B.
Life lessons
Behind the scenes
Open, closed or merged; there's no doubt these are challenging days for all schools in Canterbury.
Ronnie van Hout House and School 2001. Mixed media. Purchased, 2004
Reproduced with permission
The one above, a model of the primary school artist Ronnie van Hout attended while growing up in Christchurch, seems to suggest how large that first school looms in the life of children. In Ronnie's installation, a tiny image of the artist is visible through one of the school windows, and also inside the bedroom of his Aranui home. A looped video plays and replays the breathless bike ride between these two locations, while a makeshift UFO (or is that a ministerial monitoring device?) hovers above.
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)