Saving the Churches

It's Sunday, which always seems like a fair and reasonable time to be thinking about church architecture. And in lieu of the 7.1 earthquake that struck Christchurch and Canterbury on September 4th, there's certainly plenty to think about in that regard. Sadly, some of the province's oldest and loveliest churches have been struck the hardest and as you drive around the inner city, you'll see church after church braced against further damage.

This is just a tiny sample of the cracks and crumblings that have rendered many of the churches unuseable - at least for now. I'm assuming the fact that they have been braced means they're up for restoration (and, one would hope, earthquake strengthening) but given the number of buildings in this state around the city, I'd say the pews will be empty for a long time yet.

The cranes were brought in to assist this old Merivale beauty (above). In the days soon after the quake, the steeple was considered in too precarious a state to leave in situ, so it was carefully lifted off by a big brute of a crane and daintily placed to the side of the church until the quakes stop and all can be made 'habitable' again. I've always had a strong interest in church architecture (click on Churches in the index line below this blog), so seeing these buildings so uniformly 'struck down' has been a sad experience. I haven't had a chance (until now) to go around the city photographing them so I've missed some of the immediate damage (now tidied up); but if the weather holds this week, I hope to do a bit of scouting further afield. I feel bound somehow to catalogue something of the brutality of the day.

Architecture - Stripping Back to the Basics

I'm not sure if I'm delighted, amused or appalled by this - while all the old architectural matrons are falling down around it after the earthquake, good old Calendar Girls are rising like the phoenix from the rubble - though to be fair, their building was erected before the quake. I'm not sure who has designed it - I've made a few enquiries and each architectural practice I've asked has said (quite emphatically) "No, it's definitely not us!" Maybe listing the home of exotic dancers, strippers and topless waitresses on your architectural portfolio isn't seen as the ultimate in good taste - especially not in staid and conventional Christchurch anyway.

Barry's Provocative Unpublished Minutes - 106

"Natural and Un-Natural Forces 2."

Another earthquake inspiration from one of new Zealand's leading printmakers - in the wake of the 7.1 earthquake that struck Christchurch on September 4th. For other works in this ongoing series, click on Cleavin in the label line below.

Barry's Provocative Unpublished Minutes - 105

"Natural and Un-Natural Forces 1" Like many Cantabrians, a favourite printmaker has been inspired by the rattling, shaking earth that has dominated Christchurch and Canterbury lives since the September 4th 7.1 earthquake.

Ron Mueck - Prepare to be Amazed.

When the Ron Mueck Sculpture show opens at Christchurch Art Gallery this Friday night, there will be plenty of astounded viewers. Mueck has an uncanny ability to create astonishingly life-like works, as you can see from these photographs that I took at his Melbourne show at the National Gallery of Victoria in February.

And it doesn't matter how many times you see the images, or how many times you stand in front of the actual sculptures, there is still a sense of wonder about them. Yet for all the realism, Mueck's distorting scale is what generates the most power I think - the gigantic man (above), the tiny, fragile doll-like old woman in bed (the most powerful and moving of all the works for me), and these two adorable old ladies standing on a plinth, hardly as big as a five-year-old. It becomes realism with a disturbing twist that you will continue to think about long after leaving the exhibition. www.christchurchartgallery.org.nz

Barry's Provocative Unpublished Minutes - 104

"Settling Old Scores 3"

Facing the Music with one of New Zealand's top printmakers. Click on Cleavin for others in this series.

Signs of Earthquake Times

In the early days after the 71. earthquake struck in Christchurch, there was a flurry of new signage in the city. I'm a big fan of signs at the best of times and in 'the worst of times' I was delighted (in a non-morbid kind of way), at the hastily-written notes that appeared all over the city. The few times I have made it out and about (between book writing commitments), I photographed a few - from the formal council signs: green for 'this building is ok', yellow for restricted use and the dreaded red for danger, to the personal signs on business doorways.

I suspect this UNEVEN SURFACE sign will have become the council's most used in recent weeks.

The one no one wanted!

And one of several signs outside churches around the city. Unfortunately, as a fan of church architecture, I'm sorry to see that Canterbury's churches have been among the hardest hit of all the historic buildings in town. Most have significant damage and several are now 'propped up' with enormous steel beams....but more on that another day.... In the meantime, I can't help but smile at the optimism of this sign, outside St Lukes I think it was, on Manchester Street. Having seen the damage to churches, even if I had an urge to pray (and I haven't yet), a church would be the very last place I'd be entering during these shaky times.

More from the Earthquake Zone

When everything around them was collapsing with magnificent fury during the September 4th Christchurch earthquake, these little salt and pepper shakers stood firm and straight. I think it's a lovely metaphor for the people of Christchurch in the aftermath of the quake - determined battlers keeping on, despite the mayhem in their daily lives.

A couple of days ago, I read that Christchurch had had over 565 after-shocks in a ten-day period. It seems unbelievable - even from the point of view of someone sitting here experiencing shake after hideous shake. Obviously many have been indiscernable but nonetheless, it's a graphic reminder of just how very unreliable Nature has turned out to be. And I for one, have quite enough. Now it's just irritating. Take last night for instance - I was shaken awake on three separate occasions and in the haze of sleep, it's easy to wonder if it's all starting all over again.

But you only have to take a walk around the city to find plenty of reminders of how jolly lucky we people in Christchurch have been. Sure there are ruined homes and collapsed businesses but we're all still alive. And when you see sights like this car, still abandoned on Lichfield Street, that seems all the more miraculous.

And, coming at the quake from a completely different angle - am I only the only person small-minded enough to be intensely annoyed that this thing is still standing?

Earthquake Fragments

I've always had a tendency to 'absorb life' through the detail of things. The big picture, the dramatic events are always important of course, but, from a writer's point of view, it's like the difference between a front page news story that punches out the main facts (or fictions) and a much longer feature article, that digs beneath the surface to expose the whys and wherefores. It is the detail that intrigues me.

I like the fragments, the hints, the give-away tonal nuances of a voice, a flicker of unconscious body movement, the partial view that alludes to so much more. And so it is in the aftermath of Christchurch's 7.1 earthquake. The big picture is dramatic, gut-wrenching, profoundly moving and for many, life-changing; but on the few occasions when I have stepped outside my own home to survey some of the earthquake damage, it has been the small things that have moved me most.

What about that set of artist's pastels cast amongst the rubble - who did they belong to? What had they been used for? And that little curl of coloured party ribbon - that surely alludes to much happier times. I was drawn to the lone white plastic jug casually tossed among the broken bricks and I wondered what an article like that might say about the human race if it were dug up a hundred years from now.

I marvelled at two Japanese prints still hanging happily on 'dismembered' walls; and I fretted for the people citywide, whose offices and homes had been torn asunder to expose their private business to the world - someone's day to day movements marked on a wall calendar, their important lists and papers suddenly open to public gaze. A coloured parrot cast on its back among the rubble seemed like a garrish, slightly comical metaphor for the helplessness that most people in the city have felt at some stage during days riddled with after-shocks.

As I poked about on the edge of piles of rubble last Saturday I couldn't help feeling caught in the middle - between a slightly voyueristic urge to capture those details and a desire to respect some anonymous earthquake victim's privacy. My curiosity won out. By now, these little shreds of lives, these tiny fragments of someone's home or office, will be gone - clamped between the enormous steel jaws of a wrecker's crane, dumped into a lorry and distintegrated (except maybe the plastic jug - they never break when you want them to), gone forever. No loss you may think, and certainly that's true from a material point of view, but any one of the small things shown here may have carried a meaning, a history, a special significance that far exceeded any material worth. Who knows what stories they could all tell about their owners? And where are those owners now? Where are they living? How are they coping? And what of their futures?

An Earthquake Demolition Photo Parade

This morning I went into the city to check on restaurants - those still standing, those likely to be out of business, as I launch into the Christchurch restaurant chapter of the travel guide I am currently writing (Frommers New Zealand Day by Day 1st Edition). I found a strange, haunting beauty in unexpected places as demolition crews continue to work through the weekend. People gathered on corners chatting to soldiers and police; others stood in awe as huge mechanical teeth chewed their way through the tattered shreds of city buildings; still more came to take photographs. People of all nationalities - tourists many of them - finding 'new attractions' in places they would never even considered as they stamped their passports and boarded a plane for Christchurch. For me, the 'little beauties' came with jarring reminders that we, the humans of this place, are mere 'specks of dust.' We and all our fripperies, can be disposed of in a few seconds of angry, unpredictable upheaval. So many things, like this lone chair, a statement of vulnerability and pointless excess all at once. A touching reminder too, that although no lives were lost in the physical sense, many have been torn asunder at an economic and emotional level. It is a surreal experience to drive through your city and find the streets filled with shipping containers; lanes closed, red and orange 'disaster' tapes coming loose and floating across the roads and footpaths; piles of torn bricks piled neatly on sidewalks - and some not so neatly.

I have always found a strange and compelling beauty in machinery and building sites - anyone visiting this blog regularly will know my odd compulsion to photograph cranes; but today it was a photographic exercise laced with introspection and a reflective questioning of values, life, tragedy and people's ability to sustain blow after blow and simply keep on. As you can see from these images, it's a moving business - in every sense of the word.

Earthquake Aftermath - A Short Photo Essay

Mayor Bob on a Lean

The Horses That Never Bolted

Indoor-Outdoor Flow

The Little Shop That Was.

Opportunity Knocks After the Christchurch September 4th Earthquake

Sept.9, 2010. Ajr