Issue 45

.. expand its floor space) can be an exercise in angst and frustration as you sift through the many variations available in every conceivable item. Should you buy this version of raspberry jam because it’s an Australian brand? Or is it just packaged here while the fruit is actually from Korea? Or is some of…

.. Pepper could well have used Bill as their model and I’m sure you can think of many more examples. He was actually once asked if he’d consider playing the role of Derek Smalls in a Spinal Tap musical – or was it a Spinal Tap tribute band? Either way he wasn’t interested – in…

..bloke talking about an amazing band he’d seen in London. When he said they were called The Rolling Stones I was actually quite disappointed. I didn’t get the blues connotation and thought the name sounded like they were just another folk band – and you had to live through the folk boom of the early…

..deliberately flouted and subverted. On the other hand this dereliction of governmental responsibility has given me ample time to attend to my inner thoughts and develop an almost Buddhist tranquillity and acceptance of the vagaries of travel. Or the absence of movement. My Zen training began in my early days of commuting. It was a…

For Bill, portraits were an occupational hazard and a source of income; workmanlike, but oddly at variance with his other work, i.e. landscapes largely empty of people. Had he painted only portraits he would have been a very minor footnote in New Zealand art, but fortunately he spent nearly fifty years defining the landscape of…