus is, if you get there early enough, you can pick up your loaf of locally made Volare bread – without question, the best bread I have eaten anywhere in the world.
Those with a sweet tooth are well catered for. A limitation, however – there is not much on the menu for vegetarians, those seeking low fat alternatives, and those wanting gluten free options. While I am sure the kitchen would whip a salad similar to that shown as the very generous, fresh and crunchy garnish to our scrummy pies, I would visit more often if there was a better selection for my friends on special diets.
Where do you go in Hamilton for a good range of healthy options?
Dr Priya Kurian lecturing to Awatere Club members.
Monthly Awatere Club meetings introduce us to a range of topics delivered by experts in their field – areas of interest that we may not otherwise learn about. Topics this year included Dr Kirstine Moffat talking about “Stories of the New Zealand Piano” (great to see her book on this topic at Paper Plus a couple of days ago), Constable Lexlei Taylor inspiring us with her work with disadvantaged young people through the Big Brother, Big Sister programme, Graeme Polley talking about his work as an air crash investigator for insurance companies, and Ian McMichael talking about the widening role of pharmacists in delivering primary health care.
This month’s speaker was Dr Priya Kurian, University of Waikato, whose address was titled In Search of a Sustainable Future: A Feminist Narrative. By taking us through her own academic and professional journey, Dr Kurian introduced us to interlocking thoughts on the environment, gender, power, racism and bureaucracy. She described her inter-disciplinary work as “border crossing.
“When you come up against borders you see how they leak and seep into each other,” she said.
The website www.ashgate.com encapsulates her research themes more aptly than I am able to: Her “work opens up a path to understand, evaluate, and unpack the deep-rooted gender ideologies that shape understandings of and approaches to the environment and that, more broadly, influence political processes, power relations, and access to knowledge and resources.”
The University of Waikato website states: “Her research interests include environmental policy and politics; sustainable development; women, gender and development; public policy; race, gender and postcolonialism; science and technology politics; and media and politics.”
“As a social scientist I am committed to objective research – but all research is inherently subjective, shaped by our own values,” Dr Kurian says.
Dr Kurian took us through her own professional life, starting as a journalist with The Times of India in Mumbai. She was involved with writing about the Save the Narmada Movement, a grassroots group objecting to the development of a dam which would displace many marginalised people. In the face of the Movement’s protests, the World Bank withdrew funding for the project. (The project did go ahead, without World Bank input.) The project highlighted for Dr Kurian how public policies can destroy people’s lives, culture and land, through “the upholding of technical rationality and narrow economic values as a priority”. People’s culture must remain at the centre of development, she says.
A six month award to work in the USA led to her undertaking a Masters degree in political studies and PhD at the Purdue University. From there she was invited to work at the University of Waikato in 1996.
It was embarrassing to hear of Dr Kurian’s experience of racist treatment at bureaucratic level – jumping through hoops with the NZ Immigration Department to prove she had a working, everyday knowledge of English, with a degree in English Literature and a PhD from an American University apparently being insufficient evidence. With the abuse meted to her on a personal level, it’s a wonder she stayed. New Zealand boasts of egalitarianism. There is much that happens in our country to challenge this blithely stated assumption.
Dr Kurian touched briefly on the effect of nanotechnologies on our lives – the unknown and unpublicised dangers and promises – and went on to share some of her work with Shama:Hamilton Ethnic Women’s Centre Trust, a group that works to create societies that are socially, culturally and environmentally sustainable. Shama is a group that “challenges the pervasive barriers that ethnic women face”. It provides culturally appropriate support, advocacy and programmes to be a source of strength and empowerment for ethnic women.”
Kiwicommunicator’s champagne taste on a beer income is well catered for at VaVaVoom, located on the east side of the Waikato River just off the end of the Fairfield Bridge in Hamilton, New Zealand.
The boutique is stocked with classy donated items and staffed by volunteers. With all the profits going to Hospice Waikato, there is the added pleasure of knowing that you are helping with funding an important service to palliative care patients and their families, as well as engaging in recycling. No buyer’s remorse when you shop here.
The elegant window displays change frequently – quite a distraction when in the slowly moving queue of cars about to turn onto the Fairfield Bridge.
The exquisite collection of affordable preloved treasures ensures VaVaVoom is a collector’s heaven. Our house is full, so I leave these for someone else.
With the grandchildren all living overseas, it’s hard to know what size to buy – so the lovingly hand-knitted children’s wear remains on the rack – until the littlies visit.
Hmm – so glamorous, but not practical for a work-from-home consultant. Kiwicommuncator will return when there is a big night out in the diary.
Yes! Double whammy. A high qualityand fashionable red merino jacket for this spell of winter weather, the prettiest of floaty floral tops for the summer months ahead, and a wad of change from $100. Great shopping at VaVaVoom.
On the corner of Kitchener Street in Auckland stands a classical building, the old Auckland Art Gallery. Joining up with the old building is the modern and very New Zealand new building (in the foreground of the image).
The new building was designed to blend with the native trees of Albert Park which surrounds the building on two of its faces. Soaring above the entrance way are sarked timber ceilings with tall, shaped supporting pillars – an echo of the surrounding nikau palms.
One day I will allow myself the luxury of visiting the gallery just to look at its imported stone floors, full of wonderful fossils. This image shows a large nautilus shell and a feather.
Timber doors feature Maori motifs.
Here’s another door featuring a Maori pattern.
Hitting you in the eye is a suspended neo-pop work, fabric flowers which fold and inflate while you watch. Designed by Korean artist, Choi Jeong Hwa, the flowers are incongruous with the high quality natural materials that surround them. The plaque on the wall says the arrangement turns “the Gallery’s atrium into a gigantic glass house. Unlike living flowers, its blooms aspire to immortality; they will breathe continually for an entire year.” Isn’t the idea of a life span of only one year somewhat incongruous with the concept of immortality, too? I have always maintained that there is nothing more dead than a fake flower. For all that, I find the art work intriguing and have spent some time mesmerised by the gentle opening and shutting of each bloom.
In places like this, you can stand in the new gallery and look through to where it connects with the old.
Stepping through a door, suddenly you are embraced by the solid tradition and history of the old gallery.
The theme of contemporary natural elegance is carried through to the Gallery’s cafe built, once again, to blend with the trees of Albert Park.
This detail of the cafe’s timber ceiling shows the integrity that is part of every corner of the architecture of the Auckland Art Gallery.
Thanks to Sarah’s logic and persuasion, I don’t eat cakes these days. However, this image shows the attention to detail apparent in the Gallery’s delectable offerings. My friends enjoyed their poisson cru, elegantly presented in a glass, and my Asian noodles with chicken was a pretty scrumptious dish, too.
Allow at least half a day for a browse round the Auckland Art Gallery and plenty of time to linger in the cafe and enjoy fine fare and excellent coffee. There is a great selection of interesting teas and so many tempting food choices that we’ll be back there again soon. There is another cafe on another level of the gallery where you can sit outdoors. It will soon be warm enough. The stylish and spotless loos deserve a special mention, too!
The Sapphires
Just as I thought I was getting too picky to wholeheartedly enjoy a movie, along came the Australian movie, The Sapphires. Set in 1968 and based on a true story, the movie is about the rise to fame of four Aborigine women who became Australia’s answer to The Supremes.
Deborah Mailman’s portrayal of sharp, ugly and intransigent Gail was a highlight. Under Gail’s brashness and brutal manner, her vulnerability was searingly close to the surface. Gail’s emergence is unexpectedly, and completely credibly, tender and beautiful.
The 1960s detail was gloriously cringe-worthy – white patent boots, fluoro shift dresses and camels’ eyelashes. The Tupperware party scene was perfection. Then there was the contrast – the war in Vietnam, not overstated, but shown with an unsentimental pathos that burned the soul.
It goes without saying that the singing in The Sapphires was heart-pumping and colourful.
Apparently I was not the only one mopping up surreptitious tears during the movie. And laugh – the one liners resonate well after the movie is finished. The scripting is clever, wonderfully witty and tight. Top marks to the writers Tony Briggs and Keith Thompson.
Take a quick look at the trailer by all means – but the best lines have been kept for the actual movie.
Robyn McBride puts finishing touches on her seagulls.
Sue Edmonds readies her own work to be photographed…
… and here, she holds up Kiwicommunicator’s Growth Spurt, so that it, too, can be shot for the Artnexus website exhibition.
Starting today, my art group, Artventure, is exhibiting on the Artnexus website for one month. The artists who produce work for the Artnexus website exhibitions tend to be professionals, while those of us in Artventure generally focus on developing our style and skills – but we are proud (read overjoyed, ecstatic, blown away) when someone wants to buy one of our masterpieces.
What a challenge to finish works to a deadline. Sue Edmonds deserves a medal for ensuring that we delivered on time for the exhibition – herding eels would have been easier!
Pam Watson is involved in the artistic development of all the artists in the exhibition. Without Pam, I would still be sitting round finding the courage to learn to paint. Pam invited me to her four-day painting workshop at Raglan when I first arrived in Hamilton. My very first grubby attempt at capturing the light and shade of the Raglan hills in a series of messy charcoal “circles and sausages” was humbling – very humbling.
It is a testament to Pam that the exhibition features such a range of styles and media – something for every taste! She brings along books and prints from her vast collection and encourages us to learn by immersing ourselves in others’ works. She suggests, she challenges, she encourages us not just to see, but to think and to feel as well. Pam taught us to imbue our work with life and energy. Her instinct for knowing where to take each of us on the next step of our individual artistic journeys is unerring.
Please visit the exhibition and perhaps you could let us know which art work appeals to you and why. It would make the artist’s day.
Kiwi Communicator 