Heather Hapeta lives in Aotearoa-New Zealand: real travel, real adventures, real stories, real photos. Recent destinations Vietnam, Cambodia, Taiwan and Hong Kong – now NZ destinations due to COVID travel restrictions
During the school, summer holidays Christchurch was invaded by penguins. Each was designed by local artists, and numerous schools, to be displayed throughout the city as a pop-up penguin art trial.
I saw some mums with the kids as they kicked them off on a map, I also believe there was an app that people could follow too. I randomly came across about a dozen and here they are for you to see.
Like the giraffes that were scattered around the city a few years ago, these too will be auctioned with the proceeds going to the Cholmondeley Children’s Centre. (www.cholmondeley.org,nz )
Went to Rotorua, New Zealand, for the weekend …. came a day early ao I could travel slow and enjoy the views. Here are some for you .. from Wellington to Ohakune .
On my recent trip to Xiamen, China I was interested to see local art and, as our Kiwi tour leader, Janet Andrews, had attended the Arts Academy at Jimei University as an exchange student just a few years ago we were lucky enough to visit the Fine Art College there.
She was treated like a visiting rock star and we rode on those coat-tails. An exhibition of the students end of the semester work was very different to our preconceived ideas about Chinese art.
Here are some of their work and the fantastic artwork around the University grounds.
If you have the chance to visit this Uni, grab it!
My next post will be about the Duishan Art District and some of the artists, who graduated from Jemei Uni, and have studios there.
NOTE: thanks for the assitance to travel in this region as part of the cultural delegation from Xiamen’s sister city Wellington, New Zealand.
See more here –http://www.wellingtonxiamen.com and check #Xiamen for photos on Instagram, and in this blog for many other posts about my great week there.
Grab a free map of the sculpture walk to see these, and many more great pieces of art, Wellington’s Botanic Gardens.
I took these photos on a recent walk … and thought others may like to see them. Take the cable car from the CBD up to the gardens and wander around these lovely gardens.
Over the past five years, returning to the city of my birth, Christchurch, New Zealand, was often like returning to school – but the old three R’s rule of reading, writing and ’rithmetic had been replaced with different R’s – I often had to ask if it has been reopened, renovated, relocated or reduced-to-rubble. Unfortunately, with something like 80% of the inner-city, my old stomping ground, demolished because of quake damage, many were reduced to rubble or relocated.
Of course many of my favourites have another R as they remained-open or have reopened after minor damage was repaired, while a few had to close temporarily while neighbouring buildings were ‘de-constructed’.
A few of my special city-centre places in the remained open (or just closed briefly) category are, The Classic Villa; Canterbury Museum; Botanic Gardens; and The Antigua Boat Sheds.
Two months before the September 2010 quakes, a mayoral candidate said if he became mayor he would apply for World Heritage Status for the city’s unique Gothic Revival buildings. It seemed no city in the world had such a collection of Gothic revival buildings ‘of such high quality and so well preserved’ and I went to the Great Hall in the Gothic style Christchurch Arts Centre, another of my favourite places in the city, to hear about the proposal. He said, “these Victorian buildings date back to the 1850s and as a group are of enormous international significance. They represent the outcome of the furthest migration of any group of people in human history.” He continued, “They are more than bricks and mortar, they are at the heart of our city”.
I’m now back at the Arts Centre, very fortunate to get an escorted, behind-the-scenes, peek at the work being done in this part of the ‘heart of our city.’ Andre Lovatt the Arts Centre CEO, who values the heritage buildings in our city, is showing me around. He knows that ‘with enough time and money, you can do anything’ and time and, money has been and is continuing to be used on this collection of buildings. (Donations welcome to help this work – see their website)
Although the Gothic style is usually associated with churches the mid-Victorian architects used it in other buildings such as Canterbury College in 1873. Other buildings were added and eventually the college became Canterbury University. Over a century later the University moved to a new campus in the suburbs.
With plans to demolish the buildings locals demanded they be kept and eventually the empty buildings became the Arts Centre, which incidentally, my father had said would be a waste of money for the city and ‘should not be saved.’
A number of architects designed the individual buildings, the most well-known being Benjamin Mountford: it’s been said that the Great Hall was a good example of ‘his ability to adapt the Gothic style to colonial circumstance and to produce magnificent buildings within the constraints of limited resources.’
Much of the Arts Centre is reopening this year (2016) and there is anticipation and excitement by retailers who hope to return to the centre and by Cantabrians in general who look forward to being able to enjoy the area again. Check their website to find out the dates various buildings will be opened – and I’m hoping a New Zealand craft market will eventually open there too.
The Fool by Sam Mahon is one of my favourite pieces of public art … I wonder where it will move to within the Arts Centre grounds.
The Fool in its original spot outside the Court Theatre
A new sculpture to be installed within the Arts Centre is the twin to this one by Antony Gormley – which is in the Avon (between Worcester and Armagh Street bridges.
I believe one of the first places to open this year will be Rutherford’s Den. This Kiwi, Ernest Rutherford, is one of the greatest scientists of the modern age, and he studied at this college from 1890 to 1894: this den is where he conducted some of his earliest experiments and is now a museum and information area. The Den was extremely popular before the quake and now that it has been totally updated I can see even more locals and tourists visiting it.
Ash Keating, the Melbourne (Australia) artist was commissioned (by Gap Filler and the Christchurch Art Gallery) to create a large art work in Christchurch in 2012. He was in the city at the time of the February 2011 quake and I loved his great rusty orange work on Manchester Street.
In January 2016 it was tagged and he has just returned to repaint it … I had seen the tag and then a few days later walked past as he was repainting it. (NOTE: If you are looking for it, it’s just around corner from New Regent Street, and a couple of blocks south of the magical Margaret Mahy playground)
Christchurch has a long history of great art and artists, and since the seismic shaking over 5 years ago it has again embraced art and I will later blog some of the art around the city.
For more information on the artist see his Facebook page here
It seems the tagger has been identified – he was bragging about it on Facebook. Duh!
This is one of a series of blogs I’m writing on Christchurch and how its emerging five years on from the 2010/11 quakes when it lost some 80%, yes eighty percent, of its inner city buildings- not because they fell down, but had to be demolished because of the damage – I will be writing about what it is now, not what was lost.
Christchurch in particular is proud that local woman, Kate Sheppard, was the leader and figurehead of the suffrage movement that resulted in a petition that ensured all New Zealand woman were able to vote from 1893.
New Zealand is the first country in the world to give women the vote: married, single, migrant, indigenous, poor, rich, with or without land, working or not – all women were able to vote with the passing of the 1893 Electoral Bill.
Notice we kiwi did not use the word ‘suffragettes’ as we’d the vote some twenty years before that term was coined!
Born to Scottish parents, Kate came to New Zealand in 1868 with her widowed mother, and New Zealand honours her by having her image on our ten-dollar note.
Every Suffrage Day, 19th September, a few women gather at the Christchurch memorial panel to pay tribute to all those wonderful women by placing white camellias and purple balloons on this inner city sculpture. Note this is at the corner of Worcester Boulevard & Cambridge Terrace – although with post-quake (2010/11) plans it may be moved.
A punk rock musical about her struggles with the Prime Minister (Seddon) has recently been performed at the Christchurch Festival .. called That Bloody Woman, it had good reviews so I look forward to seeing it soon – apparently some were initially ‘shocked at the opening scenes’ when her sexual behaviour was exposed but ‘this quickly abated as the story developed’ I was told.
Pedestrian crossing signal in Wellington NZ. Began a temporary installation but now here to stay
The memorial was unveiled in 1993, the 100th anniversary of this historic event. It has six women on it with Kate Sheppard holding the petition in a wheelbarrow which is how the petition was delivered to the steps of Parliament in Wellington. The side panels show women in typical everyday (1893) settings – gathering shellfish, teaching, factory sewing, farming, caring for families and nursing. These are flanked by bronze panels telling the New Zealand suffrage story.
Here are more pictures about one of our favourite kiwi women.
John Noakes, the bus stop artist of Dunedin, New Zealand started the idea of painting bus shelters after seeing children hiding from the rain in dark bus stops. He painted about 65 of them – a fine legacy and makes for attractive driving along, and around, the Otago Peninsula.
The New Zealand rental car company I used around Dunedin was New Zealand Rent A Car (branches all over NZ)
Went to Rotorua, New Zealand, for the weekend …. came a day early ao I could travel slow and enjoy the views. Here are some for you .. from Wellington to Ohakune . 
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