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.

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.

"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.

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

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.

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

Other winning photographs highlighted animal cruelty in China and the Ebola crisis in west Africa.

As a setting for Shakespeare it would be hard to beat the café balcony of the historic Pah Homestead.

With the ongoing diet of gallery exhibitions, theatre and comedy, Auckland's creative offering rivals any of the world's great international cities, writes Heather Shotter.

Local playwright Victor Rodger has followed up last year's revival (Sons) and premiere (At the Wake) with a new play that brings a light touch to tragedy.

A NZ student who took only two years of art classes has received the best subject marks in the world in the Cambridge International Examinations.

Sections of the left-wing intelligentsia appear to believe the Eleanor Catton brouhaha says something disturbing about New Zealand.

'Oh my God, it's a cock and balls.' A $200,000 public sculpture being installed in Auckland is causing a stir with locals, who say it resembles a penis.

How to bring a legend to life? That was the challenge for film-maker Ava DuVernay when she was given the opportunity to direct - what is remarkably - the first major motion picture about Martin Luther King.

Prime Minister John Key says author's views shouldn’t be given any more credence than those of the Mad Butcher or Richie McCaw.

Is Eleanor Catton a traitor? Does Sean Plunket have a brain? Has the Prime Minister read The Luminaries? Who would have thought an obscure Indian literary festival could cause such agitated ripples.

Art causes lurching emotions. "From hateful boredom to supreme enlightenment," as John Radford puts it, raving about regular avant-garde concert series, Vitamin S.