B.
Observation/Action/Replanting
Behind the scenes
I'm finding the demolition of buildings in Lyttelton (from the Timeball to the dairy) a very visible and unpleasant process. Where, for me, much of the loss in the central city is at present only made real through photographs and irate letters in the press, in Lyttelton - with no sealed off 'red zone' to conceal change - every new building that comes down leaves a very visceral gap in the fabric of my town. The stump of a tooth in a battered mouth.
So I can only applaud sculptor Andrew Drummond's Greening Spaces project, which seeks to link schools with empty sites in their vicinity, and involves children in the reclaiming of those spaces. The project provides seeds plants and compost, and the school kids get to make newly alien spaces into something a little friendlier.
One of the first schools he's worked with is Lyttelton Main School, which sits next to the site of the old library site on the corner of Sumner Road and Oxford Street. And here is Andrew at work on the site.
Andrew is a veteran of interventions that explore the relationship between humans and the landscape. In one of our old Bulletins curator Jennifer Hay wrote of Andrew's peformance art of the 1970s as the creation of 'situations that render the artist as worker, a vehicle for change'. It's good to see that continue in such a positive way!
Andrew Drummond Earth Vein (The Insertion, Action for 9 Stoppages,
Filter Action for 2 Entries) 1980. Digital prints on rag paper. Photos: Andrew Drummond and Gregory Wilson
To find out more about Greening Spaces or to volunteer, contact Andrew.