As I drove around Christchurch’s CBD last week I was struck by the thought that if anything good can be said about disaster it is that it also creates opportunity.
In that beleaguered urban heart, among the rubble and the yawning spaces, some stark of the grey walls that once evidenced the chaos of a broken city have been transformed by soaring murals, catching the eye with their messages of hope, humour or beauty.
I’d planned to merely drive through the city to see what progress had been made with the tearing down and rebuilding process since I was last there. Instead, I found myself on a voyage of discovery around an open-air gallery, coming across mural after mural, most of which were colourful and captivating by subject and massive in proportion.
It wasn’t just the images that excited me. In those acts of creation lie the spirit of recovery and a change of attitude that points the way to an optimistic future.
It would be mundane to describe all the images but among the most impressive were the portrait of a man growing a house from the top of his head; a girl depicted in sepia gazing with sad eyes across a parking lot; a wall of seagulls painted by Australian artist Anthony Lister, and looking as if they are about to scoop up the cars parked below.
I didn’t count the number of murals I discovered in Christchurch. Once I started looking for them they seemed to be everywhere. Some of them fell into the realm of upmarket graffiti but the majority that caught my eye had plainly been designed and painted by skilled artists.
Tiny towns: Little River
Lisa Jansen explores Little River and finds many reasons to linger in this tiny town on the Banks Peninsula
