A dozen new exhibitions and a mural-in-progress colour the inner city.
Many Dunedin galleries have co-ordinated new exhibitions to coincide with the Otago Festival of the Arts.
The Dunedin Public Art Gallery has three new exhibitions on.
"Cut Collective" is a stunning collaboration by six Auckland graffiti artists who transformed the Alexander McMillan Gallery into a burlesque television game show that really has to be seen to be believed.
"Don Driver: The Relief Years 1971-1975" revisits the master painter's relief works produced in the early 1970s.
Meanwhile, the irreverent and disquieting "Pretty Vacant" brings together works from the gallery's collection by Saskia Leek, Peter Peryer, Ronnie van Hout and Mark Braunias.
The naming of the exhibition after '70s punk band the Sex Pistols' anti-anthem Pretty Vacant pretty much says it all.
Broad Bay artist Ewan McDougall's latest exhibition, "Man Murdering Bear", has also opened at Gallery De Novo.
"It's a play on the old expression after a hard day's labour in the northwestern Australian iron ore mines, 'I could murder a beer'," he said.
The exhibition also includes a striking 2m by 3m autobiographical diptych, Oamaru Boy.
Lure hosts "Smother", an exhibition of jewellery by Victoria McIntosh.
Marie Strauss explores the dark side of innocence in "All is not well in Paradise" at the Temple Gallery and the eerie Gary Waldrom delves into magic and sinister dreamscapes in his self-titled exhibition at Milford Galleries in Dowling St.
Gangsters, pretty boys, jesters and puppets all make an appearance in this underground world where strange characters meet in the dead of night.
An accompanying exhibition at Milford, "Introducing", showcases the work of young contemporary painters Marc Blake and Tim Thatcher.
Just down the road, Allan Batt and Jane Crisp collaborate on "Flora and Fauna" at the Artist's Room.
And just across the road at the Brett McDowell Gallery, Melbourne artist Rob McHaffie reveals his first New Zealand exhibition, "Hope for the Dishevelled Seeker".
"You'll find bits and pieces of everyone, everything and nothing in my work. I try to keep it open and feed it like a fire," McHaffie said of his work.
Moray Gallery has a series of new paintings by James Kerr and John Z. Robinson in "notes from grey city" and Rocda Gallery celebrates women in "Plenty", an exhibition of works by female artists exploring jugs, vessels and bodies.
Down the peninsula, Bellamys Gallery in Macandrew Bay features "Reaches", by Pauline Bellamy and her sons, Manu Berry and Max Bellamy, inspired by a family trip to Doubtful Sound.
Meanwhile, in Hoyts Lane, street artists Sean Duffell, Aaron Manuel and Harry Skipper are completing a mural inspired by Otago.
Pop down and see the work in progress.
