Architect counts down – one week to go

Close involvement with the design and construction of spaces can evoke strong emotions. Architectural stories may not be transformed into TV series as often as medical stories, but they can involve just as much drama.

Over the course of this project we have experienced excitement, disappointment, anticipation, expected and unexpected pleasures.

For  Crispin and me  it is a great delight seeing the actual spaces  looking and feeling  as we had envisaged looking at lines on a screen many months ago. A greater delight will be to see the spaces being used by their  precious  occupants and visitors.

I can’t wait to join the first visitor crowd, undercover.

Ekin Sakin
Architect, Christchurch ity Council

“Mummy, what do curators do?” (#5 in an ongoing series)

“To me, making a tape is like writing a letter — there’s a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again.

A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do.

You’ve got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with ‘Got to Get You Off My Mind’, but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightaway, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you’ve got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can’t have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can’t have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you’ve done the whole thing in pairs and … oh, there are loads of rules.”

Nick Hornby, from his novel High Fidelity

Shipping news

So a week-and-a-bit ago Neil Pardington’s survey opened here, and yesterday the exhibitions White on White and Gembox ended, and next Sunday the Séraphine Pick and et al. shows come down, and the day after that Blue Planet opens, which is the same day Chris Heaphy’s Untitled (bleu) goes on show, which takes us on, within the next three weeks, to the openings of Ricky Swallow: Watercolours and The Naked and the Nude and Talisman and of course Brought to Light and you know what, it’s kind of busy here at the moment, and if you’re not careful big things glide by without being celebrated and here’s one of them: Fiona Pardington’s new contribution to the Springboard illuminated billboard out on Worcester Boulevard.

It’s a photograph of a model of The Charlotte Jane, one of the ‘first four ships’ to colonise Canterbury, made by a Christchurch glass-blower called John Rowe, a descendant of one of the Charlotte Jane’s original passengers who reportedly sealed the instructions for the whole thing inside a tube at the centre of the model. It’s now in the collection of Canterbury Museum, where Pardington recently photographed it against a velvety black backdrop. Walk up Worcester Boulevard at dusk, when the light that powers the billboard really starts to pump through the rigging, and you see a ghost ship sailing towards you. History ahoy.

Justin Paton, Senior curator

An architect’s view

My first relationship with the new Gallery took place in a virtual world at the tip of my mouse. I imagined people walking, looking, seeing, sensing, where my mouse travelled as I decided where the walls should be located. Next I was involved with reality on the construction site, as builders made the walls, floors and ceilings and I observed compliance with architectural intent. Now I walk among complete spaces, which those walls, floors and ceilings came together to create. The doors to the atrium are open and light is finding its way through. The appreciation of the whole as more than the sum of its parts is marking the end of my professional relationship with the project ‘Brought to Light’ and the start of a new one as a regular visitor.

Ekin Sakin

Architect, Christchurch City Council

Mayoral visit to the new gallery space

Senior curator Justin Paton, left, shows Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker and Mayoress Joanna Nicholls-Parker around the new Gallery space last week.

It is now just two and a half weeks until the collection galleries open to the public on November 28, with the opening to be celebrated with a line-up of special events on the opening weekend. 

Don’t miss your chance to be one of the first to see the new galleries! 

  

OPENING WEEKEND EVENTS:
For all guided tours meet at the front desk.

SATURDAY 28 NOVEMBER
11am–3pm on the hour
Tour: Brought to Light
Join a tour led by our volunteer guides.

SUNDAY 29 NOVEMBER
10–10.45am
The Director’s Cut
Enjoy a special introduction to Brought to Light with Gallery director Jenny Harper.

11am–12 noon
Curating New Stories
Join the curatorial team for a tour of Brought to Light, full of new stories, new favourites and classic works of art.

1–3pm
Four Views of ‘A New View’
Senior curator Justin Paton leads a group of special guests Fiona Pardington, Robin White, Jonathan Mane-Wheoki and Mary Kisler on a walking tour of Brought to Light.

3.30–4pm
Expatriates: Comings and Goings
1890s–1930s
Art historian Julie King looks at the paintings and objects relating to the ‘expatriate experience’.

FOR FAMILIES
Daily, 10am–5pm
Explore Blue Planet and Brought to Light with a fun activity booklet.
Gold coin donation, collect from Blue Planet.