Ivy Fife directs the eye towards the red brick building, designed by local architect Cecil Wood and completed in 1928, home to Digby’s Commercial College in Worcester Street. Fife’s vantage point is her own rental accommodation in St Elmo Courts, a 1930-built apartment block that stood on the corner of Hereford and Montreal Streets until the 2010–11 earthquakes, opposite the old Canterbury College where she was a lecturer at the School of Art. Below, archetypal inner-city flats form a scruffy barricade between the refined Georgian-revival secretarial college and her elevated apartment.

(From Here on the Ground, 18 May – 17 November 2024)