The Spinoff’s top picks of events from around the motu.

When I read that Alex Casey turns to self-help book The Artist’s Way when she feels herself Animorphing into that monstrous 3D modelled remote worker, I knew I needed it – office life is no less monstrous. On Saturday the book was ready for me to pick up at my local library.

Squinting through my baggy tired eyes each night, I have just made it to the explanation of the artist’s date. Julia Cameron wrote that to create, we draw from an “inner well”. Ideally the well is a reservoir stocked full of trout. Some of the fish are big, fat and ready to eat, while others are babies that need more time. But the well needs upkeep – if we don’t give it attention it becomes depleted, stagnant or blocked. There are no more fish. The main tool to nourish the well is the artist date, a two-hour commitment each week to to go somewhere alone (she is strict on solitude).  It could be a walk, a visit to the best dump shop in town or any of the following events.

Performance and visual art: Having it all, all, all

Gus Fisher Gallery, 74 Shortland Street, Auckland Central
10am-5pm Tuesday through Friday, 10am-4pm Saturday until May 10
Performance: 1-2pm Saturday, May 10
Free

Saturday is your last chance to see an artwork by one of my very favourite artists, Eva Mendieta. The film on show is from her famous Silueta series, where she carved the shape of her body into natural landscapes and filled it with organic matter like moss, sticks, flowers or grass. She often activated the works with fire, water or blood. There’s a modesty to the five-minute video, with its grain and flickers, that adds to the intimacy of the work.

Mendieta is one of nine international artists in the exhibition, bought together because their work was pivotal in the re-evaluation of female subjectivity in art between the 1960s and 1990s. Other key works are Cut Piece by Yoko Ono, Semiotics of the Kitchen by Martha Rosler, So help me Hannah by Hannah Wilke and Ever is Over All by Pipilotti Rist. It’s not all serious – the installation of the works is big, bold and colourful, and many of them are tongue-in-cheek.

On Saturday, local artist Prairie Hatchard-McGill will be staging a one-hour performance called Bread – she will make sculptures out of soft, white loaves!

Northland

Music: Songwriters in the round at the Country Rock Festival

Scenic Hotel, 58 Seaview Road, Paihia
10am Saturday, May 10

Kingsgate Hotel Autolodge, 104 Marsden Road, Paihia
1pm Sunday, May 11

At songwriters in the round events, musicians take turns performing songs, usually acoustic, and sharing the stories behind them.

Visual Art: Sculpture Northland

Whangārei Quarry Gardens, 37A Russell Road, Kensington, Whangārei
9am-5pm until Sunday, May 11
$5 – $10

Over 100 sculptures in lush subtropical gardens.

Auckland

Music: Can’t Even, album release show, BUB

Neck of the Woods, 155B Karangahape Road, Auckland Central
8pm Thursday, May 8
$20 – $30

Singer-songwriter-comedian-karaoke icon Priya Sami is celebrating the release of an “emotionally unstable, classic hits debut”. She will be joined by a full band, a “celebrity choir” and supported by She’s So Rad.

Comedy: Bonetown, Brynley Stent

Basement Theatre, Lower Greys Avenue, Auckland Central
9.30pm Thursday, Friday, Saturday, May 8 – 10
$24 – $31

Poetry: An afternoon of poetry and music

The Open Book, 201 Ponsonby Road, Ponsonby
3pm Sunday, May 11
Free

Poets Craig Foltz, Alison Glenny and Richard von Sturmer will be accompanied by music from Robert Sly.

Waihī

Visual art: Now Always Forever, Cruz Jimenez

Muse, 5 Havelock Road, Havelock North, Hawkes Bay
10am-4.30pm Monday – Friday,  10am-3pm Saturday until May 29
Free

Big, celestial paintings that give way to abstract layers of paint up close.

New Plymouth

Music: Te Whare Tīwekaweka, Marlon Williams

TSB Showplace, 92/100 Devon Street West, New Plymouth Central
7.30pm Friday, May 9
$74 – $95

You simply must go to see and hear the country’s biggest heart-throb.

Wellington

Music / Books: Eyeliner’s BUY NOW, Q&A with author and artist

War Memorial Library, 2 Queens Dr, Hutt Central, Lower Hutt
2pm Saturday, May 10
Free

A chat between Michael Brown and Lower Hutt-born musician Luke Rowell (Eyeliner/Disasteradio) will be followed by a performance from Eyeliner!

Nelson

Music: Imani-J

Elma Turner Library, 27 Halifax Street, Nelson City
2pm Saturday, May 10
Free

Imani-J sings in English, Te Reo Māori and French, plays guitar, keys and swings between RnB, Neo-Soul and Afro Beat.

Ōtautahi

Music: Brouhaha With Keelty’s, Polson, Toronja

Darkroom, 336 Saint Asaph Street, Christchurch Central
8pm Friday, May 9
$15

“A brand-new free jazz group formed in Ōtautahi that offers ecstatic, burning, tangled webs of improvised sound complete with howling saxophone and guitar effects over a volcanic bass & drums team.”

Ōtepoti

Music: NZ String Quartet at Orokonui Ecosanctuary

Orokonui Ecosanctuary, 600 Blueskin Road, Dunedin
5pm Saturday, May 10
$60

The sun will be setting, the birds will be flitting around the protected forest, and the strings will be playing powerful, haunting, raw, emotional and sweeping music.

Southland

Film: The Big Bike Film Night

St James Theatre, 61 Irk St, Gore
6.30pm Monday, May 12

SIT Centrestage Theatre, 33 Don St, Invercargill
7pm Tuesday, May 13

$13.50 – $28

Two and a half hours of action, drama, humour and inspiration in the form of short cycling films from around the world.

This week, make a commitment to nourish your well. Ban your boyfriend from coming along and from calling you. See you on the other side.