Picnic in the Park

Botanic Gardens, Christchurch. Dec. 2008. Ajr

I loved the greener-than-green aspect of this scene in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens yesterday. I took it from about 200 yards away with my new camera and I was delighted with the result. My only regret - that I wasn't quick enough to get a photo of two of the birds flying in to steal one of the picnic sandwiches.

Up With The Birds

Another View of the spectacular dome of the Catholic Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Christchurch . To see more photographs of this cathedral and other church architecture, click on CHURCHES in the label line below this post.

Ding-Dong The Bell Is Gone

Church Bell Tower

Empty, Silent

In Christchurch

Dec.2008. Ajr

Small Moments of Greed

Christmas Mince Pies

Tempting, Teasing

In Seasonal Colours

StreetscapeNZ - 2

Tinakori Road

WELLINGTON

2007. Ajr

Tall Stories

Bealey, South Island. Dec. 2008. Ajr

Some years back, the owner of the Bealey Hotel (between Arthur's Pass and Christchurch), circulated the rumour that he had spotted a moa. The story spread like wild-fire - right through the national newspapers - but most people considered it a hoax. The moa of course, became extinct in New Zealand hundreds of years ago; but it's good to see the people at Bealey Hotel are keeping 'traditions' alive.

Billboard of the Week

Billboard, Greymouth, Dec.2008. Ajr

Spotted in Greymouth, NZ

On The Trail

The Bealey Track, Arthur's Pass.

It rained the day we tackled the Bealey River Valley (part of Tuatara Tour's West Coast Trail) but that didn't seem to matter. It wasn't cold and the misty, inclement conditions added a certain moodiness to the hike that only enhanced the rugged beauty of this potentially wild place. The first part of the hike, through beautiful tussock and alpine beech forest, is blessed with terrific wooden boardwalks, which made the going very easy. Clambering over the huge river boulders in the second stage of the walk (to the foot of Mt Rolleston), wasn't quite so easy. www.tuataratours.co.nz

A Marvellous Mayhem

Details from the London Town installations by Mark Braunias. Images supplied by Sarjeant Gallery.

Auckland-based artist Mark Braunias has a wonderfully dishevelled cast of characters ‘galloping’ across the walls of Wanganui’s Sarjeant Gallery in a work called London Town. Based on figures that have been “knocking about in his head space since his time as artist-in-residence at Tylee Cottage – March to May 2007” – the work is an intimate response to his time in Wanganui, filled with details of the local and social. “It’s not the big history he’s after but the small fry, the everyday, the funny, the folklore, the overlooked.” Braunias found that detail in old editions of the Wanganui Chronicle, stored on microfiche – particularly in the advertisements and especially those of a former Wanganui department store, Londontown, which was once in the town’s main street. At the end of his residency, he left town with a bundle of work books and drawings and has now returned to display the finished work – “a motley crew of characters colliding in – to paraphrase the artist – an elegant, stupid, anti-composition in the gallery space.” (From exhibition text by Greg Donson). www.markbraunias.co.nz www.sarjeant.org.nz

A Very Merry Billboard Christmas

Melbourne, Australia. Nov. 2008. Ajr

Christmas is coming to Collins Street

Melbourne

Craning My Neck

Construction Site, Christchurch. Dec. 2008. Ajr

Surely I can't be the only person who finds an unexpected beauty in construction sites! I took these shots this afternoon - on a perfect-blue Canterbury summer day - of what I think is a perfect abstract composition of beams, crane parts and street lamps. It goes without saying that I got carried away with the joys of my new camera (my Christmas gift to myself just yesterday) and took at least forty shots of this particular crane - much to the amusement of the construction workers, who started hollering at me.

The Umbrella Project

The Umbrella Project. Top Dome Installation; Bottom: Pool Installation. Images Courtesy Sarjeant Gallery.

I LOVE this (top) photograph of the Umbrella Project which is currently installed in the dome of Sarjeant Gallery in Wanganui. It was taken by the gallery’s staff photographer, Richard Wotton and brilliantly conveys the wonderful juxtaposition of whimsy and classical architecture. The work itself came about when nearly 60 Wanganui secondary school students attended workshops with well known Pacific Island artist, Michel Tuffery. It responds to the problem of graffiti and tagging in a positive way – and allowed the students to mark their umbrellas with Maori and Pacific inspired designs and references to their own identity. More than 250 finished umbrellas were then installed for one day at the now-disused Gonville swimming baths – a site that has been subject to excessive tagging and graffiti. The umbrellas have since been installed in the Dome of the Sarjeant, where they will stay until March 1, 2009.

Nerves of Steel

Near Greymouth, West Coast. Dec. 2008. Ajr

This is one of just a few (I can only think of three) shared road/rail bridges left in New Zealand. The wise driver of course, gives way to the trains! This is Bridge 13 on the Hokitika Industrial Line, over the Taramakau River, not far inland from Greymouth on the West Coast.

StreetscapeNZ - 1

Nov.2008. Ajr

Temuka, South Canterbury

The Main Street

Cool Cars - 30

One Pink and White 1956 Buick Century - Spotted at Waikari in North Canterbury.

For others in this series click on Cool Cars in the label line below this post.

Barry's Provocative Unpublished Minutes - 40

"Horses For Courses." Here's another inkjet print from one of New Zealand's top printmakers. To see the complete series thus far, click on 'Cleavin' in the label line below....go on, it's worth it!

Bush Architecture

Arthur's Pass, South Island. Dec. 2008. Ajr

This is the very cute Jack's Hut, tucked into beech forest on the side of the main highway at Arthur's Pass. You'll pass it if you drive the three hour journey across the South Island, from Christchurch to Greymouth. It's now a registered Historic Site in the care of the Department of Conservation. I'm not sure of its original purpose - perhaps it was an early roadman's hut?

Artist Studios - 11

Visiting the Antarctic as a recipient of the Antarctic Arts Fellowship in the summer of 2001-02, had a huge impact on Christchurch printmaker, Dee (Denise) Copland - the extraordinary atmospheric effects, the illusions and the dynamic environment presented her with many challenges – real and imagined – and she was taken completely out of her comfort zone. That was a good thing; and her icy adventure triggered a wealth of new work over the next seven years – five Antarctic-themed exhibitions thus far and more to come. “The underlying concern in my work questions the balances and tensions between Nature, Humanity and Culture. In the Antarctic, the physical extremes provoked some interesting ideas and new ways of working and responding to chance and change,” she says. “Standing where Sir Ernest Shackleton stood to gain insights into what he and his team faced; making drawings and notes about the physical marks that remain; comprehending the sense of vastness and space – all that has changed the way I work. It’s pushed me out of two dimensions and into thinking and working in three dimensions, with fewer editions and more one-off works.” Dee, who has been exhibiting her prints nationally and internationally for thirty years, has recently exhibited in “Melt” in Melbourne and the same group show opens in Sydney in February 2009. She’s also working towards a solo survey show at SOFA Gallery in Christchurch in April. She works from her Christchurch studio – a private haven and storehouse of ideas filled with artworks, banners, bones, bushes, bird cages, posters, materials, little treasures from friends and quirky collectibles that strike a chord with her personal concerns and observations.

To see others in this Series click on Artist Studios in the label line below this post.

A Very New Zealand Christmas

Pohutukawa, Akaroa, Banks Peninsula. Dec. 2007. Ajr

Meet Metrosideros excelsa - the New Zealand Pohutukawa

This is our coastal evergreen that produces great drifts of scarlet flowers every summer.

It belongs to the Myrtle family and is one of twelve members of the Metrosideros family endemic to New Zealand. We've tended to adopt it as our very own southern symbol of Christmas - as you can see in the stamp below.

A Back Alley Christmas

Christchurch. Dec. 2008. Ajr

This painting of an old New Zealand Christmas stamp has been around for as long as I've been in Christchurch. It's painted on the wall of a back alley that runs between Hereford Street and Cathedral Square. It's in the company of other old stamps -I've never quite been able to make out what they're all about, although in the dim corridors of my memory it may have been something to do with the old Post Office building nearby. This one at least, still has a certain relevance once a year.