Bring Back Life

I've made no secret of the fact that I love words and signs but sometimes, in certain contexts, they're a mystery to me. I photographed this phrase through the window of a now-empty fashion store. I have no idea of its relevance but I liked the sense of mystery in that - and the way the o0ld building across the street is reflected in the image. There's just something about all that visual layering in a city that I adore.

Lighting the Way

I loved this composition in a High Street Window - a very pleasing retail still life complete with Trubridge-designed light shade on the far left. For others in 'the continuing saga' of one of my favourite David Trubridge lighting designs, click on David Trubridge in the label line below. www.davidtrubridge.com

StreetscapeNZ - 49

Tinakori Road, Thorndon

Wellington

April 2009 Ajr

A Touch of Glass

Sunglight catching at Stems

Handblown

At Arts Centre Market, Christchurch

October 2009. Ajr

A Vineyard Moment

It was autumn when I got to the Hawke's Bay in May and all the vines were turning lustrous shades of red and gold. Sadly, the weather was not quite what we've come to expect from the Hawke's Bay - grey overcast skies rather than the usual vibrant blue, but somehow it didn't matter. Regardless of the time of year you visit, this part of New Zealand - slung out on the North Island's east coast - offers food and wine lovers some of the best experiences in the country. From superb farmers' markets, orchards, chocolate-makers and boutique preserve makers to over 45 wineries producing everything from cabernet sauvignon to riesling, chardonney, sauvignon blanc and sweet dessert wines, it's a feast from dawn to dark. You'll also find some of the loveliest boutique accommodation here, with something to suit all budgets. www.hawkesbaynz.com

From the Food Files

Red Beet Salad

Prepared To Perfection

And Photographed

By Chef Ben Batterbury

At The Rees Hotel, Queenstown

www.therees.co.nz

Art Statements

I received an invitation to this new exhibition - Ilios, at High Street Project in Christchurch - but I've set it to one side and can't remember who has created the show. I did however, have fun following the poster all over the city on the weekend. I love the way it has 'taken up residence' with other signs and posters to create a visual expression in its own right.

Responding to Nature

This is one of the few Christchurch public artworks that, up until now, I have studiously ignored. I’m not sure why. It’s not that I don’t like it – well, not exactly – rather that it annoys me at some level that I haven't quite been able to pinpoint. I feel a little cheated that Christchurch has ended up with what I would call one of Chris Booth’s ‘lesser works.’ The work, obviously created by New Zealand sculptor, Chris Booth, is entitled Taurapa and was created as the Christchurch-Seattle Sister City Sculpture in 1996-97. The form of the sculpture resembles a taurapa, or the stern post of a Maori waka (canoe) and it references the waka that once plied the river it sits beside. Booth, born in 1948 in the Far North, has exhibited widely throughout New Zealand and internationally. Along with several public works in New Zealand he has completed public commissions in Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands. I’ve seen a good many of Booth’s works and he has a reverence for nature that I like – that in fact is what strikes a chord in most of his viewers. His works have a certain ‘humanity’ to them. He’s not trying to be too clever, too esoteric, too intellectual. They pay homage to the land they are created in; they use the materials of the site and they celebrate the raw beauty of nature. I particularly like his Earth Blanket series, which you can check out by visiting his website. (This work is from his Slab Series). Most of his major works are illustrated there, so I’ll let you form your own opinions. www.crhisbooth.co.nz

Art Signs

Love the way someone has removed the 'M' from Smart and placed an apostrophe to make it Jonathan's Art Gallery rather than the original Jonathan Smart Gallery. (Maybe it was Jonathan himself?)

Lattitudes

Christchurch-based sculptor Graham Bennett recently presented a new exhibition called Latitudes at The Arthouse, here in Christchurch (Sept 16 – October 4). The show is theoretically over but when I drove past the gallery last weekend, his works were still in situ, still glinting in the sun, still casting small and miraculous shadows across the inside and outside of the building. I HAD to stop and take some long distance photos – little fragments of detail, slithers of shadow and reflection, a tangle of components and ideas. I’ve written about Bennett’s work on this blog before and he also features in my Artist Studio Series, which you can see by clicking on either name in the label line below. It’s been a busy year for Bennett. In 2008-2009 he’s had solo shows in Japan, Hong Kong, and Waiheke Island; and he’s created stunning collaborative works with Dunedin fashion designer, Donna Tulloch, which were shown at Dunedin’s ID Fashion Week and also later exhibited in Japan to coincide with Yokohama’s Triennale of Contemporary Art. (I’ve also featured these stunning smaller pieces on this blog – “When Sculpture Meets Fashion”). The year has also seen Bennett show large works at Waiheke Island’s terrific ‘headland – Sculpture on the Gulf’ and in Sculpture in Central Otago, another large outdoor exhibition staged at Rippon Vineyard in Wanaka. In addition to the interior works at The Arthouse’s new show, Bennett also created a new work – Orbit – which, at eight metres high, has been installed outside the gallery. You can find out more about Graham by checking his website: www.bennettsculpture.info www.thearthouse.co.nz

New Inner City Street Art

I roamed around town for three hours this morning, making the most of the return of fine weather - enjoying taking photos of new signs, posters, shop windows and the like. It's amazing how quickly change takes place in a city and I have a number of places I frequent for that very reason. One of them is Manchester Street - always slightly shabby and interesting, always changing. I noticed these new doors on a fish and chip shop there. They've obviously commissioned a street artist to create a lively, in-context approach for their business. I like that. I like too, that increasing numbers of businesses are hiring graffiti artists to give their premises - and even their vehicles a distinctive look. You'll find the same thing happening in SOL Square (South of Lichfield), which probably started 'the legitimising of street art' in Christchurch. The developers there hired graffiti artists from Auckland right back when they opened about three years ago, and the place is a visual feast of colour and chaos. This is a new work that has been created on one of the lane walls just this last week. I'm all for it. Good street art gives the inner city character and imbues dark alleys with colour. What can be wrong with that?

From the Church Files

Since it's Sunday, I decided to rummage around in my Church files to see what new architectural perspective I could bring to the table - as it were. This is what I came up with....two of my favourite photographs taken in Christchurch. I like to think of them both as being a little odd - in the conventional church sense. The bottom shot is taken at a Catholic Church over the other side of town (which is the terminology I usually give a place when I can't remember the name of the suburb); the top image was taken near the intersection of Colombo Street and Moorehouse Avenue - not sure what church though. I'm constantly drawn to this form, if only because it's so incongruous and unexpected. All I can say is, I hope Jesus was in a forgiving mood when he was 'introduced' to these strange architectural oddities.

StreetscapeNZ - 48

Tuam Street, Christchurch

A Place to Dream

Soft comforts at Teichelmann's Bed & Breakfast

Hokitika on the West Coast www.teichelmanns.co.nz

Small Moments of Greed

Lemon Meringue Pie

Enjoyed in Sumner

In a Greedy Moment

August 2009. Ajr

And So to Sleep.....

A Bedroom with a View to Die For

Cool, Calm, Spacious, Classy

The Rees - Overlooking Lake Wakatipu

And The Remarkables.

www.therees.co.nz

Showtime 8 - All the Fun of the Fair

Image Courtesy CCC&NZCup&Show Week

Love the swirls of colour and movement in this image from last year's Royal New Zealand Show. It says so much about the pace, the colour, the extravagance, the fun of New Zealand Cup and Show Week, which is now New Zealand's largest festival of racing, fashion, agriculture and entertainment, all crammed into one hectic week from November 7 -14. It's a week that's filled with parties and socialising and a city filled with hats and high heels. I loved watching all that last year when I was in Melbourne in time for the Melbourne Cup. As trams, cabs and trains pulled to a halt all over the city, passengers spilled out in their finery - giggling groups of young women excited yet still a little self-conscious about wearing hats; men in pinstriped suits; the fashionistas strutting their stuff. It's the same in Christchurch - although forget trams and trains spilling out hat-wearing race-goers. That ain't a happening thing here; but packed bars and restaurants are. And for the kids the Royal New Zealand Show turns on another whole world of entertainment - the animals, the rides, the fairground atmosphere. It's all happening - soon! www.nzcupandshow.co.nz www.theshow.co.nz

Billboard of the Week

This is what I love about billboards - their ability to transport you some place else, their ability to distort visual reality. This image is so large that at first glance it really does look like there is a woman swimming in a giant tank on the side of an inner city building. It's such an unexpected juxtaposition that you're forced to look twice. That, for me, is a successful advertising campaign - something that makes me look harder, longer and think about possibilities and 'unlikelihoods.'

More From the Word Files

Layers - Stories - Suggestion - Histories - Age

Tucked between Typography

Writ Large & Bold

It's a Sign

A Huddle of Words

Signposting

Christchurch's Newest Cafe September 2009. Ajr

Words on Walkabout

I am a word collector. As a writer by profession they are ‘the tools of my trade’ of course, but words are SO much more than that to me. It’s about the typography, the shapes and shadows, the forms. It’s about the colour – the same word written in red, blue or green suggests very different things; it’s about the location – a common word transported out of its usual context draws me up short - who put it there, why, what were they intending for me to take from it. And I love a quirky unexpected partnership of words. I get inspiration from them all.

I adore signs. They potentially contain a wealth of humour and an insight into a culture; and billboards for their ability to take words on a gargantuan journey. And then there are the old signs, the old typography – no longer fashionable yet still clinging to the timber and brick facades of the older parts of towns and cities. They tell another whole set of stories with their curly, worn letters – intimate tales of old-fashioned businesses like shoemakers, bookbinders, tailors: good gutsy trades that no longer hold the sway they once had (more’s the pity). The peeling paint, the fading letters, all suggestive of the inherent layers of time and history stacked up between the ‘ms’ and ‘es’ and ‘ys.’

All these things become graphic souvenirs for me. I take photographs, I note down words, phrases, unexpected couplings, I take rubbings, I admire, I gather, I hoard. I have books filled with words. I have handmade books dedicated to ‘word play’ – little typography collages that trigger something deep within my creative processes. Other books are dedicated to ‘words for short stories’, to the fiction-writing processes that for me, often require a very visual starting point and a sustained ‘visual gorging’ to bring an idea to life. That ‘visual research’ is absolutely intrinsic to my creative processes.

And since I’m giving away all my collecting/hoarding secrets, I may as well confess to also collecting old type. Wooden type blocks just DO something to me. I can’t go past them. One of the best birthday presents anyone ever gave me, was a little handmade box with a lid covered in Japanese paper machine-stitched with the letter A (for Adrienne) and inside the box? A collection of wooden A’s. (Thanks Marianne!). I have wooden type ‘prancing’ all around my house – over walls, on mantelpieces, on sideboards. I have old type cases that have been transformed into miniature display cases. And I have a whole set of old lead type – never quite as pretty – which sits quietly in my bedroom corner – chiefly because I can’t lift the box without all the letters spilling out. So there it sits, in the shadows under the old Singer sewing machine that acts as a bedside table, weaving its own silent stories.

Suffice to say, I am surrounded by words and the products they make, advertise and direct – books, signs, type, posters, bookmarks, product boxes, cards, photographs - you name, I’ve probably got it. It goes without saying that this makes for an unusual domestic interior but I’m happy with that. I may have written extensively about expensive contemporary design and architecture but I have no yearnings to live in a glitzy, soulless box that says nothing about its owners and everything about the architect who created it – dwellings where everything is perfect and nothing is out of place. I’m much happier with floor-to-ceiling visual stimuli, in a place of visual chaos in fact, where my eyes can spontaneously come to rest on a giant word roaming across the top of a door frame, or on a quirky shop sign that is so out of place in my kitchen as to be comical. For me, inspiration can come from anywhere; everything communicates; words sing!

Barry's Provocative Unpublished Minutes - 68

"A Bit of Toilet Humour"

There's not much I can add to this - other than to say I'm delighted to welcome the beginning of a new inkjet print series from one of New Zealand'sa top printmakers. For others in series click on Cleavin in the label line below.

On the Rails - Showtime 7

I like this image - courtesy Christchurch City Council/NZ Cup&Show Week - taken at one of last year's Riccarton Racecourse race meetings. It's all in the people for me and in this case, the hats. I love the fashionable pink against the scruffier, utilitarian straw hat. It makes my own camera finger itch in anticipation of this year's New Zealand Cup and Show Week, which is due to kick off on November 7-14. I visited a hat shop in town a week or so ago and they were already busy in the lead-up to November's festivities. I can't wait to get amongst it. www.nzcupandshow.co.nz

Corrugated Iron Re-Visited

Everyone talks about Australia being the “spiritual home of corrugated iron” and maybe it is. Certainly contemporary Australian architect, Glenn Murcutt has created a huge revival of interest in corrugated iron as a modern building material; but here in New Zealand corrugated iron is as much a part of the landscape as sheep and cattle. You can rarely drive more than a few kilometres in this country without coming upon corrugated iron buildings in some form.

I can’t imagine there is a single farm in New Zealand that doesn’t feature corrugated iron in some way. It’s used for fences, pigsties, dog kennels, henhouses, sheep pens, barns, implement sheds, water tanks even for makeshift walls of houses. It’s been used to building thousands of holiday baches, farm cottages, shearers’ quarters and mountain huts. I’ve found corrugated iron churches, wineries, libraries, information centres, bus stops, grandstands, warehouses, huts and hotels. And of course every second roof in New Zealand is made of corrugated iron - and I think most people will agree, there's nothing quite so comforting as the sound of rain on an iron roof.

New Zealand architects have also been quick to jump on the Murcutt bandwagon (though never as successfully in my opinion). Don’t get me wrong, there are some very successful contemporary buildings in corrugated iron; I just get a little concerned about the trend for architects here to ‘follow like leemings.’ Heaven knows, I’m no architectural historian, so I have no idea who first entertained the idea of corrugated iron as a modern building for domestic and commercial architecture in New Zealand; but I do know that once the first architect tried it, hundreds of others copied the idea.

As a result we now have a proliferation of city dwellings (domestic and commercial alike) that pay weak and very forgettable homage to corrugated iron. In many cases in fact, I suspect it is not at all about paying homage to corrugated iron as a unique historic building material but rather an attempt to keep building costs down. I’ll bring you photographs of some contemporary corrugated iron buildings in New Zealand another time – for now, the continuing rural perspective.

I’ve written about corrugated iron before (click on corrugated iron in the label line below) and I’ve been amazed at how many readers that particular post has had. I have since discovered there are actually corrugated iron enthusiasts – websites for them even! So here’s another batch of photographs from a recent trip to the South Island’s West Coast – a place where corrugated iron has been used without discrimination, a place where corrugated iron covers a multitude of architectural sins, a place that is filled with architectural character, in no small part due to the prolific use of corrugated iron.

A Quiet Visual Moment - With Water

Photo Courtesy Polynesian Spa, Rotorua

Relaxing at Rotorua's famous Polynesian Spa.

And I can think of no better place to do just that!

www.polynesianspa.co.nz

From the Food Files

The Arts Centre Market in Christchurch is one of the city's best known tourist attractions. I'm in two minds about the quality of some of the goods on sale in the market - there are some very nice wares but they are often so swamped in what I very generously call 'crap' that it's hard to take the place seriously. I often wander through of a weekend. For one thing, as a travel guide writer, I consider it my duty to be informed about as much as possible and that includes the quality of assorted marketplaces; for another thing, quite apart from the goods on sale, there's always a lively atmosphere with buskers and visitors that excites my camera. Just around the corner from the main market are the food caravans - a narrow alley that runs behind Court Theatre, which is crowded with food vendors and hungry punters. All nationalities converge - predominantly Asian - but among them all, I spied this stall selling delicious European pastries. From memory the guy was Czech but don't take my word for it. My camera gets so filled with stuff that I often forget names and places.

Shoe Shuffle

Red Shoes

By Fiona McGuinness

High Street, Christchurch September 2009 Ajr

If you're a little bit of a shoe fan, click on SHOES in the label line below to see others that have taken my fancy.

Under-Foot

I like this idea - chalk/stencil advertising (restrained advertising that is) on footpaths.

I snapped this outside Underground Coffee in Colombo Street (Christchurch) and I sat awhile and watched. It drew a LOT of attention. I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. It adds colour and interest to the otherwise dull walkways.

Cool Cars - 56

One Deep Red 1967 VW - Spotted in central Wellington

Crated.

If The Physics Room website is all up to date, this work at The Kiosk in Christchurch is by Anya Henis (Sept.25-Oct22). I don’t know a thing about her or her work and the website doesn’t elaborate either. I’ve mentioned more than once that The Kiosk is one of my favourite miniature exhibition spaces in the city, although the occasions when I get really excited by what’s on show there can be counted on one hand.

This is another time where I have walked around it feeling slightly deflated. Although the concept – ‘crating up The Kiosk’ and working on the exterior of it instead of within its small glass showcase - may have had initial merit, I think its execution is a little on the shabby side and potential has not been realised. (I may seem old-fashioned but I still believe the actual 'crafting' of an artwork is just as important as the concept and ideas it is supposed to express). The four exterior artworks ‘say’ nothing at all to me – nor, in my opinion, to each other. But it does bring colour to the pedestrian intersection and it does match the pansies in the neighbouring garden, so it’s not all bad. www.physicsroom.org.nz

Billboard of the Week

Christchurch October 2009. Ajr

I brought traffic to a stop when I paused too long at the traffic lights near Jade Stadium to get this billboard photograph. People are SO impatient these days. It was only a few seconds. Maybe they needed coffee?

Barry's Provocative Unpublished Minutes - 67

"Sport and Politics Don't Mix II" Here's another in the ongoing series of inkjet prints and etchings from one of New Zealand's best known printmakers. For others in the series, click on Cleavin in the label line below this post.

Showtime 6 - Hats!

I went through a stage of wearing hats back in the eighties – not for any particular reason…just because I liked them. I wouldn’t dream of donning a hat now – not for anything! (Except maybe a sun hat). Can’t explain that; just gone right off them. So, I think you can safely assume that I will be the only woman at NZ Cup and Show Week without a hat! And all the happier for it – especially when I look at some of the ridiculous get-ups that pop up around the race course. Those hideous things called ‘fascinators’ for instance! Whoever invented those – along with the person who called them fascinators – should be taken out into the centre of the race track and shot.

Fashion on the Field. Addington Raceway 2008 I often wonder where this tradition of wearing hats to horse race meetings originated. Suffice to say it goes way back. Maybe the British royal family are to blame? It’s interesting that, wherever there are horse meetings, there are hats, in any part of the world. I was intrigued to find last year that the tradition is even alive and well in the middle of the dusty Australian Outback. Who would have thought? All that said, I am looking forward to studying the hats at this year’s race meetings. A GOOD hat can be a ‘many-splendoured-thing’ (on the right person) (see above for instance) and I sense of world of excellent photographs opening up before me come race day. I am sincerely hoping though, that hat fashions have moved on from the silly fascinator phase. www.nzcupandshow.co.nz

StreetscapeNZ - 47

Crummer Street-Ponsonby Road

Ponsonby, Auckland

April 2009. Ajr