Arts & Minds

From a famine to a feast: Auckland will host its first Fringe Festival next year, running from March 6-20, at the tailend of Wellington's Fringe Festival and several months after September's inaugural Auckland Festival. Artistic director Kim Renshaw, who is working at the SiLo, says although a proportion of Wellington Fringe artists will move on to the Auckland event, "we hope it will have 65 per cent Auckland content".

Named Fringe Auckland, the festival will spread across several venues, including the SiLo, the Herald Theatre, the Classic, possibly the Maidment Studio, and Aotea Square.

The concept of fringe originated at the Edinburgh Festival, where so-called alternative performers demanded their own platform. Renshaw says Fringe Auckland hopes to attract "some groups which have produced in the past, like Theatre At Large and Inside Out, that we want to come back into the industry and start again". She says it will also contain more music and visual arts content than the Wellington event. The board, which is still being set up as part of a charitable trust process, has applied for $30,000 from Creative New Zealand, and will seek corporate sponsors and contra advertising and marketing deals to meet its total projected budget of $90,000.

Registrations will be open from July until November; for more information contact kim.renshaw@paradise.net.nz

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And these people have started a war: US Republican Senate majority leader Bill Frist was aghast to discover Congress has accidentally allocated US$121 ($220) million to the arts. "We approved what?" asked Frist, according to The Onion website. "Any funding of the arts was purely accidental ... any financial support of artists, musicians or writers on my part was done unwittingly."

He said it. The 2003-4 budget bill, which boosted defence spending by squillions and gave billions in tax breaks to oil companies, also included the assistance to the National Endowment for the Arts. It seems the senators who voted 76-20 for the bill don't read the material. Although the bill stated the aim of assisting programmes to encourage public understanding of the arts, one senator (R) Ted Stevens reckoned he was confused, while another, Gil Gutknecht (also R), said, "This means some limp-wristed NEA member will decide what qualifies as art rather than Congress or the President. Remind me never to skim a bill again."

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The ATC's production of The Graduate finishes its dream run at the Maidment on Saturday night. Ironically, ex-Shortland Streeter Paul Ellis, who flew back from London to play Benjamin, is being eyed up for an English touring production of the play on the recommendation of casting agent Pip Worlidge, who also flew in from the UK. As for the sex scenes between Benjamin and Mrs Robinson (Elizabeth Hawthorne), Worlidge thought they were the "best in the world", declares the play's director and outgoing ATC head, Simon Prast.

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Recommended: Dean Tercel's Allure, Oedipus Rex Gallery. Over a number of years and a lot of exhibitions, Dean Tercel has stuck to the same line - portraits of young women whose sensuality is matched by the sensuality of the paint. He has got better and better at it, but here and there falters into drawing where he should model. Nevertheless, he creates bold, instantly recognisable images; until April 5.

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Ranges of Inspiration II auction, Corban Estate Arts Centre Galleries, 426 Great North Rd, Henderson. Art which has been on show since last month goes under the hammer to raise money for the Waitakere Ranges Protection Society. Artists include Greer Twiss, Stanley Palmer, Don Binney, Peter Siddell, Gretchen Albrecht. Open 10am-4.30pm each day. Bidding starts on Sunday at 4pm (viewing closes that day at noon).