B.
A stroll down memory lane. . .
Behind the scenes
Karen Cunningham found out her photo was in the David Cook: Meet Me in the Square exhibition when a resident at Edith Cavell Home and Hospital brought it to her attention during a weekly game of housie.
Karen Cunningham in front of David Cook's photograph of her (left) with her friend Lynette.
Karen used to work at the home and still tries to get to the weekly housie games to catch up with her friends there.
She was very surprised and honoured that there is a photo of her in a gallery.
Karen was out shopping with her friend Lynette at the time the photo was taken, and remembers that even then she felt excited to be photographed.
Over thirty years later, she says: "it's nice to have a nostalgic photo of that time". Karen enjoyed the memories sparked by the photo and the exhibition while acknowledging the many changes to Christchurch and its architecture since that time.
Come down to see the exhibition at Level 1, 209 Tuam Street on until the 24th of May.
The catalogue for this exhibition is available on our Online Shop and also in the exhibition space.
Related reading: David Cook
Exhibition
David Cook: Meet Me in the Square
24 May 2015
Cathedral Square, Centennial Pool, Lancaster Park, schoolboys, punks, nuns – a photographic journey through 1980s Christchurch.
Notes
Spotting Dad
When Caroline first found out about the David Cook: Meet Me in the Square exhibition through the Gallery's Facebook page before it opened, she had an inkling that she might see her father in the show.
Interview
The significance of everyday things
During the winter of 1984 my mother, father and I packed an overnight bag and climbed into Dad’s Hillman Hunter. I was five years old and, as far as I could remember, it was the first time we’d ever ventured outside of Blenheim.
Notes
Catch the Bus Into Town
Megan made a special trip to the David Cook: Meet Me in the Square exhibition last week after seeing a photograph in The Press of her and her friend at the Cathedral Square bus stop, taken in 1984.
Notes
Sisters Growing Up in Christchurch
Since the exhibition David Cook: Meet Me in the Square opened at 209 Tuam Street, the Gallery's Visitor Hosts have spoken to several people who either appear in the photographs themselves or have a personal story to share about a particular photograph in the show.
Article
Meet Me in the Square
The first thing you notice, even before the pageboy haircuts and oversized plastic spectacles, is the absence of smiles. The unhappiness in the eyes of the average Cantabrian snapped on these grey, chilly streets seems palpable. Even the Christ's College cadet, cradling a rifle as part of soldiery drill, looks ready to turn the gun on himself. In 1983, the year when David Cook began a project to explore his hometown, a camera as his compass, most locals look distinctly brassed off.
Notes
Meet Me in the Square
Now's a good time to make Friends with the Gallery. We're offering Friends 20%* off our new book of photographs of 1980s Christchurch by David Cook.
Collection
David Cook DIC Beaths Winter Fashion Parade
The former DIC Beaths department store was converted into the former Christchurch Bus Exchange on the corner of Cashel and Colombo Streets.
Collection
David Cook Funeral In The Cathedral
David Cook took more than 6,000 photographs of Ōtautahi Christchurch in the 1980s, recording life in the city from unexpected vantage points. Here, his camera peers through the door of the Anglican cathedral in the city square to a waiting hearse outside. It’s a scene of lost things; some obvious, others overlaid by the city’s subsequent history – the death that prompted the funeral, the (now absent) flow of traffic in Cathedral Square, and the cathedral itself, nearly wiped off the map during the Christchurch earthquake of 2011, and now being rebuilt.
(Absence, May 2023)
