The idea for this project came after reading of former Christchurch Art Gallery curator Neil Roberts predicament of living in a perfectly good but red zoned house, was the beginning for these works. The house is significant from a New Zealand art historical perspective; it was designed by sculptor designer Tom Taylor for renowned painter Bill Sutton, who lived there from 1963 until his death in 2000. It seems insane that this great place might just be demolished for no good reason. The new plan for the rebuild will change Christchurch even further, so my work is a type of mapping of what we still have here now. Most of the artists approached, I had known for a very long time and the majority of them have been living and working in this neighborhood as long as I have. Some are still in their houses/studios but others have not been that fortunate, everyone carrying on though in their new circumstances in one way or another. The eastside of Christchurch has always had a proportionately larger population of artists, including: Colin McCahon, Bill Sutton, Rudolf Gopas, Doris Lusk, Tony Fomison, Rita Angus, Leo Benseman. The geographical area for "EASTSIDE" is roughly between Montreal Street / Bealey Avenue / Linwood Avenue / Ferry Road, The project, as an exhibition, is of 24 artist portraits, each a same size painting, 60 x 60 cm: acrylic on hessian on board. The video footage shown with the exhibition is from the Christchurch CBD just after the 6.3 earthquake of February 22, 2011 by Frank Film, makers of "When a City Falls". Rudolf Boelee
I go down Manchester Street: it's all there. Early sun on the Drawing Room, John Darby Men's Wear, the bike shop on the corner of Tuam below the old sauna parlour, the doorway to my first love's studio, Smith's Bookshop, the Brooke Gifford Gallery over the road, back across the collectibles shops to the barber's – the sign is out, down past the Excelsior pub, looking over to Java for coffee and the red dot moving sculpture. It's where I have been much of my life; Christchurch as was. I turned half a hundred on September 3, 2010, looking forward to the next half-century, and I now find myself saying over and over “there was”, looking back to make sense of the present and future. I take that walk on Google maps street view. It's the only way, because my prim hometown has become a disaster zone perched on the edge of the Pacific. Ironic when Greg and I chose to stay here to bring up our late-life babes in the sometimes-cloying safety of family and the familiar. These old street pictures look “righter” than the new pioneer town with its unexpected views of the Port Hills, vacant sections and containers. My subconscious is waiting for the long-known to return, even though I have been here for all the more than 13,000 shakes. The hold-on-to-the-floor horrors, the leaping-away-from-the-dodgy-chimney shimmies, the was-that-a-train-or-a-big-one-coming rumbles, standing in St Martins almost on top of the fault on February 22 while the earth bellowed. I know the geology, the soil profiles, the twice-the force-of-gravity heaving of the land, the red-dotted faultlines' slashes; but it is taking time to absorb all the changes.
I carry so many griefs for people, for places, for the comfortable daily routines, and for the security of solid ground. Everything -- the physical and the emotional, the intellectual and the spiritual – has been thrown up in the air and is slowly floating down to earth in new patterns. We all try to make sense of our new reality every day, creating new lives, new paths. The artists - the fragile creatives - are helping shaping the narrative of this time, living in a buckled part of town they tell the tales past and present that will endure for our children.The artists, the writers, the film-makers, the photographers have real resilience: keeping the spark to make sense of the inexplicable, the huge, and the life-changing. Our villages remain, communities in which to live and create. “No loss of place is trivial – in our ways, for our own loved places, we grieve.” - Keri Hulme 2013 Why does anyone stay living in a disaster zone? I asked that question when I read of flattened cities, war zones, natural disasters. Now I know. This place and people are in my bones and in my garden. Otautahi/Christchurch is where my family has the web of blood connections that stretch across the city, from my father's childhood home in Madras Street to my great-grandparents' property in Allandale. From the Gladstone where I misspent my youth to two blocks away at the hospital where I bore my children. From The Press building in the Square where I met my beloved, Greg Jackson, to the house in the Botanic Gardens where I played as a child in the wild garden by the river and my close family lived for near 30 years. From the Port Hills where my father's ashes watch over the city to the sea where I body-boarded when carrying my twins and out to the plains.
I like the big machinery time we live in; the way great wide spaces are being created. I am amazed by the vastness of what had seemed like a smallish city block when it had buildings rather than one building: another blank canvas for creatives – property owners this time. The best, the worst, the beautiful and the ugly are all hanging out. Possibilities and potential that this buttoned-down city had locked away. Creating seems easy now, though the journeys back in my head surprise, delight and frustrate me. Feeling the beat, Greg and I danced again at Mollett Street, at 11am in an autumn glow on the gravel replacing the old punk warehouse. No bricklined midnight lane to enter any more, but warmth on our faces and thirty minutes of pure pleasure. I see wildflowers in the wreckage, seedlings of natives trees, ducks making their ponds in the foundations of demolished buildings. At iconic-to-me sites the dirt underfoot set me wondering how long it had been since that soil had seen daylight; what had happened in that place before it was built over; what the city looked like when it was Otautahi Pa and surrounds; what trees and vegetation were there, what birds sang. Lots of both! says Keri. The presence of ka manu iwi katoa was overwhelmingly loud, so much so that gathered human voices couldn't outsing the birds. “One of the reasons Kai Tahu kai-karaka call so loudly is – we were attempting to out-call the birds … the late great Irihapeti Ramsden told that one to me - and also mentioned that Kai Tahu women would call, in relays, for over an hour when approaching the great southern pa …. loud and long, that's us!”
I have so many connections in the web of life here – surprisingly to me also with the artists Rudolf has portrayed: some whose houses I know, some I know, some I know their grandchildren and children, some I drink tea with, some my beloved works with. Tony Fomison’s mother Mrs Fomison lived across the road from my old Avonside house. She grew a wonderful lemon tree that went up one of the front verandah posts and trailed across the verandah just below the guttering, covered in bright yellow lemons; beautiful! Tony, who was Greg's friend as a young man, grew up in that house and was one of the founding class at Linwood High. I now live in the house belonging to the school's founding deputy principal. When Greg wrote the mayor’s speech for the opening of the Christchurch Art Gallery, he “took” Tony and Phil Clairmont to the opening: they were the only artists mentioned by name in all the speeches and pomp and circumstance. I admired Jane Zusters' work in Wellington thirty years ago; Robyne Voyce and Rudolf Boelee were the almost the first people I met when I returned to live in Christchurch 23 years ago; I lived two doors from Doris Lusk and saw the rooftop views she saw from her window. I love the way Rudolf's portraits strip the subjects down to their emotional bare bones: the strained and set faces with the creative and quake chaos of the workrooms. They help make sense of life here At my bedside I have a huge wood bowl, carved from “the first tree planted on Banks Peninsula by the first missionary “. Hanging from the kitchen door is a shillelagh; a club of knotty wood that my Great-Uncle Huia collected from the Botanic Gardens and hung inside the back door of the curator's residence at Rolleston Avenue for late nights in the gardens. My children gather seaweed for our garden from the beach where their great-great-grandparents gathered seaweed. Their future is our shared past which we revisit, over and again, as they and we create the new. After all, my grandmother lived in Chester Street East for over 70 years, saying:“I still haven't got the garden finished.”
Sharon Murphy
The Linwood Community Arts Centre The building was designed by Victorian architect J.C. Maddison and its construction completed in 1885. The building has strong connections with the surrounding community, having housed and provided services ranging from local government to health, cultural and education uses in the area for 125 years. The Linwood Community Arts Centre was severely damaged during the February 22nd earthquake and the fire wall collapsed during a subsequent aftershock in July 2011, but has now been restored to its former glory.
"EASTSIDE – 24 Artist Portraits" at Eastside Gallery will be the first exhibition at the facility. It is my intention to tour this work around New Zealand public galleries.
I now find myself saying over and over “there was"
looking back to make sense of the present and future. Sharon Murphy