B.

I’ve had this little untitled sculpture by Clare Noonan on the same wall in my home for more than 15 years. It might even be the first thing I hung there, since we’ve had our house about that long. I bought it at a fundraiser for the High Street Project, and I’ve always loved it, for reasons I find hard to explain.  Sometimes, it suggests a new way to think about the world; in others, it feels like a reminder of something I already know.

Artists from Aotearoa New Zealand are often well-travelled. Feeling the distance of Aotearoa from the world’s centres of art, they have often been drawn overseas to study and work, contributing to the art history of their adopted countries as well as this one.

As we all know, one of the best ways to prevent the spread of Covid-19 is washing our hands. For the last week or so, our wonderful librarian Tim Jones supplied all the bathrooms at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū with poems by New Zealand poets to make the recommended 2-minute handwashing sessions pass a little more bearably.

Now we are all working from home, we'll try to keep this going, starting with a reading of On First Looking into Chapman's Homer by John Keats, the poem behind Michael Parekowhai's sculpture. Tim himself is the reader.

Press play and start washing.