Today I visited our art gallery for the first time in over five years. Not because I dislike it, but because it has been closed since our 2011 earthquake. The gallery has just reopened, after extensive repairs, not to the windows as might be thought, but to the foundation. This has been re-levelled (they squirt resin into the ground beneath the foundation, gradually raising it up) and base-isolated, in effect placing the building on giant rubber tyres so that the building moves with a quake rather than resists it. The building was the Civil Defence headquarters during the emergency phase of the disaster, then had to be closed as two nearby office blocks that leaned over it had to be demolished. (These blocks actually banged together during the quake, and ended up leaning against each other).
The upstairs level of the stair well. A sculpture of upside-down chairs and florescent tubes hangs from the ceiling like a chandelier
The bull on a piano has become something of a symbol of Christchurch's resilience. First exhibited outside in a post-quake wasteland, it now has pride of place in the foyer. The work is "On first looking into 'Chapman's Homer" by Michael Parekowhai.
A great view out over the surrounding streets from the upstairs foyer.
This is the view you get when you sit at the piano.
Main foyer and stairs
There are several exhibitions on here at the moment. One I particularly liked was of the work of Margaret Stoddart. One of the first New Zealand women to have a career in painting, she was an adventurous explorer of the local landscape, using the 'respectable' pastime of botanising to travel through some of the wildest country of the province. The picture above is of her homeplace of Diamond Harbour, painted in 1909.
How lovely. I am surprised by just how many women were able to have adventures under the disguise of respectable pastimes. All power to them.
ReplyDeleteOne of my Christmas books 'The Flower Hunter' is about just such a woman. During World War 1 she went alone (aged 70)to New Guinea in search of all the known species of Birds of Paradise.