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Perimeter Notes: A day around the red zone
With Christchurch Art Gallery still closed and the city rattled by aftershocks, senior curator Justin Paton set out early this year for a walk around the red zone to look for 'signs of art-life'. In this diary of his day, he finds toppled monuments, long-hidden murals, 'outlaw greenery' – and a whole lot of wire-mesh fence.
It's 8:30 in the morning on 10 January in the earthquake-shaken city of Christchurch, and I'm at home packing my bag in preparation for a day 'on assignment' around the centre of town.
Don't, however, let that shiny word 'assignment' fool you into thinking I know what I'm looking for.
I've explained the trip to Bulletin's editor as a kind of tour of the public-art horizon, something to tie in with the public art programme that the Gallery has just launched. I've played up the idea of curator as reporter, trudging the city with Dictaphone in hand. But the truth is that my motives today are looser and more obsessive (plus, I don't own a Dictaphone). Partly, yes, I do want to see how public art as we know it is surviving in a city where so much has been damaged or demolished. But I've got to admit that I'm just as fascinated by everything in the city that's not art – by all the things in the post-quake landscape that seem to imitate or ignore or outdo it. And if I'm completely honest, I need to admit that art may have nothing to do with it – that I'm heading back to the edge of the so-called 'red zone' to simply and dumbfoundedly stare.
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Julia Morison Small triumphal thing 2011. Melted shopping bags, cement, silt, metal
Meet me on the other side
From strange grey forms resting in cages to old furniture that takes on a life of its own, through to beautiful abstract paintings made from 'liqueurfaction' silt, Meet me on the other side is Christchurch artist Julia Morison's evocative response to the earthquake of 22 February. Shown in Auckland in late 2011, where it was acclaimed for its 'horrifying brilliance', this body of work has been brought back to Christchurch for a special showing in a space overlooking the inner-city red zone. Here, Morison speaks to Sally Blundell about silt, shaking and spirits.
Rolling Maul
A lot of water, and Lord only knows what else, has flowed under the bridge since Justin Paton and I first hatched our plans for a fast-paced, post-quake showing of new work by local artists. Rolling Maul, so far, has been quite the antithesis of 'fast-paced', and despite our best efforts, it is yet to roll anywhere – rather it has been beset by the same delays, cancellations and frustrations as all of the Gallery's other in-house plans.
Our original concept, as outlined in B.165, was based around the use of one of Christchurch Art Gallery's ground-floor exhibition spaces, which we hoped to reoccupy as soon as they were no longer required as part of the City Council/CERA earthquake response. But as we are now only too aware, we won't be showing anything there any time soon.