B.
The Easy Ride
Behind the scenes
Cycling is still one of the easiest way to get round the inner suburbs of Christchurch after the run of recent earthquakes, but you have to have your wits about you.
Since 22 February inner-city cycling includes the art of split-second dodging of the liquefaction, pot holes and road cones that litter many streets. It's an eerie experience cycling into work at the Gallery through the empty back roads past abandoned buildings with no traffic congestion – you'd think a cyclist would enjoy that aspect but it is just plain spooky.
My favourite collection work featuring cycling is Ronnie van Hout's House and School (2001), a work that includes a film shot from the handlebars of his bike as he cycles through his old Christchurch neighbourhoods of Aranui and Wainoni. The easy ride is over for now Ronnie, but I really do hope that in the rebuild Christchurch places an emphasis on creating an amazing network of cycle-ways to make it the envy of any city throughout the world.
A Christchurch pothole, the cyclist's curse and to be avoided at all costs.
Ronnie van Hout House and School 2001. Mixed media. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o waiwhetū, purchased 2004
Related
Collection
Ronnie van Hout House and School
Ronnie van Hout’s installation recreates his childhood home in Aranui, a suburb of eastern Christchurch, and his primary school in nearby Wainoni. A looped video replays his daily bike ride between the two locations. Together, these elements present the story of van Hout’s beginnings.
Familiar architectural structures, however, are taken beyond the ordinary by the presence of a hovering, makeshift UFO, whose surveillance results appear on a nearby monitor. Can we read this as a picture of suburban childhood experience as an alien might see it, or as the artist’s memorial to the need for imaginative survival and escape?
(Above ground, 2015)