By Carol Yinghua Lu
Usually after visiting a new place and meeting new people, I immediately want to write about it. What often happens though is that I get home, become overwhelmed by a million other things, and my memories fade. However, in the case of my recent trip to New Zealand, in particular to Christchurch, both my memories and the urge to write them down have remained strong.
However, writing about this trip isn’t simply reminiscence: it’s made me think about the conditions of making art. Although my journey started in Christchurch (the third-largest city in New Zealand), its unusual character really only struck me when we landed in Wellington after a journey of just under two hours, on an extremely stormy evening. It was so windy that we couldn’t claim our luggage until the next morning. It made clear how this island country – which boasts some of the most magnificent scenery on the planet – is dominated by the weather.
Walking the streets of Wellington the night we arrived, I was reminded of what a city is meant to look like. The earthquake that hit Christchurch in February 2011, transformed the city into a place full of ruins, wounds, barricades, large empty plots, makeshift structures, a bar set up in old buses that has become an artist’s hangout, and a café built from plastic containers.
Let me backtrack. I landed in Christchurch for the first time on a beautiful autumn morning. The brand-new airport didn’t prepare me for the extent of the city’s damage. The quake caught people in Christchurch by surprise; Wellington, on the other hand, which is a high-risk area, has been reinforcing the foundations of its buildings for years. But it happened anyway, and has left many holes – both physical and psychological – in the city.
Along with colleagues from the UK and Germany, I was part of the first group of international guests invited by Creative New Zealand (the Arts Council of New Zealand), to visit Christchurch. The hotel we stayed in was one of the few tall buildings still standing; next to it, a crater full of muddy water had taken the place of another building. Kate Montgomery (Senior Arts Advisor of Creative New Zealand based in Wellington) and Melanie Oliver (director of the Physics Room, a dynamic non-profit), who came to pick me up from the airport, pointed out empty and wrecked buildings on our way to the hotel and explained what they used to be. Coincidentally, Kate is a native of Christchurch and was the director of the Physics Room from 2007 to 2010 before moving to Wellington. Melanie moved to Christchurch late in 2012 to take up the directorship of the gallery, and is just getting to know the city. Kate marvelled at how the earthquake had completely disorientated Christchurch and, for someone like her who has grown up and lived most of her life in the city, it is nowadays very difficult to get around. A lot of roads are blocked and traffic redirected due to damages or reconstructions.
In the following two days, we met with curators and artists in cafes, studios and on campus around Christchurch. Everywhere we went, people talked about how the earthquake had taken away their stability and their belongings and had changed the familiar context in which they practiced. Artists were forced to abandon their studios without their work or furniture. Art institutions lost their spaces. Colleagues moved away from town. But people also talked about the present and their efforts to rebuild their lives, initiating new projects and moving into rebuilt places. Excitement is in the air. The emergence of Dog Park– an artist-run space established last year by Ella Sutherland, Chloe Geoghegan and Barbara Garrie – reflected such a positive and pro-active post-disaster outlook shared by practitioners in the city. The intention of the space is to initiate platforms and opportunities for artistic productions and experiments, and to generate discourse around local art. Dog Park was being refurbished at the time of our visit, so we met with Ella, Chloe and Barbara in a café to look at images of their past projects and discuss their curatorial visions.
Things felt normal again when artists showed us their work and talked about their future plans. We took a beautiful mountain road to visit the School of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury in the suburb of Ilam; established in 1882, it’s one of the oldest art schools in New Zealand. Many artists from Christchurch have either taught or are currently teaching in the design discipline of the art school, which plays an active role in the local art scene. New graduates of the design department are involved in setting up art spaces and publishing publications. There is a rigorous drive to create and maintain a critical discourse about design in the community through independent publishing. For instance, the work of Luke Wood, a lecturer in graphic design at the Canterbury art school from which he graduated in 1997, embodies an independent and self-motivated practice. We met Luke in a bar housed in a bus: it wasn’t unusual to have meetings in makeshift surroundings. In fact, frequent gatherings have also gradually turned them into recognizable hangouts and places with character. This bus bar, for example, is frequented by motorcycle lovers, to which Luke belongs. Last autumn, he won the New Zealand Designers Institute’s editorial and books top award for a publication he designed and published, titled Head Full of Snakes– a text-heavy, motorcycle fanzine. He also co-publishes and co-edits a journal called The National Grid, which focuses on the contemporary and historical practice and discourses of graphic design in New Zealand.
The truth is, you’re reminded of the trauma of two years ago at every turn. The loss, the inconvenience, the ongoing repairs, the lack, the damages, the heart-ache – all are very tangible and immediate. One morning, we joined Jenny Harper (Director of Christchurch Art Gallery) and Justin Paton (Senior Curator of the gallery and curator of the New Zealand Pavilion in the 2013 Venice Biennale) in a café. It was impossible to visit the Christchurch Art Gallery, which is still being repaired. Luckily, the building didn’t suffer a great deal of damage, but liquefaction had damaged its foundations and the floors are no longer level. The staff can still enter the building and work in the office, but it’s not yet possible to access one of New Zealand’s most important public art collections. They recently celebrated the tenth anniversary of moving into the building – which will remain closed for another two years. The anniversary celebration was to be held in off-site projects, which have become central to their programming since the closing of the building. The gallery has managed to remain active by inviting artists to interact and work with existing structures of the city, a move best described as ‘closed but open’. In fact, this motto seems to characterize the best of the city’s art community. There seems to be no stopping of artists and curators from working continuously with or without a space.
For those actually with a space, it’s also a time to think hard about the meaning of making exhibitions in this particular context of Christchurch. After some refurbishment – and thanks to its solid Art Deco building – the Physics Room is fortunately back in the home it’s had since 1999, on the second and third floor of the old High Street Post Office building, on the corner of Tuam and High Streets. It’s a lone survivor among collapsed buildings and crumbling structures. The gallery has been an artist’s initiative since 1996 and has a rich history of supporting diverse and radical artistic experiments and discourses. Since joining the space in 2013, Melanie has kept up a rigorous programme of organizing solo exhibitions or events in the two adjoining gallery spaces almost every month. The intensity of its pace reflects a sense of urgency in the city, a need to keep producing and giving space for production in the midst of ruins. We were introduced to the gallery’s history through a recent publication that records its past projects and exhibitions; it has supported many different artists at different stages of their career. The new library for books on art and critical theory, and plans to launch a new art journal, all herald new beginnings.
Looking out of the windows of the Physics Room, you can see a collapsed roof on a large piece of empty ground; exposed structures, and a building which, although still standing, has most of its walls missing – a clock hangs off the one remaining wall. I couldn’t see if it was still working, but time did stop, in that particular building, at the moment of its destruction.
When we visited the Physics Room on a windy, rainy morning Melanie had just discovered the ceiling leaking. She was concerned about the works on show being damaged and contacted the landlord to come and repair them. This is normal for people in Christchurch – they repair and move forward. The earthquake has stopped time for the residents of Christchurch but nothing will stop them from moving forward and setting the clock to work again.