From the archive...
Satellites

Boh Runga

In the late 1990s Boh Runga, hair aflame, was the lead singer and guitarist in the band Stellar*, who were signed by Sony in 1998. Their debut quickly went platinum, taking the record for the country’s second-highest-selling Aotearoa album to date, and took home a slew of awards at the 1999 New Zealand Music Awards. But Runga’s first post-Stellar* creative endeavour would be just as successful. She began designing jewellery, first with New Zealand Mint, and then for her own eponymous jewellery line. Runga’s jewellery is now as recognisable as her music and she says, ‘I like to think my background in music makes what I do unique. Many of my designs are still in production from when they were first released so they have struck a chord.’

David Correos

Before David Correos was a familiar face on television in Aotearoa, he was racking up titles as a weightlifter. Although he began doing stand-up comedy in 2011, his main focus at the time was weightlifting and he became a national champion, Oceania champion, and junior bronze-medallist at the 2012 Commonwealth Games. Then, as he was pursuing qualification for the 2014 Commonwealth Games, Correos snapped all the ligaments in his ankle — a devastating and career-ending injury. Not long after, he left his job as a debt collector, moved from Ōtautahi to Tāmaki Makaurau, and began pursuing a career in comedy.

Yuk King Tan

During Yuk King Tan’s childhood, her family lived in Australia, Aotearoa, Malaysia and the United States, although it was Aotearoa that she identified with most strongly. Then, in 2005, after she’d become well known as a contemporary artist, Tan moved to Hong Kong — a kind of reverse migration towards her family connections. She still lives and works in Hong Kong, where she is now ‘a hybrid of both territories’.

Laurie Foon

Laurie Foon spent twenty years building Starfish, a fashion label that aimed to minimise its environmental impact through local manufacturing and eco-friendly materials and processes. After the label closed in 2013, Foon began to parlay the intense focus on sustainability that she had developed through the label to other avenues, realising that ‘There’s only so much individuals and businesses [can] do without that … change coming from within a system that we live in.’ After a few years working for the Sustainable Business Network, Foon was elected to Wellington City Council in 2019. In 2022 she was re-elected and appointed Deputy Mayor, and she has continued to champion sustainability initiatives in these roles.

Onlie Ong

After moving from Taiwan to Aotearoa in 1991, Onlie Ong began taking evening classes in ceramics. Over the next two decades he exhibited his ceramic sculptures, his work distinctive for its trademark touch of surrealism and layered symbolism. But in 2008 a wrist injury hampered Ong’s ability to work with clay. He pivoted to painting and, while the medium may be very different, his taste for absurdism and the unexpected has followed him from his ceramics into his paintings.

Graci Kim

Graci Kim is a New York Times-bestselling fantasy author — and her own life story is full of twists and turns. She began writing after working in Taipei and Beijing for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, but even during that time she launched a toy company (that turned children’s drawings into soft toys) and hosted a cooking show called Graci in the Kitchen, which was broadcast on Tastemade and the Food Channel. After emergency eye surgery, which left her blind for a few months, and the death of her grandmother, Kim decided to return to Aotearoa and throw herself into writing. Early in the transition from diplomat to writer she used an anglicised pen name, before embracing her family name, Graci Kim.