Slide Show - Images (mostly) from The Illustrated History of Painting

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Tuesday, September 17, 2013

FUCKING CHRISTCHURCH



Relocating from the U.S. to Christchurch (9years ago?) I was full of newcomer enthusiasm. I had, as is my nature, a surfeit of gas-filled ideas. Ideas about what I thought possible in Christchurch ... what cultural potholes could be gainfully filled. When I chatted up such ideas on CCH’s 'Cultural Circuit' (I make a little joke there) I was almost universally met with expressed doubt and prophetic discouragement.

Ōtautahi oldsters wouldn’t have much to say in response … but seemed to be sizing me up sideways. But the young, in particular, would come right out with it; about my enthusiasms, about my ideas, they'd say something like, "aye, reckon that won't fly ". When asked why not they'd uniformly opine – well mate, they’d intimate, that's just "fucking Christchurch".

I did what I often do when I don't understand something. I made a painting from my confusion. I did several...pretty much alike. My understanding didn't bloom, but one of these particular pictures sold at a Christchurch Art Gallery fundraiser ... creating an awkward auction moment for the then new Director, Jenny Harper. I gave another, a paper version, as a birthday gift to my good friend Paul Strangwick - a man who claims agreement with the image’s sentiment. I still have the one - pictured above. 

Now uncounted quakes later, a divorce, multiple domestic displacements  - the result of marital and other, more literal, tectonics.  Interminable work-disarray catalyzed by no-end-in-sight reorganization at the art school. All of the assorted public and private chaos, and its aftermath … accompanied by countless, publically cheery, kia kahas, Babbit-like-media-exclamations of  faux-wonderment, at Garden City ‘resilience’. Municipal and university happy talk - platitudes about new beginnings and bright futures. Etc.

So now, finally, I'm on board (y’all) with this here regional disbelief. With the well aged and well known Canterbury malaise. The neuro-degenerative condition   I encountered early on, in this overgrown farm-service town of yours. Now, like you, small squint-eyed probabilities have displaced big wide-eyed possibility.

So, if someone comes up to me honking (as I once did) about the infinite possibilities of place, I’ll look them wearily (and warily) in the eye when they ask ‘why not’. I’ll greet their callow query with a wizened 100-mile gaze, and the Great Canterbury Chestnut: the one welcomed me when I first fell off the interstellar turnip truck…

Well sir, I guess that’s just “Fucking Christchurch”.

Now ain’t it?