Colourful splodge launches festival

The 2010 Dunedin Fringe Festival began with a colourful splash in the Octagon yesterday.

Paintbombs were hurled at a 3x4m canvas by a number of colourful locals, including deputy mayor Syd Brown, Dunedin artist Ewan McDougall and art writer and curator Peter Entwisle, to create what organisers were calling "Dunedin's largest artwork".

Of the 80 paintbombs launched, more than half missed their target, threatening the Robbie Burns statue behind the artwork more than the giant canvas.

Dunedin Fringe chairman Warren Taylor managed to get more paint on his clothes than he put on the canvas, while Broad Bay artist Ewan McDougall slipped up completely on the Octagon grass, adding mud brown to the other colours on his painting smock.

The artwork will form the backdrop for the "Busking Blitz" at the Otago Farmers' Market from 9am tomorrow.

The first glimpse of the fringe featured local, national and international artists.

Dunedin sound artist Peter Mason warbled away with his Flintstone-esque metal sound machine, with the sonic highlight a solo rendition on a saw and guitar hybrid he calls a "saw-tar".

Christy Flaws from Australian show "Bubblewrap and Boxes" had the crowd in a spin with her hoola-hoop swimming demonstration and Charlotte Dick and Sandra Muller resembled Brownies from the badlands with their "Camp Dunedin" hi-jinks.

Director Paul Smith said the launch was a chance for lunchtime crowds to get a taste of the fringe action to come.

"It's a sample of some of the fantastic acts we have performing this year, as well as a great way of celebrating all that is fringe," he said.

The festival will feature more than 50 events and 300 artists during the next 10 days.

The fringe fun continues today, with the launch of the "Chindogu Fringe Inventions" exhibition of weird and wonderful - but completely useless - inventions at the Otago Settlers Museum at 5pm.

The exhibition runs until the end of the festival, on March 28.

Comedians Irene Pink, Jeremy Elwood, James Nokise, Simon McKinney and T. J. McDonald will be throwing around the gags at the Polson Higgs Comedy Club and Academy Cinema.

I Love Camping is on at the Fortune Theatre studio at 7pm, followed by the world premiere of Head Full of Toys, featuring live music by Flying Nun and Dunedin Sound exponent Stephen Kilroy, at the same venue at 9pm.

Meanwhile, at the Globe Theatre, Wellington dancer and choreographer Sascha Perfect presents a fusion of butoh and live music in The Quantum Enigma at 7pm each day until Sunday.

"It's quite a meditative experience and goes into a spiritual realm," she said.

"You get into those liminal worlds that are neither logical nor illogical."

Wellingtonian Eli Kent's road trip The Intricate Art of Really Caring, about James K. Baxter, follows at the Globe at 9pm.

"It's about two friends who decide to go on a road trip from Wellington to Jerusalem, to see James K. Baxter's grave," he told the ODT.