Performance shines light on mental health issues

The complex issues of mental wellbeing, suicide prevention and aftercare when someone has taken their life will be addressed in a theatre show/seminar at the Warkworth Town Hall on June 28.

Shot Bro – Confessions Of A Depressed Bullet will be presented by Rob Mokaraka, an actor/writer who had a public mental and spiritual breakdown in Point Chevalier, Auckland in 2009. In his own words, he says he provoked the police to shoot him dead on the street, outside his house. He ignored the warning from police and took another step, which resulted in him being shot in the chest at close range. After multiple surgeries, multiple court cases and multiple therapies, he created a tool for healing and educating communities and organisations.

“We need to illuminate this problem, because it grows in the shadows and the silence. We need to put heaps of aroha and light on it so we can educate ourselves,” he says.

The Warkworth event is free and is being hosted by the Healing Through Arts Trust. It is billed as being suitable for all ages, mental health practitioners, counsellors and community groups.

A trust spokesperson says that the performance will showcase Mokaraka’s personal experience on how to handle depression while creating awareness regarding suicide prevention.

“He uses humour and love to give participants tools to normalise and cope during these crazy, unsettling times,” she says.

Children can attend with a parent or caregiver.

People are asked to RSVPs to htatrust@ gmail.com by Monday June 26. Koha welcome.

Art classics framed with flying colours

Anthony Grant is having fun with framing. After a lifetime of collecting a vast and wildly eclectic selection of art, the Auckland barrister is turning his creative attention to how some of his world class paintings and prints can be displayed to pack more punch at Sculptureum, his sculpture garden, gallery and restaurant at Omaha Flats.

An ideal solution, he believes, is to add a vivid blast of colour to an artwork’s frame, mat board or both, and with the help of his regular picture framer, Stu Robb at Sgraffito in Remuera, has been pursuing this approach with characteristic gusto. Instead of plain black frames on a white mat board, many Sculptureum gallery exhibits are now sporting brightly coloured surrounds that echo colours used in the work.

Grant began his reframing project with a classic ‘comic book’ image by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein – actually a signed bag from the Guggenheim Museum – and a photo of the artist that is displayed below it.

He felt the images needed a bit of a ‘pop’, which is just what they got when warm coral red mat boards replaced the original white.

Grant has gone on to use the same technique with a collection of classic Andy Warhol prints, several Picasso posters, two more large-scale Lichtensteins and a print of the final abstract self-portrait by Henri Matisse, The Sorrows of the King, which sports a half blue, half yellow mat.

“Framing changes the relationship with the image,” Grant says. “This form of art can be magnified by framing. The novelty of colour … does that magnify or harm the