A guide to Lōemis 2025

Monday, 2 June 2025

Andrew Laking is the founder and artistic director of Lōemis festival.

Lōemis is a small festival by design, and nearly every event is a new creation or circles broadly around ideas of midwinter – darkness and light, ritual, harvest and the turning of the season. Festival director Andrew Laking shares a few highlights with The Post to give a sense of this year’s festival, which runs from June 9 to 21 throughout Pōneke/Wellington…

Bret McKenzie and The State Highway Wonders

Hannah Playhouse, June 18-19

It’s not often you get to hear Bret McKenzie live in a small setting like the Hannah Playhouse, where he will be performing with his hugely impressive eight-piece band, The State Highway Wonders. I mentioned to Bret that we often have a focus on new works and he’s taken that one step further by, perhaps somewhat riskily, deciding to pen a song live on stage with the audience.

Two other shows happening at the Hannah Playhouse also deserve a special mention: Flashpoint :: Synapse and Waypeople, created by Justin Firefly Clarke and Jake Baxendale respectively – two of Aotearoa’s leading composers. I’d like to say they’re loosely from the jazz world, but their works are much harder to place than that – they’re also hard to explain in brief! They both bring vastly contrasting offerings that combine sound with highly original visual displays.

Earth Tongue

Meow Nui, June 13

Seeing as this show will be on Friday the 13th, we figure it makes perfect sense to channel some of that energy towards this cult-like, horror tinged, psych duo who have been making waves across Europe and are heading to us via Dark Mofo.

Clear Path Ensemble

Begonia House, June 12

Only months ago it seemed like the Begonia House was due for demolition, but the venue has been given a new lease of life, which means we can follow on from Tiny Ruin’s standout show last year with this equally lush offering from Clear Path Ensemble, presenting a suite of new work under the glass.

Sprites

Pukeahu, June 9-21, nightly

One good thing about June is that it gets dark early, which makes it easier to spot otherworldly, glowing sprites hanging out in inner-city foliage. Sprites is a sound and light exhibit we will be installing in the trees next to the Hall of Memories, designed to make your evening winter commutes a little brighter.

Lou Drago

Tararua Tramping Club, June 14 and 21

This year we’ve partnered with the Goethe-Institut to bring Berlin-based artist Lou Drago to Wellington on a month-long artist residency. Lou specialises in creating carefully constructed communal listening experiences and here presents a deep listening event at the Tararua Tramping Club with Erika Grant.

Food offerings

Graze Wine Bar and Everybody Eats, June 10 and 17

Ideas around winter harvest have been central to Lōemis since we began in 2016. This year we bring back regular collaborator Max Gordy (Graze Wine Bar) with a neolithic inspired food offering on June 17, and we are also partnering with Everybody Eats for a pay-what-you-can event on June 10.

Anemic Cinema

Roxy Cinema, June 16

Anemic Cinema (titled after the surrealist film from 1926) is a series of avant-garde silent short films, brought to life by Stroma, New Zealand’s leading contemporary music orchestra. One highlight, in a night of many, will be a new score to Len Lye’s seminal 1929 work Tusalava which recreates the beginnings of life on earth through meticulously constructed animations.

Dark Night :: Love Party

Dom Polski in Newtown, June 21

Winter is a great time of year to be going out into the darkness. I love the spirit of this event, which will feature a much-awaited debut showing from punk-pop duo Love Party, plus a rare cameo from Flute Journeys, who describe themselves as having the playing abilities of 5 to 12 year olds. Their performances are “joyful to watch … everyone becomes extremely invested in them making it through the next verse or chorus”.

– View the full programme at loemis.nz