Antarctica's barren environment has flummoxed and troubled artists for five decades - not least because its cold prevents them from gripping a pencil or paintbrush.

Foreign backpackers going door to door posing as gifted artists to sell cheap, mass-produced Chinese prints have been caught by police.

Ravi Shankar, a major influence on The Beatles and Dad to Norah Jones, has died. He was 92.

Basing its final concert for the year on Sunday around the theme of a German Christmas was a shrewd move for Bach Musica.

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra came to town with an early Christmas present: a Gershwin cocktail that capitalised on Freddy Kempf's recent CD.

Artist Stephen Martyn Welch this year won the Adam Portraiture Award for his self-portrait, he raised $75,000 for Starship hospital in an auction of his works and his TV show, The Sitting, was nominated in the Television Awards.

A photographer who has attracted international recognition for nude photographs he took of his wife in the '80s says the pictures almost never came to light.

He is an artist best known for wrapping the Reichstag in Berlin and for siting thousands of coloured umbrellas across valleys in Japan and America.

The Royal NZ Ballet's season of Giselle is wowing audiences with its revitalised version of the classic story of love, betrayal and revenge. Raewyn Whyte reports.

Current and upcoming listings from galleries in the Auckland area.