The Metropolitan Club

The Metropolitan Club The most interesting little events company in the world ✨

While the Still Life | Wild Places exhibition at Katherine Mansfield House & Garden may have come to an end, the experie...
29/11/2021

While the Still Life | Wild Places exhibition at Katherine Mansfield House & Garden may have come to an end, the experience lives on through the Literary Taxidermy Writing Competition!

The Literary Taxidermy team agreed to use Mansfield as their muse for the 2021 contest and this year's participants were given the first and last lines from two works by one of New Zealand's most famous authors. Their task was to stitch together original stories and poems using those lines as their own start and finish.

Hundreds of entries poured in from around the world and we're very pleased to announce this years winners! Congratulations to...

🖊 Laura Lott, a student living in the Midlands, UK, won the short story competition with her entry “The View from Here.” It’s a macabre tale from an all-too-plausible future, detailing a collision of politics, privilege, and plague.

🖊 Emma Lamont-Messer, a former lawyer living in Auckland, New Zealand, who won the poetry contest with her poem “Daleko Tea.” It’s an unsettling report from a café that seems unable to shake off its dark past, and it imbues Mansfield’s lines with an unexpected creepiness.

Click the link below to read more about the winning entries, as well as those of all the short story and poetry finalists, and find out how you can order the 2021 anthology of literary taxidermy THE ART OF DEATH — Available now as paperback or digital download!

https://literarytaxidermy.com/news.html

📸 feature works by Antoinette Ratcliffe and Jane Thorne, two artists from the Still Life | Wild Places exhibition

We wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who visited our exhibition in Wellington - we're going to miss all the un...
15/11/2021

We wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who visited our exhibition in Wellington - we're going to miss all the unusual inhabitants who have called Katherine Mansfield House & Garden home over the past few months 🦉🦌

Thank you so much to our incredible artists, partners and sponsors:
Karley Feaver Artist
The Sick Bay: taxidermy art by Antoinette Ratcliffe
Hayley Theyers
Steph Lusted Jewellery & Objets d' Art


Paola King-Borrero artist
Katherine Mansfield House & Garden
Hendrick's Gin

To see more from these fabulous women: https://www.themetropolitan.club/meet-the-artists.html

12/11/2021

It's the last weekend to enjoy and many of these beautiful art pieces are for sale 🖤

Come one, come all! There are only a few days left to step into the wonderful and curious world of Katherine Mansfield. ...
11/11/2021

Come one, come all! There are only a few days left to step into the wonderful and curious world of Katherine Mansfield. Arguably one of NZ's greatest female authors and poets ✒

The exhibition features a range of local female artists who bring her incredible words to life in their own unique way.

Table setting by The Sick Bay: taxidermy art by Antoinette Ratcliffe
📸 by Stephen A'Court

"...roses are the only flowers that impress people at garden parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of know...
09/11/2021

"...roses are the only flowers that impress people at garden parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of knowing." 🌹 ~ Katherine Mansfield, A Garden Party



Hayley Theyers
The Sick Bay: taxidermy art by Antoinette Ratcliffe
Steph Lusted Jewellery & Objets d' Art
Karley Feaver Artist

We're in the final week of the exhibition - pop by this weekend, and explore the series of curious new settings that a...
06/11/2021

We're in the final week of the exhibition - pop by this weekend, and explore the series of curious new settings that are informed by Mansfield’s life and works 🌱

Deer by Karley Feaver Artist
📸 by Stephen A'Court

"She is a connoisseur of the ripples that mean so much more than waves, a collector of little emotions caught on the win...
06/11/2021

"She is a connoisseur of the ripples that mean so much more than waves, a collector of little emotions caught on the wing, never pinned or bottled in her pages, but kept alive there in all their fragile iridescent colours". 📖 ~ Robert Litell on Katherine Mansfield

Artist Spotlight ✨ Paola King Borrero is greatly influenced by her international background, cultural sensitivities and ...
04/11/2021

Artist Spotlight ✨ Paola King Borrero is greatly influenced by her international background, cultural sensitivities and her education. Born in Colombia, raised in New Zealand and educated in the United States (art history and painting), she has lived and taught art and art history in Greece since 1997.

"Ever since I can remember I have been collecting objects and images. The main content of my work is the vast materials I have gathered for more than 30 years. Beginning at University with oil paintings on canvas, then to collage, I proceeded to use from my immense collections to create my recent assemblages. Attracted to materials found in nature, such as hair, beehives, teeth and bones, meshed with everyday objects such as boxes, dilapidated frames and printed matter, I try to create an elusive quality by exploring associations that convey intense emotion. With these materials, I am able to articulate my perspective of the world.

When I come upon an object, I initially look at its purpose, then its physical appearance, texture, colour, and where it came from. I thirst to alter it in some way while yearning to discover its unique beauty. I begin to gather together what I feel has a connection with the object or image, in either a conceptual or visual way. In creating my work, I believe one of my biggest challenges is trying to figure out exactly what relationship these raw materials have with each other and then their contradictions. My subject matter is birth, death, the body, pain, pleasure and the contemporary interspersed with nostalgia. As evidenced in a selection of works, juxtapositions between the beautiful and the ugly, the serene\violent, optimism\pessimism, plastic\natural are now translated into biting edge beauty intermingled with a hint of the macabre. To complete my process through these works I try to emote a glimpse of uneasiness for the viewer. The titles also play an important role in my work".


Bodice by Paola King-Borrero
📸 : Stephen A'Court

03/11/2021

Any keen gardener reading Katherine Mansfield's New Zealand-based stories cannot fail to be impressed by her ability to describe plants and wildlife in such a way that it makes one pause, read the paragraph over again, slowly absorbing the words and think what a keen observer of the natural world she really was 🌷🌹🍂🍄🌼



Hayley Theyers Photography
The Sick Bay: taxidermy art by Antoinette Ratcliffe
Steph Lusted Jewellery & Objets d' Art
Karley Feaver Artist

“Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can...
01/11/2021

“Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people.” ✒️ -- Katherine Mansfield, Letter to Sylvia Payne (24 April 1906).

There are still two weeks left to enjoy the exhibition so make sure you head along, tell all your friends and enjoy some beautifully curious pieces from local women artists.

The Sick Bay: taxidermy art by Antoinette Ratcliffe
Steph Lusted Jewellery & Objets d' Art
Karley Feaver Artist



Hayley Theyers Photography

Fancy a delicate cup of bug-invested tea at this curious table setting? 🦗 Come along to our Halloween event this weekend...
29/10/2021

Fancy a delicate cup of bug-invested tea at this curious table setting? 🦗 Come along to our Halloween event this weekend and celebrate the weird & wonderful spaces here at Katherine Mansfield House & Garden 🕷 🕸 https://fb.me/e/kh3vQ6rzO

Sunday 31st October, from 6.00pm.



Hayley Theyers
The Sick Bay: taxidermy art by Antoinette Ratcliffe
Steph Lusted Jewellery & Objets d' Art
Karley Feaver Artist

"Going to Katherine Mansfield's birthplace is not unlike visiting the Treaty House, in that the history associated with ...
29/10/2021

"Going to Katherine Mansfield's birthplace is not unlike visiting the Treaty House, in that the history associated with the place almost overwhelms the building." --- Linda Burgess, Historic Houses: A Visitor's Guide to Early New Zealand 🗝

Address

Auckland

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Metropolitan Club posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to The Metropolitan Club:

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Thoughtful antidotes...

We started life as Glory Days way back in 2012, working alongside a team of passionate writers, journalists, photographers, artists, designers and talented vintage enthusiasts to produce New Zealand’s premier vintage lifestyle magazine.

In 2016 we decided that what the magazine needed more than anything was to be hosting events for our growing number of energetic readers and so we started working with another group of passionate people to produce what have been called ‘thoughtful antidotes to the everyday’.

We like that recommendation very much and have worked our way from managing costume competitions and taxidermy exhibitions to the Blood Moon and Dazzle Balls and from cabaret shows and midnight music hall theatre to Absinthe tasting with the Green Fairy.

All that was so exciting and more than enough work to keep us properly busy so we stopped publishing the magazine and devoted ourselves to the entertainment business. We do miss the magazine but our new path been a fantastic ride and we keep our hands in the publishing game with our travel guides and collectors almanacs.