SunLive sponsored Miss World NZ Tauranga contestant Candy Barry visited Red Square this week to find out what people thought about beauty pageants. The next events in Candy’s quest to be crowned Miss World NZ are a charity lunch at Mount Bistro on Sunday, March 14 and the national final in Auckland on Saturday, April 8. See below for video of Miss World NZ Tauranga contestant Candy Barry quizzing the public about beauty More...

Dance Unlimited is gifting their old dance floor to the Tauranga City Council, as well as money to purchase a new one. Dance Unlimited is a non-profit organisation that was set up in the mid-1980s to provide dance opportunities for all dance students and to bring dance to Tauranga. In 1989, it purchased a dance floor from funds raised at a ballet festival and has since managed the bookings for the dance floor and collected revenue from these hires. Dance Unlimited president Susanne Hanger, More...

Tauranga Art Gallery’s latest exhibition has begun with `Queen of Kitsch` Judy Darragh showing her flamboyant work.   For the exhibition called `Throw Up’, Darragh has attached vinyl records, ping pong balls and polystyrene painted fluorescent green to the gallery walls as blank canvases. She has created order and balance by limiting her palette to black, silver and fluorescents. She says to throw in the towel, throw the book at, throw the baby out with the bath More...

Thousands of people turned out for the Kiwi Festival Carnival at the Wharepai Domain on Saturday.Crowds arrived at 3pm and listened to a variety of bands such as Kora, Tahuna Breaks, Kantuta and Capoeira Brasil until 10pm.There was also live street art, people dressed in costumes, food and drink.Kora performed at the carnival after a two year hiatus from performing in New Zealand.SunLive photographer Tracy Hardy was at the event. More of her pictures are below. Headline act Kora perform at More...

Former Tauranga Girls’ College student Hannah Gilmour is flying to America to showcase the unique sound she has created with chirping crickets. Hannah has been selected to attend the New York Electroacoustic Music Festival March 25-27.   Electroacoustic is a new style of music that uses electronic technology to create new sounds. Hannah Gilmour is taking her musical talent to New York. The composition Hannah has created took a year to compose. It uses the sounds of crickets More...

More than two thousand Kiwi music fans turned out to see Bic Runga, Dave Dobbyn and Tim Finn play at the MORE FM Winery tour at Wharepai Domain on Sunday evening. Bic’s sister Boh Runga opened the concert, with Che Fu joining her for the second half of the opening set. Photos by Natasha More...

The coastal lifestyle festival, Kiwi Festival BOP 2010 continues today incorporating the Maketu Kaimoana Festival. The third annual Maketu Kaimoana Festival begins at noon offering six hours of seafood, free beer and wine, entertainment and arts and crafts stalls, at Maketu. JA 1275 arriving about 6.30pm Saturday Another Festival draw card arrives this evening, when locomotive JA 1275 is expected at The Strand from Auckland with seven carriages. The steam train will be shuttling More...

Tauranga Art Gallery’s latest exhibition has begun with clay artist Len Castle showing his wares. The exhibition called ‘Mountain to the Sea’ has about 60 works portraying images of inspiring New Zealand landscapes. Len Castle: ‘Mountain to the Sea’. Photograph by Chris Hoult. Len, aged 85, has worked as a full time potter since 1963 and has used photography to capture the moment and then used these photos as his guide at the potting wheel. The exhibition More...

Tauranga artist Maraea Timutimu was honoured when she was asked to create the artwork in the foyer of the new building at the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic’s Windermere campus. It took Maraea about four weeks to create the sculpture, which is made out of perspex plastic and aluminium. The sculpture created by Maraea Timutimu in the foyer of the new building at the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic’s Windermere campus. The sculpture is the feature artwork in the new building, which is used More...

Tauranga artist Doreen McNeill has come a long way from her early days of drawing navigational charts for aircraft to establishing herself as an artist. One of the works featured in the exhibition Navigating Her Way. Doreen’s exhibition, Navigating Her Way, opened at Tauranga Art Gallery on February 13. It incorporates many of those earlier charts in her abstract, Caribbean inspired landscapes. Doreen’s childhood love of art was taken up during the 1960-70s while living in More...