Second Word-Fest opens
Rambling Rows at Lollokiki’s White Room is being added to by araLyn Doiron.
Word-Fest—Golden Bay’s vernal accolade to all things lexical—is up and running.
Last Monday saw the launching of two Word-Fest events, and the interest they generated showed that the success of last year’s inaugural Word-Fest was no flash in the pan.
Three Little Words is the title of an exhibition that runs throughout September at MONZA Gallery. Artists were challenged to produce works no bigger than a standard postcard, and use only three words.
“The idea came from a project I heard about called Postsecret,” said Word-Fest convenor Nic Wooding. “An American guy called Frank Warren distributed about 30,000 postcards and invited anonymous people to decorate them in any way they liked, include a secret they’d never admitted to before, and return them to him in the post. He’s produced books with what he’s had sent to him and posted some secrets on a website. It’s become a bit of a phenomenon. What caught me was that so much could be said in such a little space. For Word-Fest I thought we could make the works even more compressed by limiting them to just three words. The results are great.”
Golden Bay’s artists have responded enthusiastically to the challenges of the postcard-sized medium. There are 99 entries in the exhibition and they speak in a wide variety of voices. The exhibition includes words from three languages—Maori, English and Africaans. The three-word phrases include the portentously imperative Watch This Space; the interrogative Which Way Now?; the plaintive I Miss You; the comforting Time For Tea; and the satisfied It’s All Good. Some artists took the chance to express their connectedness to this planet, this country and this region. Others drew the viewers into a kind of dialogue as in, Sweet As, Mate! and Try To Understand.
All the works are for sale for just $30, and about a dozen sold on opening night alone. The exhibition will also benefit the students at Central Takaka School: $5 from each sale will be donated to the school’s library.
Across the road at Lollokiki’s White Room, the community story called Rambling Rows was started. Fortunately opening night was dark but not yet stormy, so the story got off to a fine start. Visitors to the gallery are encouraged to make a three-line contribution to the unfolding tale. The last line of the previous contributor is the only guide as to where the story has been previously. The story will be partially revealed later in Wordfest month.
Neil Wilson
