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.
*See recent posts about the quakes – an elephant in the room and one about Christchurch as it is.