MORPH Magazine is a unique approach to magazine publication. Advert-free, non-profit, and with a focus on grassroots art and culture, it's a refreshing wind wafting between the corporate edifices of the publishing world.
Morph is an online only magazine produced by the Depot Artspace in Devonport, Auckland.
LATEST MORPH PORTFOLIO
thisisrabbit thisisrabbit generates left-field improvised doodles and is an exercise in the spontaneous illustration of narrative.“Using automatic writing techniques from the art of improvisation I create simple, absurd, playful works with maybe a twist of morbid curiosity. This results in a combination of doodling, street art posters and screen-printing, all with th... Read more... |
RECENT ARTICLES, COLUMNS AND REVIEWS
Hyougen* Hyougen* Last week it was made official; Tokyo is the most expensive city to live in. ECA International revealed the news that Tokyo had moved up one spot this year to claim the top position in their yearly Cost-Of-Living survey. The survey also noted that Japan has more ‘most expensive cities’ ... Read more... |
Londontown 5: Going on RecordI was back in NZ for 30 minutes this morning...in the form of a talking head via Skype. This was because I was very kindly asked to talk to a group of artists about statement writing. I’ve been writing statements for artists in a professional capacity for five years now, as ... Read more... |
BAFTFT 9: More than anything, this last year in America has taught me patience. Moving in with a family in rural North Carolina after living with three kiwi gents in a slightly dingy (see: well-loved/hated & rat-infested) Auckland flat meant a drastic change to my lifestyle. For the first five months back ... Read more... |
WCC 8: In the Thick of it When the New Zealand Company eyed up Wellington as its first organised settlement, they lacked vital foresight as to how large and populous the city would quickly become. Surrounded by hills and sea, the new city had little room to grow; the already crowded settlement had to accommodate up to ... Read more... |
Noun, Verb, Kimchi: Part 5 Preface One: I’m now up on the Twitter, @ClaytronGo. Would love to see you there.Preface Two: This is a column about life in Korea, except that this particular entry is about Bangkok. In fact, it’s the second part of a two-parter, which began here. Confused? Don’t be. In the spirit ... Read more... |
Katherine Mansfield, the ‘Underworld’ and the As a scholar, enthusiast and society member I was recently fortunate enough to attend Katherine Mansfield, the ‘Underworld’ and the ‘Blooms Berries’ Symposium held in the UNESCO city of literature, Melbourne. I was there to present a paper and to soak up all things Mansfield. Having spent the last five ye... Read more... |
Interview with Escapist Karley Feaver Karley Feaver is a self taught artist living in Auckland, born in New Plymouth. Karley works across a broad range of disciplines including painting, sculpture and taxidermy. Karley’s works are held in private collections in the UK, Russia and throughout New Zealand. Her recent project 'Interviews with Escapists' explores escapism, in ... Read more... |
Kyou wa Totemo II Tenki Deshita* I arrived back in the Land of the Rising Sun about three weeks too late to fully enjoy the Sakura (cherry blossom) season and the Ohanami (seasonal-drinking-with-friends-under-the-beautiful-foliage) day. However, I was lucky enough to see the last fading days of it, which was actually beautiful in itself, the pink petals lo... Read more... |
Noun, Verb, Kimchi: Part 4 Bangkok is a city of stories. If you don’t have a story on arrival, wait five minutes. The city will be sure to bestow one upon you. Take Irish Jimmy, whose heavily weathered skin illustrated the severity of his 40 or so years on the planet. Jimmy has stories. Jimmy ... Read more... |
WCC 7: A Stranger in Two Cities When travelling to Australia, I’ve always enjoyed discovering the subtle differences between the two countries. The confectionery aisles in supermarkets are often the best for this; Freddo Frogs replaced with Koalas, strangely named biscuits and all the kooky lines of Cadbury chocolate flavours that never make it to New Zealand. ... Read more... |
John Freeman: Shrinking the World At the beginning of this event, John Freeman, related a story of how, Oscar Wilde, when enquiring about the sales of his recent book, sent a telegraph with a singular symbol “?” Wilde’s publisher replied to this telegram with an equally expressive communication “!” This apt exemplar of the poignancy ... Read more... |
An Hour with CK Stead I hadn’t planned on spending an hour in the life of CK Stead. I was idly eavesdropping on someone’s conversation at book club when they mentioned how much they were looking forward to this event at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival; I checked my programme; I went along.The room ... Read more... |
What Good Are the Arts William Butler Yeats published the poem 'Sailing to Byzantium‘ in the poetry collection The Tower in 1928. What stands at the centre of this time-honoured piece of poetry is the unswerving belief that art, in all its manifestations, is what outlives us. According to Yeats, art possesses this potential for ... Read more... |
Can the Arts Save the Planet! It is often the event least anticipated that will undoubtedly secure a place at the top of your festival list as ‘thought-provoking’. I was blown away by the impact the event Can the Arts Save the Planet? had on me. I came away from the event with more questions and ... Read more... |
Featuring Lakshman Anandanayagam For this month's 10 Questions, Morph interviewed fantastically talented, Auckland based Flame Artist and Director Lakshman Anandanayagam. With a passion for all things involving visual arts, Lakshman spends a lot of his spare time moonlighting as a VJ and installation artist, creating, installing and performing visual backd... Read more... |
Religion: What is it Good for? Religion: What is it Good for? Remarkably, as Chair Sean Plunket stated, it took the three panellists of Religion: What is it Good for? forty minutes before journalists were blamed for the creation of media silence and the reluctance to discuss religion, a typical Plunket observation which met with uproars of ... Read more... |
An Hour with Lionel Shriver An Hour with Lionel Shriver in conversation with Charlotte Grimshaw Death and So Much More Lionel Shriver is one of the literary superstars of this year’s Auckland Readers and Writers Festival. Despite her ten novels from 1986 onwards, and a journalistic career which includes a spell at The Economist and a current ... Read more... |
Ben Naparstek: In Conversation Ben Naparstek: In Conversation The interaction between an interviewer and interviewee involves a delicate pattern of linguistic steps bounding backwards and forwards. Ben Naparstek, editor of Australia’s The Monthly and author of In Conversation: Encounters with Great Writers (2009) established this apt analogy of the journalistic interview as a nimble rhythmic ... Read more... |
Sarah Thornton: Seven Days in the Art World Sarah Thornton: Seven Days in the Art World chaired by Linda Tyler Sarah Thornton is a big ticket author. In addition to the ubiquitous jug of water which no one ever touches, someone dressed in black lays out two full wine glasses. Chair Linda Tyler, dressed rather fabulously in sequins, introduced ... Read more... |
Paul Millar: No Fretful Sleeper Paul Millar: No Fretful Sleeper Chaired by Peter Wells One of the wonderful things about the Auckland Readers and Writers Festival (and Auckland Triennial and the public library, come to that) is the opportunity to learn about something new as well the opportunity to get to know a favourite writer a ... Read more... |
An Hour with Marti Friedlander An Hour With Marti Friedlander chaired by Len Bell Reading the Portrait Marti Friedlander sold out the smallish NZI room, and for good reason. With a body of work stretching back half a century, her photographs have touched many people’s lives and for many different reasons. The most famous images from Friedlander’s fifty-year ... Read more... |
An Hour with Alison Wong An Hour with Alison Wong chaired by Graham Beattie The Present Past The platform was set up like someone’s idea of a library. There were two leather chairs sitting on a Persian rug, framed by potted palms. The rows and rows of chairs facing the platform made this setup seem a little ... Read more... |
The New Zealand Listener Opening Night The New Zealand Listener Opening Night of the Auckland Readers and Writers Festival is, without fail, a “moveable feast”. This year’s collection of writers was no exception. When I first heard the combination of distinguished writers expected to ‘open’ the festival I was intrigued. Each literary figure has proven themselves distinct, ... Read more... |
WCC 6: Dining with Ducks I’d never really thought of food as being particularly associated with New Zealand culture. Our perceptions of almost every foreign culture are rich with images of their exotic cuisine. But in New Zealand, aside from Watties’ attempts to nationalise their sauce (“You’ll always be a kiwi...”), we don’t really have ... Read more... |
BAFTFT 8: Kiwi Music With a Bang It’s 2am on a Monday night and I am driving on a dark country road. The crisp, wet air is pouring through all of the windows, my hair is madly flying around my head giving me Medusa-like qualities and the stereo is blasting whatever musical treat the ‘Soul Town’ station ... Read more... |
Noun, Verb, Kimchi: Part 3I say the boy needs more homework. Pile it on. I want him to be Korean by the time he’s done.- Homer Simpson It’s a question with which every traveller struggles: How willing am I to let go of my own cultural values and embrace the values of my host culture? ... Read more... |
Method and Manners For many artists, finding your own studio space to create in can be a hard task. Artist Erin Forsyth and her sister, Leah, decided to take matters into their own hands. This year they set up a new creative space in Auckland under the banner of their non-profit company, ‘Method ... Read more... |
Londontown 4: Attention please! Apparently there is no such thing as a ‘geek’ anymore. In my day, Macs were the shape of E.T’s head and admitting you chatted online was reputation suicide. Therefore somewhere in the back of my mind, way back past all the security codes and passwords, flows an undercurrent of mistrust of... Read more... |
WCC 5: One month, one bar, six shows. It was with much excitement that I examined the month of March as it was laid out in my diary. A particularly good Victoria University Orientation programme combined with a couple of well-timed band tours had left me with quite the eventful schedule, if not and a little out of ... Read more... |
Dispatch from the Real World: The Office From Monday to Friday, from nine until five-thirty, I’m at the office. I always swore I wouldn’t work in one. I would be a writer, or an artist, or any job which didn’t require a desk. I might condescend to answer emails from a laptop balanced on my lap in ... Read more... |
