World Famous in New Zealand

The phrase New Zealand gothic has been around for a while, often used to describe a distinctive film-making aesthetic running from The Piano [1993] through to Perfect Strangers [2003], but already evident in Alison Macleans fourteen-minute horror gem Kitchen Sink [1989]. Recent art from New Zealand seems to have run with the cinema gothic idea, but ditched its art-house pretensions to celebrate the guilty pleasures of the B-movie [think earlycareer Peter Jackson]. The result is a distinctive mixture of gothic dread, gritty realism and camp humour. Dread, because thats the prevailing atmosphere of the gothica kind of nameless, free-floating fear. Realism, because it often explores positions of cultural and economic marginality. And humour, because its hilariously tasteless, improvised and wilfully incompetentfast, cheap and out of control.