Christchurch Six Years on: Community Cooperation and Creativity
Six years after Christchurch’s destructive earthquakes, how has community art enabled grieving and recovery?
Recently, on a visit to Christchurch, New Zealand, my husband and I travelled by taxi from the airport to our hotel in the city centre. Initially we were seduced into thinking the city had recovered from its devastating earthquakes of 2010–11. We passed through quiet, orderly streets full of beautiful green gardens with large trees, flowering magnolias and wild daffodils. But as we approached the city centre our senses were confronted by the chaos of street closures, temporary wire-mesh fencing, mechanical screams of construction tools, flashes of orange-and-silver safety jackets and road safety cones, and dusty building blocks. The city constantly reminded us of devastating destruction and creative rebirth.
Christchurch and its surrounds were hit by a magnitude 6.3 earthquake at 12.51 pm on Tuesday 22 February 2011. It was the second major quake in five months and was documented in many news reports at the time. Christchurch’s buildings had been severely weakened by the first quake. The second one was devastating.
One hundred and eighty-five people were killed. Over 100,000 houses were destroyed along with vital infrastructure. Some of Christchurch became uninhabitable because of liquefaction which produced about 400,000 tons of silt, making rebuilding impossible. Many people left the city, never to return. The NZ$40 billion dollar clean-up continues six years on.
As I walked around Christchurch, along closed streets, across rubble-strewn blocks and past boarded-up buildings, I was struck by the amount of art in public spaces — the murals on buildings, the sculptures and outdoor installations — and, on enquiry, I was made aware of many community art projects.
The community had responded by decorating and celebrating what was left standing in Christchurch with street art in the form of enormous murals on the exposed sides of buildings, where their neighbour had been demolished. It provided a refreshing contrast to the pervading greyness of the road repairs and empty demolition sites. This art had existed before, but has evolved further since the earthquake, inspiring Lindsay Chan to launch an interactive map listing the location of the 100 murals, many confronting.
They reminded me that the city has suffered but has not died.
Although the earthquake destroyed many of the most beautiful contemporary art galleries in Christchurch, the use of outdoor spaces was quickly adopted by artists and has been embraced by the community to improve their quality of life, offering ‘camaraderie … when all around is chaos’.
Hundreds of temporary and transitional projects have popped up in Christchurch, adapting culturally and ecologically to the constant demolition and reconstruction. Reuben Woods, who is exploring the city’s post-quake street art, says the earthquake in Christchurch made it easier ‘for artists to leave their mark. There’s more space to fill, and there’s less defined ownership of space so it doesn’t seem villainous to do something with it.’
Although the Christchurch Art Gallery was closed for five years after the quake, the art gallery director, Jenny Harper, was still able to engage her community through a crowd-funded purchase of a massive 1.7 tonne bronze bull on top of a grand piano centrally displayed in the rubble-strewn city.
The bull was adopted by the community because it represented a symbol of resistance and was something beautiful and solid to cherish.
I met up with Tamsin Martin, a writer friend who directed me towards Christchurch’s 185 white chairs installation currently located at the site of the demolished Presbyterian church and created by artist Pete Majendie in February 2012, a year after the quake. The strange collection of chairs, all sprayed white, is set out in orderly rows to represent each person lost.
Many Christchurch residents have a special attachment to the chairs and do not want them to be removed. Pete is working towards finding a permanent site and believes the collection could sit well with the Canterbury Earthquake National Memorial wall along the river. He says the art installation transcends the earthquake, but is also rooted in it. The city needs a soul or a heart and this contributes to making a city what it is.
I located several artists who told me stories of their involvement in community art projects. These artists have thoughtfully engaged and worked with their communities to help them grieve their losses ritually and mark them in time, enabling them to begin the journey of recovery together.
Corina Hazlett works in a number of prisons providing art therapy for the prisoners and in 2012 and 2013 organised a major auction of the prisoners’ artwork. ‘Artwork enabled prisoners to paint about their feelings and process their anxieties, as it was a terrifying time to be incarcerated during an earthquake for both prisoners and staff,’ she said.
The auction in 2013 of 140 wonderful works of art by 75 painters, pen-and-pencil artists, wood carvers and sculptors raised over NZ$21,000 for the prisoners’ affected communities. Corina received an award for this work.
Jane McCulla, a ceramist, lived at the epicentre of the earthquake in the small seaside community of Lyttelton. She told me about a community project she initiated in 2013. ‘I hand cut over 500 tiles, bisque-fired them, mounted them on card and placed them at peoples’ front gates or random street locations,’ she said. ‘When the public found them they read the message on the card telling them to bring the tile to a table on the main street where they could meet me and paint their tile. Lots of people came together at the table on the street to paint their own individual design. Every age group took part. I also visited the two schools and invited Maori groups and the surrounding bays to take part. The great thing was the gathering of people sharing their stories of what they were going through and this helped to heal.’
These tiles were then used to create a mandala, which was placed in the city centre.
Jane initiated a second project, the Community Regeneration Mandala. She made 1000 small porcelain bud forms. ‘I placed them in a circular Mandala form on the ground and invited members of the public to choose one to take home,’ she said. ‘When people were choosing their individual bud form they would chat to other people, compare their chosen buds and sometimes share their stories about how things were progressing with their broken homes and devastated city after much demolition.’
Jane said she uses the mandala shape because to her it means community or togetherness and the bud forms suggest regrowth of the city.
Jenny Cooper, a children’s book illustrator, came up with the project named Crack’d for Christchurch and formed a group by suggesting they would collect all the broken china around Christchurch and make mosaics. This china often had precious memories associated with it. ‘We wanted to bring back beauty into the central city, to document the domestic items that Cantabrians had lost, and to provide physical memorials of Christchurch’s domestic history,’ she said. One of the most famous pieces is the Flora and Otto furniture that weighs over two tonnes and took six months to complete.
Some artists did not stay and have stories of both sadness and resilience, such as that of ceramist Kim Henderson. Kim and her husband’s business lived through both earthquakes, but they chose to make a major lifestyle change and move north to Fossil Point in the Greta Valley on State Highway 1. They set up an entrepreneurial venture of an eclectic cafe with a small gallery for Kim’s ceramic work. Their business, Fossil Point Cafe and Gallery, opened eight months before the devastating 7.8 Waiau earthquake in November 2016. State Highway 1 was significantly damaged and was closed to all travellers, so Kim’s anticipated first summer season never eventuated.
The community was cut off and the flow of tourists stopped. Kim was devastated, but she then became empowered by her distress and frustration. Deprived of her ability to make ceramics due to a lack of power supply for her kilns, she began drawing satirical sketches and cartoons, which she posted on the Fossil Point Galley and Cafe Facebook page. She said, ‘It made me feel stronger and our new community has been incredibly supportive. I am just about to make pottery again after finally getting power to the kilns.’ Kim hopes that by sketching and contributing to the community recovery by speaking out about the slow response of government to repairing the infrastructure she has given a voice to smaller communities spread along the State Highway.
According to Dr Caroline Bell, people say that since the Christchurch earthquake they feel more connected to their communities, they have become less materialistic and have learnt new coping skills.
The artists of Christchurch have enabled their communities to connect through activities, which involve them individually and collectively. The people who make up the communities are encouraged to participate by creating visual stories about their experience and positively reframing their life stories, all of which contribute to their recovery.
