B.
Quasi takes shape in the Gallery's loading bay earlier this week.
Face Five
Exhibition
Christchurch-born and internationally renowned artist Ronnie van Hout has had a huge hand in our latest outdoor installation. Quasi, a five-metre-tall sculpture of the artist's hand and facial features, was unveiled this morning on the Gallery's rooftop, next to Gloucester Street.
Van Hout’s highly visible work is a continuation of the Outer Spaces programme, which has been running since 2009.
Director Jenny Harper says Quasi is a larger-than-life work that will make people laugh, think and discuss.
'If there’s one thing that has defined post-quake Christchurch, it’s our creativity, and Quasi is a wonderfully bold continuation of that,' she says.
'When the Gallery was closed for earthquake repairs, our Outer Spaces projects brought art out into the central city, taking over walls, temporary hoardings and vacant lots. We also installed another of Ronnie’s rooftop works, Comin’ Down, above C1 Espresso on High Street.
'Now that we are open again, Outer Spaces is back home, exploring new sites in and around the Gallery.
'Quasi’s arrival means the Gallery is now completely surrounded by art, facing outward to greet the city from all directions. It signals the energy and activity going on around us, and it’s up there for everyone to enjoy,' she adds.
The Gallery commissioned van Hout to create Quasi specifically for temporary installation on its rooftop. The towering work comprises a central steel structure covered with polystyrene and painted resin, and will be on display until 2017.
The Gallery owns nine works by van Hout, including two smaller-scale sculptures.
Quasi takes shape in the Gallery's loading bay earlier this week.
Quasi takes shape in the Gallery's loading bay earlier this week.
Quasi takes shape in the Gallery's loading bay earlier this week.
Related reading: Public art, Sculpture
Exhibition
Ronnie van Hout: Quasi
9 June 2016 – 25 February 2019
A giant new sculpture on the Gallery roof by Ronnie van Hout.
Interview
Not Quite Human
Lara Strongman: The title of your new work for the Gallery is Quasi. Why did you call it that?
Ronnie van Hout: Initially it was a working title. Because the work would be outside the Gallery, on the roof, I was thinking of Quasimodo, from Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. I was coming out of a show and research around the idea of the freak, the outsider and things that are rejected—thinking about how even things that are rejected have a relationship to whatever they’ve been rejected by. And I called it Quasi, because it’s a human form that’s not quite human as well. The idea of something that resembles a human but is not quite human.
Notes
The regeneration must not be bureaucratised
Aaron Kreisler is Head of the School of Fine Art at the University of Canterbury. He talked to Bulletin about challenges and opportunities for the arts in our city and what art can contribute to the future of Christchurch.
Notes
What sort of city do we want our children's children to live in?
Martin Trusttum, project manager for Ōtākaro Art by the River, and founder of temporary gallery space ArtBox, writes on the role of art in Christchurch.
Commentary
The hungry gap
We invited artists, academics, city makers, curators, health specialists and gallerists to comment on the challenges and opportunities for the arts in our city and what art can contribute to the future of Christchurch.
Interview
A Dark and Empty Interior
In B.167 senior curator Justin Paton documented his walk around the perimeter of Christchurch's red zone, and we featured the empty Rolleston plinth outside Canterbury Museum at the end of Worcester Boulevard. In this edition, director Jenny Harper interviews English sculptor Antony Gormley, who successfully animated another vacant central-city plinth—the so-called Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London. Gormley filled the plinth with 2,400 people, who occupied it for one hour each, night and day, for 100 days. Here, Jenny asks him about his practice, the value of the figurative tradition and whether he has any advice for Christchurch.
Article
Here and Gone
In the last issue of Bulletin, senior curator Justin Paton wrote about the way the Christchurch earthquakes 'gazumped' the exhibitions on display at the Gallery – overshadowing them and shifting their meanings. In this issue, with the Gallery still closed to the public, he considers the place of art in the wider post-quake city – and discovers a monument in an unlikely place.
