While the University of Canterbury has had a shaky start to the year, we are extremely proud to announce the launch of Issue No. 3 of Oculus: Postgraduate Journal for Visual Arts Research. Oculus showcases the exceptional quality of postgraduate research throughout New Zealand and Australia and is now peer-reviewed by an outstanding international board of scholars. We’re also looking forward to an end-of-year exhibition on the Campus Gallery, jointly organised by the students of the Postgraduate Diploma in Art Curatorship, Honours Art History and Design students. Lost: an exhibition of destroyed and stolen artworks and its accompanying catalogue promises to be the occasion for the Christchurch community to reflect on how destroyed artworks keep living in the public’s, artists’ and art historians’ minds through reproductions and literary descriptions and how they sometime become mythical objects enriched by the imagination of artists and scholars alike.
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu has been closed to visitors since 22 February 2011 when an earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale struck New Zealand’s second largest city. It was the second major earthquake to strike and came just over six months after the first in September 2010. For ten days in September, our sturdy building was used as the Civil Defence hub from which the initial stages of the disaster management and recovery were planned. And, at that time, we thought this was long enough! However, from February we needed to deal with the reality of the present and once more become the hub of various operations.
Miraculously, it seems now, the NGV touring exhibition of Ron Mueck’s sculpture opened in the Gallery in October 2010 and closed in January 2011. We were thrilled with the 135,000 visitors who saw this exhibition, which became the largest pay-to-view art show ever held in Christchurch.
During both earthquakes and subsequently, our Gallery has stood as an expression of recovery and renewal in this city, and it’s a role we’d like to reinforce into the future. The building has proved itself to be made of strong stuff, with climate control in collection areas continuing seamlessly and damage to works of art minimal. Of course, one major consequence of the seismic activity has been the cancellation of key elements in the exhibitions and public programmes – and, at this stage, it is still unclear when we’ll be able to open again.
David Maskill