For the next two weeks, across Auckland, more than 100 world class shows - local and international - will astound and entertain.

"It's going to be a family reunion mixed with work." Since his sister moved to the North Shore in 1999, David Shrigley has been a frequent visitor to New Zealand.

The Pacific Rim is reflected in the Auckland Arts Festival with art from Japan, New Zealand and Samoa. Six artists from Japan at the St Paul Street Gallery make considerable demands on the viewer. Three long videos are full of angst, examining Japanese so

Elisabeth Easther takes a look at the Auckland Arts Festival’s crowd-pleasers and finds plenty to both amuse and delight.

"Hold on," says the woman on the end of the line. "He is in rehearsal right now. I'll just go and grab him."

NZ On Screen Content Director Irene Gardiner selects five great New Zealand arts documentaries, to mark the start of the 2015 Auckland Arts Festival.

Danik Abishev was born in the circus "I really didn't have a choice about becoming a performer," he says.

Nestled in beautiful Tapapakanga Park Splore festival became annual for the first time this year, and it seems the move was a very successful one, write Lydia Jenkins and Rachel Bache.

A gallery has grown in the heart of Coromandel Town. In a purpose-built space designed by Ron Sang, Barry Brickell's Driving Creek Art Gallery is hosting its sixth exhibition Using Paint and Clay Expressively.

"I don't make lollies!" Lemi Ponifasio is talking about the often-extreme reaction to his latest production, I AM, from which many audience members walked out when it was staged at last year's Edinburgh International Festival.

In painting, even at its most abstract, a strong horizontal across a work is inescapably read as a horizon.

Mother/Jaw is a youthful, passionate and promising exploration of being and identity. It emphasises "otherness" - arising from ethnicity, on one hand, and states of mind on the other - and takes a significant stance in the Fringe Festival dance programme.

Deutsche Grammophon must be very happy to have Grigory Sokolov in its stable. The Russian came to the notice of the world in 1966, winning the International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition at only 16.

On Thursday, Kathryn Stott caps off her first visit to our coundty playing Shostakovich with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.

Super-sized eggs of all colours are to be placed around the country - making for the ultimate Easter egg hunt.