If there’s only one product you invest in for your skin this spring, make it a good quality mineral sunscreen, according to Probeauty.

The sun’s harmful rays are the number one cause of our skin’s ageing, (even more so than smoking or ageing itself), and these UVA and UVB rays can still reach our skin even through clouds and windows. Add to this the fact that New Zealand has the highest rate of skin cancer, and that’s more than enough reason for us to apply daily. 

The majority of the cheap sunscreens found in supermarkets use ingredients such as oxybenzone, octinoxate and avobenzone to create a chemical reaction in the skin that absorbs rays, converting them to heat. However, studies have shown some of these chemicals are damaging coral reefs and could be toxic, and in addition they don’t always prevent UVA rays.

Physical (mineral) sunscreens usually use zinc oxide as the active ingredient (a healing mineral that’s been around for thousands of years to treat burns, rashes and infections) which works to physically deflect the sun’s rays like a shield. Mineral sunscreen is not toxic to coral reefs, and is great for sensitive skin and for children, as it won’t cause heat and irritation in the skin. 

If you already love mineral sunscreen but don’t like the white “ghosting” look it can sometimes give, we love Suntegrity’s range of tinted sunscreens for the face and body, to give the skin a hint of colour and a boost of skin nourishment with natural ingredients such as aloe vera, jojoba oil and natural antioxidants. Don’t forget to apply sunscreen to your neck and your hands, these two areas of our skin are some of the first to show signs of ageing.

probeauty.co.nz

Fitness pro Kyla at Studio Six Private Training believes a few easy wins can keep you in top shape through the summer.

Drink up. The sun’s out, you’re moving more – time to make sure you’re getting that 1.5 litres of the good stuff. When you’re dehydrated, your body starts to think you’re hungry, when really you just need a big old glass of H₂O.

Stay organised. Make sure you’ve got healthy food options prepped. When we’re hungry, we usually rush to convenience food, which tends to be unhealthy.

Stick to healthy snacks. There are some super-tasty healthy options. Kyla recommends Sweet Chilli Philly or hummus with carrot sticks and rice crackers. How about half a palmful of nuts and seeds, or some popcorn? Try to add protein into your snacks, as it means you can eat fewer calories and feel fuller.

Allocate certain days to exercise. Monday: gym. Thursday: swim. Even if it’s only a few days a week, having a schedule keeps you accountable.

Get into BBQs. Summer is great for healthy eating, with BBQs over long nights accompanied by fresh summer salads. Try to stick to non-fatty protein, like steak and chicken, rather than sausages, and look for healthy salad dressing.

Balance your big nights. If you know you’ll be having a calorie-heavy night out, try to balance it with a healthy lunch that’s high in protein.

Try something new. A new year is a great excuse to switch up your exercise regimen. Get outside, keep it fresh, and find something you love.

s6.co.nz

From High Street, to destruction, to Re:START and back, Infinite Definite is a classic story of a business in the Christchurch CBD, earthquakes and recovery. Fashion designer and retailer Jono Moran talks the journey over with What's Hot New Zealand.

Infinite Definite’s origin story began back in 2008 as a menswear label which I designed and had manufactured right here in Christchurch. We were looking for stockists for Infinite Definite and the opportunity came along to rent a space on High Street in the old ANZ Bank Chambers building. So we decided to open our own store to sell Infinite Definite in Christchurch. There were plenty of other talented emerging designers that weren't being stocked here at that time, so we broadened our offering to encompass a range of New Zealand brands as well as some international ones we thought would resonate with our customers. It was also an exciting opportunity for me to design and build our first interior space to represent our brand (on a shoestring budget).

The Canterbury earthquakes came along two years into our business, shutting us down for around six weeks following the September quakes, and then ultimately losing our first store in the February quakes along with everything in it. After leaving the store that day we were never able to go back in.

Around five months later, after looking at all sorts of potential spaces in suburban and industrial areas around Christchurch and not finding anything that we thought would work for our business, Re:START came along. Four weeks on, we were back up and running in the central city just a few blocks away from where we started.

Re:START was an incredibly important project for the Christchurch Central City. It was one of the only functioning areas of our CBD for the first couple of years and without it, businesses like us may not have been able to take part in reforming our city in those early years.

Following the earthquakes we decided to focus solely on the retail part of our business and put our menswear label to the side for the time being. We rocked along for five and a half years in our Re:START store, all the while looking for a permanent place to call home.

In 2016, we signed a lease in a new build which had enough space for us to further develop Infinite Definite, back on High Street right on the edge of what would become the new Retail Precinct.

I wanted to create a calm space with a simple palette of colours, materials and textures that I felt would offer us flexibility to curate and showcase our eclectic range of goods and designers. It was important that the store had an easy flow and that people had space to take things in visually while they moved through. Hopefully this is the experience people have when they visit us.

High Street is feeling a lot more like the High Street we knew pre-quake. In a lot of ways it is still in a very formative stage, which is exciting. Among a few of us who were High Street originals, we are seeing new artist-run spaces popping up and other independent retail spaces coming into the mix as well.

I do miss having the older building stock in the CBD, which provided affordable spaces for creatives to set up studios right in the heart of the city, but in reality a lot of it wasn’t used and wasn’t fit for purpose, so I don’t get too hung up on the past. The future of Christchurch’s central city and Infinite Definite’s part in it is my focus.

I love the public spaces that are forming in our city, and we have such an incredible mix of small business.

By 2030, I would love to see more people living in our central city, along with the long-overdue completion of the anchor projects like the stadium and convention centre.

I am excited about where central Christchurch is heading. There is an exciting energy in the city at the moment, with more and more businesses filling in the gaps and bringing new colour to the CBD. I think we are at a great turning point where the city is once again becoming a regular part of people's daily lives.

The best thing about my job would be that it gives me a place to work creatively alongside other creatives. No day is the same and every day we are looking for how we can develop our brand and do something new.

Choosing brands for Infinite Definite has always been first and foremost about things we want to wear ourselves, things we want to use in our own home, and things that inspire us. Our decisions are ultimately design-focused and we are always looking for goods that have integrity in their own right.

The Lifestore is an area of our business that is growing a lot and it was one of the major reasons we looked for a larger floorspace on our return to High Street. We have so many exciting new homewares coming in over summer. As with our offering in apparel, our Lifestore is eclectic and we aim to curate an exciting and interesting mix of products, many of which are things Sarah and I use at home or are drawn to in terms of design.

infinitedefinite.com

For Vikki George at Roccabella, jewellery is about stories and memories. She tells Cityscape about some of the most special jewellery in the store.

Hearts On Fire

“If you’re looking to buy a round brilliant cut, the diamond I would recommend to my family and best friends is Hearts On Fire,” Vikki says. “It is simply the best cut diamond for sparkle, it’s not just a brand name, it’s a reassurance of the quality.” 

Hearts On Fire started in Boston in the 1990s and set about perfecting the cut of round brilliant diamonds using heart and arrow facets. It soon earned a reputation for selling the world's most perfectly cut diamond. Roccabella partnered with Hearts On Fire in 2006, and as one of the top sellers in the world, Vikki travelled to Boston to meet the designers. “I know Hearts On Fire intimately,” she says. “They’re cut with such precision, which makes them visually more beautiful. They just sparkle more than other diamonds, it doesn’t matter the size. I call them ‘ten-table diamonds’ because you can see them from ten tables away.”

Vikki loves that Hearts On Fire come in a whole range of sizes and prices, all with top-quality diamonds. “You can’t go out and buy a small Lamborghini, but with Hearts On Fire you can have that prestige and quality on any budget. I love that we can offer this kind of luxury at all price points.”

Gioielliamo

Roccabella’s story with Italian jewellers Gioielliamo goes back to the pre-earthquake days. Vikki imports jewellery from the family company’s head jeweller, Filippo. Back in the early days of Roccabella, Vikki’s mother Margaret dealt with Filippo’s father. “It’s a great dynamic between the two countries,” Vikki says. “We talk on WhatsApp about what is on trend in Italy and what Gioielliamo items are popular in Christchurch.” Gioielliamo comes from Arezzo, a traditional goldsmithing town where many age-old family businesses have been squeezed out of the market by mass-produced jewellery. “We try and support and protect that history of artistic, ethical and authentic manufacturing,” Vikki says. Most Gioielliamo pieces are 18 carat gold, and many feature coloured stones – including exquisite chocolate-coloured diamonds – and all the pieces have a certain Italian charm. “Italian jewellery just has a little special something,” Vikki says.

Selin Kent

Vikki hit it off immediately with Selin Kent when first contacting the New York jeweller. Roccabella’s story of recovery resonated with Selin, who is originally from Istanbul and no stranger to devastating quakes. Her speciality is stunning jewellery made from ethically sourced metals and gems.

Minimaliti

Lena, the designer behind the contemporary Tel Aviv jewellery brand Minimaliti is also a friend of Roccabella. Unfortunately, her shipments haven’t been able to go out because of Covid-related restrictions and delays, but Vikki loves her designs and with persistence, the two jewellers managed to get a new shipment of Minimaliti pieces into Roccabella at the end of November. “We’re the ultimate in keeping hope alive,” Vikki says. The Minimaliti range is unique and modern, made mostly from rubber and silver, and remarkably cost-effective for its quality and beauty.

the non citizens

the non citizens is specially special to Vikki because, well, it’s her own range. Vikki designed each item herself, and the demi-couture pieces are ready to take home as-is, or you can customise your own with a special stone or metal that suits your look.

The name of the range comes from Vikki’s experience of the world. “I was born in Tokyo,” she says. “I don’t have my own citizenship, I am only a New Zealand citizen because of my parents. I believe the world should be open to everybody and we should be citizens of the world. My jewellery imparts a little bit of that empowerment – you can be anything and do anything.”

Lola James Harper

This French perfumery is all about connection, and Vikki loves Lola James Harper’s philosophy. “It’s all about how you set your mind and mood to the scent you wear,” she says. Each of the scents – whether it be an eau de toilette or a scented candle – is designed to convey joy, love, a positive outlook, or a new mindset.

Get your hands (or ears, or neck) on these exceptional items, or talk bespoke jewellery design with Vikki at Roccabella in Cashel Street.

roccabella.co.nz

Christchurch’s new rooftop bar is giving us an opportunity to escape life’s street-level madness and feel the wind in our hair.

On the roof of The Muse Hotel, and named for the hotel’s pink sunset glow, The Pink Lady Rooftop is an intimate space that’s all about the views.

Created by the team behind other Christchurch hotspots like Welles Street functions, Earl, and Bottle + Stone among others, Pink Lady is giving us that ‘stepping off the plane in a foreign city’ vibe. The drinks list features fabulous wines, crafties from Fortune Favours, and cocktails that are fun, flirty and made for the ‘Gram.

The bar has a chic mid-century vibe, and for nibbles, you’ll be able to choose from a breezy Baja-inspired menu with a selection of bar snacks designed to share with your friends as you gaze out across the Christchurch city skyline. Let’s face it, watching the sun set over the Port Hills on a warm summer’s night with a cold margarita in hand? We’ll see you there.

pinkladyrooftop.co.nz

Rave and dance to drum and bass with these Kiwi legends who have made it big at festivals around the world.

Shapeshifter are touring New Zealand in October with three shows that are sure to be a bangin’ good time. Following up on record-breaking tours of New Zealand, the crew will perform at Auckland Town Hall on October 16, Christchurch’s Town Hall on October 17 and at Hawkes Bay Black Barn Amphitheatre on October 24.

Expect to see full-on professional production values with live instruments and singing, synthesizers, light show, and of course massive sound.

Auckland Town Hall, Friday 16 October, 2020

Christchurch Town Hall, Saturday 17 October, 2020

Black Barn Amphitheatre, Hawke’s Bay, Friday 23 & Saturday 24 October, 2020

Electric Avenue, Christchurch, Saturday 27 February, 2021

shapeshifter.co.nz

A new exhibition – Mosque: Faith, Culture, Community – which aims to demystify Islam for non-Muslim New Zealanders opened December 12 at Canterbury Museum.

Mosque: Faith, Culture, Community highlights the mosque as the heart of Muslim communities, and the diversity of Islamic culture showcased through art and objects. The museum developed the exhibition in partnership with Christchurch Muslims who are keen to share knowledge, understanding of Islam, and the diversity of those who follow the faith with the wider community.

“Our hope is that in working with local Muslims we have created uplifting experience for our visitors, one that highlights the diversity of Islamic art, architecture and culture,” says Museum director Anthony Wright.

“It is important that we share stories from all parts of the Canterbury community and that we work with those communities in presenting them. We hope that the exhibition will dispel some of the misconceptions about Islam and that visitors will come away with a greater understanding of their Muslim neighbours.”

The first Muslims to arrive in New Zealand, Mahomet and Mindia Wuzerah, and their sons Pero and Mero, came to Christchurch in 1854 from India, working in the household of John Cracroft Wilson in Cashmere. Other Muslims, mostly from China and India, arrived in Otago and on the West Coast during the 19th Century gold rushes.

New Zealand’s first mosque opened in Auckland in 1979 and Christchurch’s first Islamic Centre a year later in a small house in Phillipstown.

The exhibition highlights the role of the mosque as the centre of Islamic religious life and the place where people meet, exchange news, learn and celebrate. In a video made for the exhibition, Muslims who worship at Christchurch’s mosques – Al-Noor, the Linwood Islamic Centre and the Rasul-O-Allah Centre, Bishopdale – talk about what their mosque means to them. Objects on display from the museum collection and the community illustrate the influence of differing cultures on expressions of the Muslim faith.

Anthony adds that the exhibition has been an opportunity to put on display rarely seen Islamic objects from the museum’s collection including a beautifully decorated Qur’an produced in Kashmir, dating back to 1700.

The tragic events of 15 March 2019 are marked by a display of the tributes left outside the Linwood and Al-Noor Mosques and the Botanic Gardens in an outpouring of love, support and solidarity for the victims. The headscarf worn by the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, during public events at the time is also displayed. She donated it to the museum in late 2019.

Community representatives selected the tributes for display from the collection held at the museum. The museum cares for about 100 tributes, a representative sample of the thousands left in the outpouring of aroha and support for the victims of the Christchurch mosques attacks. Staff worked with Muslim community representatives last year to select the tributes from the thousands laid at sites across the city and wider region in the wake of the attacks.

Mosque: Faith, Culture, Community also features 33 drawings of mosques drawn on location by internationally acclaimed Syrian-American artist and architect Whabi Al-Hariri Rifai (1914–1994) in the last years of his life. Al-Hariri travelled to 16 countries, from Spain to China, to document the most significant historic mosques of the world. The collection of large graphite drawings, entitled Spiritual Edifices of Islam, depicts the rich diversity of Islamic architecture. They were first exhibited at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC, United States of America in 1999 and have been shown at major museums and venues around the world.

The display of Spiritual Edifices of Islam is supported by the Georgetown Design Group, Washington DC.

canterburymuseum.com

A mainstay of the DTR street art crew, Dcypher cut his teeth in Canterbury before spending a decade in Los Angeles working as a freelance artist and developing mural art for TV shows like Sons of Anarchy, Silicon Valley and NCIS.

Tell us about DTR. The DTR crew was formed back in the late ‘90s, predominantly graffiti artists who had similar ideals. It has had many members, but over time has been refined down to myself, Ikarus, Freak and Yikes, who are all still active today as artists in various capacities.

How did you come up with the name Dcypher? The name came about when I was a teenager. It’s super cliché in hindsight, but once you’ve chosen a name you kinda have to stick to it. Graffiti can be difficult to decipher to the general public so at the time it felt like a good fit.

How did you get into street art? I got into creating art at a young age but as a teenager, hanging out in the city skateboarding and tagging was a part of the culture at that time. Also my father bought me a book of 1980s subway graffiti art in New York called Subway Art. It was mind blowing at the time and still is. Once I saw that I was hooked.

READ MORE: Street art in Christchurch

What was the first bit of street art you created? Around 1998, it was a piece that said ‘infamous’ and had a character next to it. It’s possibly still there sandwiched between two buildings, due to new buildings being constructed over the years. It was pretty terrible, so I went back to the drawing board for quite a while before I really started to take it seriously.

Tell us about a piece of street art that’s inspired you. There wasn’t a lot of murals, graffiti or street art up in the beginning that was massively inspiring to me, but being a dedicated skateboarder for half my life I was heavily influenced by skateboard graphics. Although, there were a few really talented German graffiti artists that visited Christchurch in the early 2000s that definitely gave me a very different perspective of how far the art of graffiti could be developed in style and technique.

How does your process work? There are obviously different levels and forms of creating graffiti and street art legally or illegally, but from a commercial perspective the process of developing an artwork always varies from client to client. The client usually has input into the design’s outcome. I’ll create a mock-up of what the artwork will look like for the proposed wall, that's it in a nutshell. I won't go into the unsanctioned side of things, although that is a huge part of my development and freedom as an artist over the years.

Talk us through the piece you’ve done in Christchurch that you love the most. The latest piece that DTR painted as a crew in the South Frame would be my favourite wall this year. It’s a timeline that depicts the development of graffiti and street art with mainstream technologies collaged with pop culture references and influences of the last four decades as markers of time and progression.

Where’s your favourite place to go in Christchurch for a:

Morning coffee? The closest one to where I’m working. I’m not a loyal coffee shop kinda guy.

Post-painting beer? Smash Palace for post painting beers for sure!

Hit of creative inspiration? I would have to say the city itself is where I draw a lot of my creativity from. It’s an extremely active city as far as murals, street art and graffiti go. I see cities as huge, constantly evolving, collaborative artworks.

dcypherart.com

Gerard Smyth has become a chronicler of the earthquake recovery, recording hundreds of hours of historical footage and releasing two feature-length docos on Christchurch’s up-and-down decade.

When the earthquake hit on February 22, 2011, Gerard Smyth grabbed his broken video camera and within 20 minutes, holding the lens in place with his thumb, began recording the central Christchurch chaos. He had been working on a documentary about what a ‘near miss’ the September earthquake was, and organically flew into the action by the seat of his pants. As a one-man crew he went where he could, when he could, to capture the important moments over the following hours, days, weeks, months and years.

Gerard grew up in Christchurch, in an Irish Catholic family with 38 first cousins spread across the economic spectrum. His father – Bernard Smyth – was a well-known local television presenter, and Gerard had a strong grounding in storytelling and an insight into the city’s people.

Storytelling would become his passion. He did stints of other things – gardening, bringing up kids, opening Volcano Café in Lyttelton – but making documentaries was never far from his heart. He’s the producer of Frank Film, a small current affairs crew which has shot scores of mini docos about South Islanders.

Gerard has also created feature-length documentaries, both in New Zealand and overseas. When a City Falls (2011) is an early chronicle of the immediate and ongoing aftermath of the Canterbury earthquake sequence; a moving story of people banding together in some of Christchurch’s darkest days.

“There have been so many stories to tell,” he says. “So much Christchurch has needed to know about where we are heading. What ideas do we need to choose from in our identity as a city? Where do we go, and who is going to lead us?”

Creating the sequel, When a City Rises, was a natural progression. Gerard has recorded hundreds of stories in the intervening decade, and has over 600 hours of footage from the earthquake recovery and rebuild. He started working on the 90-minute film around 2017, and launched it in cinemas in November 2020.

When a City Rises is a record of ten years of Christchurch’s recovery, telling two stories side by side. The first is the physical recovery of the city centre, inside the four avenues. The second is a story about our recovery as people. “Are we still the old Christchurch?” Gerard ponders. “The most English of all English cities? Or have we changed into a city of diverse and new people with new ideas?”

The answer he gives to his own question is cautiously optimistic: “We are turning into that, we are changing quickly.”

Watching the film, viewers were struck by how quickly they had forgotten things that were so normal such a short time ago: the sheer number of empty lots, the twisted structures. Gerard, too, was surprised at times by his own footage. He says there were entire interviews with people he had no recollection of speaking to. “I think we’ve all got a propensity to forget the hard stuff. We can’t live in the dark times for long. Our memories are such fickle things.”

The most surprising footage to find, he says, was the scene in which Mayor Lianne Dalziel and the Christchurch City Council approved the restoration of the Town Hall. Gerard recorded the moment from a corner of the room, then moved out to capture campaigners’ jubilance in the aftermath. “I like that spontaneous footage,” he says. “I’m most proud of that. It’s the most fun to do.”

We interview Gerard in The Herb Centre café, near his central city home, and it quickly becomes apparent from the frequent interruptions that he really is a man of the people. “You’ve been away for a while! How was it?” he asks a staff member. “Are you loving the warm weather?” he enquires of an acquaintance who comes in for a coffee. “I’m giving an interview,” he reveals to another, who stops by the table to say hi. “G’day, how’s the baby?” he asks another punter.

Gerard admits he's not a fan of the government’s recovery plan, but does claim to be a champion of Christchurch – “I fiercely don’t align myself with any political group.” Gerard believes it could take another 20 to 30 years to transition from ‘rebuild’ to the natural development of a normal, organically evolving city. But he holds out hope, saying it’s not too late to build the modern city we deserve, and that taking our time isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“The government of the day, in the years after the earthquake, worried if things weren’t done quickly Christchurch would cease to exist,” he says. “It’s a double-edged sword. Through doing things quickly, you lose a lot of individual and diverse expression. We locked out lots of potential, but we could see the error of our ways, and find ways to allow the smaller ‘finer grain’ alongside the majorlithic structures, so many of which have ‘for lease’ signs on them.”

So what does Gerard want for the central city, if not glass-fronted contemporary steel monuments? “Thousands of children. Lots and lots of families living in the heart of the city in four-storey multi-use buildings surrounding green areas. Recreation areas in our city. Tennis courts. An urban suburb.”

Slowing down, he says, taking the government’s hands off the wheel and letting development happen at its own pace might take a similar amount of time to the oft-delayed ‘blueprint’ plan and anchor projects. And it might deliver something more to Gerard’s taste. “It would be the risk that could save the city.”

“Letting capitalism dictate how our city looks and works is obviously failing.”

He describes pre-2010 Christchurch as “A faded, gracious city of small-scale treasures.” And now: “It’s lost so much of that old stock, but there is a beauty in the rebuild city. Perhaps it’s yet to flower. Things are changing.”

gerardsmyth.nz

Anthony Wright and his partner Selene Manning recently completed the stunning home-cum-art collection Wrightmann House.

All the interior walls of this architectural marvel are covered in art, and the overwhelming sense of being surrounded by beauty and confronting works resolves into a wondrous experience of spotting new details and hidden surprises every time you look. Anthony wears a lot of hats in his occupational and personal life – perhaps the most visible of which is his role as director of Canterbury Museum, where he is overseeing plans for an extensive modernisation of the institution. Anthony takes a moment with What's Hot New Zealand to answer some questions on life, history, and art.

Being director of Canterbury Museum was the dream job that brought me to Christchurch 24 years ago. As it turns out, my great, great grandfather came here in 1857 and is buried in Linwood cemetery. So there are some family links here that may have been part of the draw back to Canterbury.

Though born in Auckland, I very quickly dropped that scene and became an avid Crusaders fan. I’d always aspired to lead a museum somewhere in the country.

Having told the interview panel I’d be here a minimum of three years, an optimum of five, and a maximum of seven, Canterbury captured me. I just love the sense of community here and what I believe is the finest museum, the finest collection in the country.

There are so many highlights of my time at Canterbury Museum, but the most recent is undoubtedly this year's celebration of the museum's 150th birthday on our present Rolleston Avenue site.

We marked that with what we call House of Treasures: Ngā Taonga Tuku Iho. The first part is a fabulous book featuring 150 of the greatest treasures in the collection, and the other part is an exhibition which features the rarest and most fragile of objects which we normally can’t display because they are so delicate.

The most chilling one for me is the only remaining huia nest. A bird that’s now extinct, and the only nest that was ever collected. It’s made out of twigs and beautifully photographed by Jane Ussher for the book. The photo is an artwork in its own right, and you could perhaps say the nest itself is an artwork of nature. That’s one of the taonga that go back to the roots of the museum. The huia bird skins were one of the things that founder Julius von Haast exchanged with museums around the world to build what was, in the 1870s and ‘80s, one of the great museum collections of the world.

The museum redevelopment plan is really about bringing a tired and failing set of buildings into the 21st Century – mostly the middle-aged ones, the old heritage buildings are actually in the best condition.

We really need to care for and provide much better access to the millions of taonga, or treasures, and their stories, that the buildings house. Caring for the collection and making the collection and its stories much more accessible to the Canterbury community and our visitors is at the heart of what we’re doing.

Less than a percent of the collection is on display, so we hope in the redevelopment to greatly increase that, and also to make the museum spaces more flexible so that we can change exhibitions and show more of that large collection on a rotating basis.

The response to the concept designs has been gratifyingly positive. It really has been a slow development of ideas by the architects and consultant group working with a wide range of stakeholders and the wider public.

People have taken on the sometimes difficult job of balancing the care and enhancement of the heritage buildings with the need for modern facilities and to simplify the overwhelmingly rabbit-warrenness of the space. It’s 14 different buildings built over 150 years, so there has never been a site-wide circulation plan before.

We’re just finishing off the concept design with a view to lodging a resource consent application very soon.

While that’s being processed we’ll also be fundraising to bridge the $70 million gap that we’ve got towards our $195 million target project cost. We have got $125 million raised already.

If that gap is filled promptly, then it's two years of detailed design and building consents, and then a three-year move off-site so it can be upgraded and redeveloped.

During that three-year period, we plan to operate a temporary museum elsewhere in the city, given its importance both to the local community and to tourism.

Among the most important collections, the Antarctic heroic era artefacts are truly world class. Our Māori and Pasifika collections, our New Zealand natural history, and decorative arts are also strongly represented. And not to be forgotten is that Haast presided over the discovery of great deposits of moa bones in Canterbury and he exchanged those with the great museums all around the world to build a worldwide collection. It would be impossible to assemble such a collection today.

We’re adding thousands of objects to the museum collection every year, including very important scientific collections which help researchers understand our environment, weather patterns, and life in the past in New Zealand.

I would like my legacy to be stronger public collections and better access for all people to the great treasures that define our part of the world.

The seemingly endless array of human invention and endeavour drew me into the world of art. It can make the hair stand up on the back of your neck and other times it just gives you an overwhelming sense of peace and beauty, so it’s that huge array of emotions that art can inspire.

I trained as a scientist and a botanist, but I had a formative experience when I was on the students’ association executive at the University of Auckland. There was a modern painting hanging on the wall of my office and I didn’t really know anything about it at the time, but I realised after two years of sitting below it that it was an original McCahon. That painting drew me in, even though I didn’t really understand contemporary art at the time. That was my entrée to it. There were green hills, and the words ‘I am’ in capitals on it. It’s one of those things, I kept looking up and I would gaze at it while I was thinking out problems. Before that, I was probably more into the classical European art that you would see in the art gallery – at Lindauer – and Goldie Māori portraits and things like that. Contemporary art has grown more and more all-consuming as time has gone on.

Canterbury art has a long and consistent school which has produced generation after generation of really gifted artists. To me, they more than hold their own nationally and internationally.

It’s always invidious to choose just one up-and-coming artist to look out for, but our latest acquisition came out of the Ilam 2020 senior student show out at the university arts school, and it’s a stunning light box triptych by student Alice Cheersmith. It consists of three, metre-square, digitally painted back-to-the-future scenes in light boxes in vibrant blues and magentas and golds. It’s a stunning work. It just fills you with hope and inspiration for the future when you see enthusiastic young people like this with such incredible vision and technical skill. Now we’ve got to find space to put it up.

I think the earthquakes caused a huge series of dislocations and disruptions and that was imposed upon the arts scene. But I think out of it, especially with the gift of time, there’s a broader, stronger and far more diverse arts ecology growing in Christchurch, that’s my view of it. And it ranges through street art and public art to the established galleries. There’s also a thriving student and pop-up art scene, you know, little student galleries and things. That’s an opportunity for up-and-coming artists and indeed some established artists who show recent work in juxtaposition. I think that’s incredibly important to developing the arts scene.

The idea for Wrightmann House didn’t come as a lightning bolt to my partner Selene Manning and me. But practically speaking, both of our pre-earthquake houses were either munted or destroyed by the earthquakes. We looked for a replacement house that might be able to house our art, but none of them had anywhere near enough wall space and would have cost more to change into something that would work than building new. That’s when we had the idea of taking the existing piece of land in Bishop Street and demolishing the munted house, retaining all the mature trees and gardens, and building a purpose-designed house with absolute maximum wall space.

We started talking to the architect and then the builder five years ago now. Athfield Architects were just brilliant, in terms of the way they listened to our ideas and just continually amplified them and skilfully turned us from our simplistic thinking to solutions that we couldn’t have dreamt of.

The builders, Clive Barrington Construction, also entered into it with real gusto and it was just a joy working with all the teams, liberally lubricated with gin and tonics at regular celebration points along the build journey. It’s not only an art house, it’s a bit of a gin house.

The gin comes from being a collector at heart, I think. When I was a student, Gordon’s was the go-to gin for G&Ts – I don’t remember much choice in those days. After the earthquakes, as part of our trying to enjoy life on the side, we started collecting different gins, some of them from overseas just to try them because we’ve always liked a gin and tonic in the evening. At that stage I had the mistaken belief that we were going to collect all the gins available in the world. In the last few years I’ve become painfully aware of how impossible that would be – there are hundreds of new gins emerging every single week around the world.

While we were going through the thinking and building process the collection sort of doubled in size so just as well we built maximum wall space.

People say that building a house can be a dreadful process to go through. It was simply a joy for both of us and we live in a house now that we just love, that we really enjoy day and night.

Most of our artworks have a definite story, and in most cases we’d be able to remember the first glimpse, where it occurred, and get some sense of the original spine-tingling feeling that we had.

Some of them are deeply disquieting when you first see them, but they grow on you and you understand more the more you look at them, and sort of get a deeper view of things.

I think SCAPE Public Art is pretty much single-handedly responsible for Christchurch’s really enviable world class contemporary public art collection. I think back over the 22 years of SCAPE’s existence – at the beginning of that period the city had a scattering of Victorian public statues and that was pretty much what public art was.

I really love SCAPE’s model of collaboration between artists and industry. I'm happy the involvement of industry has brought thousands of new individuals and their families in to become supporters and lovers of the art.

One of the hard things about art for many people is they are afraid of art, and they don’t know how to get into it. Selene and I always say when you look at a piece of art, if you like it, go for it. If it’s for sale and you can afford it, then don’t agonise over whether it’s the right art or not. We put a heap of stuff in our collection that probably wouldn’t pass the taste test for many people, but it doesn’t matter.

Every piece is chosen to talk to other pieces and together it makes a whole for us.

I’m lucky enough to get away on some botanical field work each year. That’s really important in keeping in touch with the plants. But I also keep in touch with other botanists. I’m president of the New Zealand Botanical Society, amongst other things.

My pet project at the moment, I’ve been working on searching out and describing additions to the flora of the Cook Islands during visits there over more than a decade. It’s short periods of very intense fieldwork, and then good intentions to keep that going in the evenings in between times.

I’m very much into plant species. For example Paul Dibble’s The Gold of the Kowhai sculpture in the garden has inspired me to gradually collect up all of our native species of kōwhai and showcase them so we can have our own gold of the kōwhai.

Quick-fire questions

Favourite art in your collection? If I had to choose, it would be Reuben Paterson’s The Nubian, 2010. It’s a sparkling glitter work and depicts tropical flowers on a black ground. It’s just a sort of happy dream world piece that transports me back to Rarotonga, which is where we purchased it from the Bergman Gallery.

Favourite gin? Langley's No.8 from London. It’s a really good true London gin. It packs a bit of punch but it’s smooth and delicate and I’ve never had any aftereffects from it yet.

Favourite Canterbury plant? Probably matagouri. It’s so much maligned as a fierce and thorny plant, but when you actually stop and look at an individual plant, it’s beautifully formed and it’s got cute little leaves, and tiny, perfectly formed flowers. It also creates amongst its tangled branches a micro habitat that provides a safe haven for dozens of little lichens and mosses and liverworts. Often we overlook plants that we think of as a nuisance but they all have their place in the wider scheme of things.

What do you love about Christchurch in summer? The wide-open skies, long hot days, basking in the sun as a break from gardening and doing other things. It’s the time of living, of being outdoors, it’s an invitation to get out into the hills and explore.

Where would you take visitors to the city for: Two hours? I’d take them on the Ōtākaro river walk with a few deviations to nearby public art works and one or two quick breaks at the really good cafés or bars that are either on the walk or not far from it. The visitors to town that we’ve taken to it have been impressed and it’s just a very pleasant way to see the city, not from the roads, but on foot. Half a day? I’d supplement the two-hour menu with a trip out to Brighton through the red zone, and go to a café for brunch, lunch or dessert. 24 hours? I’d expand the half-day experience with a trip out into the country and have lunch at one of the fabulous winery restaurants. I’d also take them to some of the galleries, and if possible finish the day with a concert at the Town Hall.

Read more about the genesis of the Wrightmann House & Collection over here.

Wongi Wilson is a street artist with a reputation for high-quality, large-scale works in prominent positions around Christchurch.

What motivates your DTR street art crew? Our motivations have changed over the years but for nearly 15 years we've pushed graffiti art productions.

How is the art scene in Canterbury different now from ten years ago? The street art scene in Christchurch has become multifaceted. There are many offshoots of street art. It wasn't taken seriously as an art form ten years ago and now it is legitimate.

How did you get into creating street art? It started as an interest in the sub-culture and trying to mimic what I'd seen in magazines, documentaries and movies. Along the way there were a few opportunities to develop, namely through Project Legit but besides that, it was self-motivation.

READ MORE: Street art in Christchurch

What was the first bit of street art you created? Was it any good? It was 3D-style lettering. It isn't there anymore and no, it wasn't good.

Tell us about a piece of street art that’s inspired you. The internet wasn't what it is now, even in the mid 2000s, and magazines and books were the main source. I first saw Maclaim Crew in The Source magazine and it blew my mind to see you could use spray paint to create artworks that looked like a photo. I couldn't pick just one work but I've been hugely influenced by Tasso Maclaim and Case Maclaim.

How does your process work? Generally someone will reach out to me with a space or an idea, and I'll figure out whether it's something I can work with. From there I'll either interpret their idea or I'll come up with a concept for the space. The majority of my works are created this way but there are a couple of public walls that I've painted after finding the owner’s contacts and getting permission. It can be hard to contact an owner of a wall and once I have a good wall and contact, I'll generally repaint it every few years.

Talk us through the piece you’ve done in Christchurch that you love the most. My favourite piece is of my friend who passed away, the whole crew painted a production in his memory and I painted his portrait. It's in the city on Pilgrim Place, best viewed up close but visible from the Colombo St bridge.

Where’s your favourite place to go in Christchurch for a:

Morning coffee? Little Poms.

Post-painting beer? Smash Palace.

Hit of creative inspiration? This is a difficult question because there's not one place I draw constant inspiration but rather different experiences inspire me, and the next that comes to mind is Armageddon where I'll be able to see art by world-class comic book artists.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given? Eat more veggies.

wongi.co.nz

Joel is a Christchurch graphic designer and urban artist with a proclivity for creating art around the themes of beauty and decay.

What are the inspirations for your various art pieces featuring faces? My inspiration comes from everywhere. A lot of what I paint has been influenced from my past work in graphic design and commercial art. I fuse a lot of found photographic elements of texture, shapes, patterns from all things that I am interested in like architecture, design, typography, nature, sports and urban decay, usually collaged together around a human form that again is collaged together from a mixture of different sources.

How did you get into creating street art? I was always into drawing as long as I can remember. The style and nature of my work now is stencil-based, so these techniques lend themselves well to going large. It just came out of wanting to challenge myself to paint larger and larger, really.

What was the first bit of street art you created, and was it any good? This is going way back, the first mural I was asked to do I must have been 11 or 12, for a friend’s dad’s restaurant in St Albans. What I can remember of it was awesome, haha. It was of sacks of flour and birds, I think, from memory. It’s long gone now, under layers and layers of paint.

READ MORE: Street art in Christchurch

Tell us about a piece of street art that’s inspired you. There is no specific piece I can think of, but some artists that I really admire and have influenced my work in one way or another are Conor Harrington, James Jean, Rone, Daniel Arsham and Telmo Miel.

How does your process work? My process with street artworks is always changing and developing. Every time I paint a mural I find a new technique or process that I learn and can take into the next piece. I love the challenge of these works. You are always dealing with various challenges and constraints within mural works, like weather, access, height et cetera. Coming up with ideas is the easy part: I have a massive stack of old notebooks with hundreds of sketches and ideas that I am always adding to and referring back to. Each mural work is different – sometimes it’s a smaller studio piece that I really want to paint at large scale and I find the perfect wall and other times it’s working with brands or companies, large and small, within a brief. Sometimes this is tricky, working as an artist trying to keep true to your style and what you want to be painting, and working with these brands within guidelines. I really enjoy this challenge and sometimes working within restraints helps me learn more about my process and myself as an artist.

Talk us through the piece you’ve done in Christchurch that you love the most. One piece I am really fond of is a piece out in Kaiapoi, just over the railway tracks. I really enjoyed working on this piece. I was asked to be the guest artist at the Kaiapoi Art Expo last year and as part of this I was commissioned to paint a mural.

Where’s your favourite place to go in Christchurch for a:

Morning coffee? At home.

Post-painting beer? At home.

Hit of creative inspiration? The surf.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given? No matter how hard you work, someone is working harder.

joelhartdesign.com

Spanning almost three decades, The Wrightmann Collection comprises nearly 1000 works of art and objects by Aotearoa New Zealand artists, signifying an ‘alignment of the stars’ for Selene Manning and Anthony Wright.

Many items in the collection, displayed in the recently completed Wrightmann House, represent a cross section of contemporary Canterbury art and its art history with works by recent graduates and emerging artists in conversation with senior artists’ work.

Recently opened for the first time to the public for a one-night only arts event, a fundraiser to support SCAPE Public Art, The Wrightmann Collection also reveals the untold story of Christchurch’s many ‘pop up’ galleries and artists’ spaces that flourished in the immediate post-quake period.

2011

From 22 February 2011, Manning and Wright prioritised the work of local graduate and postgraduate students. Wright notes that the earthquake changed everything. This included the city’s galleries, which were decimated. Galleries that opened post-quake did so in temporary premises outside the city centre. The Jonathan Smart Gallery in High Street took up residence in the former Oddfellows Hall and studio of sculptor Neil Dawson in Linwood. By July 2011, a cluster of galleries had opened, circling the city’s borders, evidence of the response of ‘first-movers’ establishing creative ventures. Characteristic of this phenomenon was a commitment to immediate and affirmative action, rather than long-term entrepreneurial opportunity. Typically their later closure was an accepted trait of the changing and unstable environment that they occupied.

This included the opening of the Tin Palace gallery in Lyttelton by School of Fine Arts (SFA) student Amelia de Roo, and the artist-run space, 183 Milton Street, coordinated by tenant and SFA student Tim Middleton, which opened in February 2011 and closed in October as the university year ended. Two of Middleton’s works, Super Dry, 2014 – a solid plaster cast of a beer box – and Apparition, 2018 – a large framed work, also in cast plaster, are held in the Wrightmann Collection.

In March, ABC gallery was opened at 337 Lincoln Road by graduates from the SFA, Matt Akehurst, Zhonghao Chen, Oscar Enberg and Sebastian Warne. Its launch was fortuitous as they already had plans to open prior to February 22. By chance, ABC was among the first in the post-quake city, yet it closed as planned in October 2012. Three of ABC’s founders are represented in the Wrightmann Collection. Warne by You take Sally, I’ll take Sue (ain’t no difference…), 2011, Chen by two works from 2006 and 2010, and Akehurst by Object 25, 2013, part of an ongoing series in which he imagines contemporary post-war sculptures that might have been.

Also in July, Chambers241 gallery opened in Moorhouse Avenue with a group exhibition of prominent local artists that included contemporary jeweller Areta Wilkinson and printmaker Jason Greig. Distinguished by his gothic sensibility, a monoprint by Greig, Sun Cult Goddess… Curse the Gold, 2011, now in the Wrightmann Collection, was singled out for attention in The Press by arts reviewer, art historian and scholar Andrew Paul Wood as “a magnificent print”.

Prior to February 2011, the combination of CoCA’s (the Centre of Contemporary Art) emerging artists programme and the annual Select exhibition of year three and four students and postgraduates at the Ilam Campus Gallery were of importance to Wright’s and Manning’s acquisitions. Wright recalls: “CoCA was fantastic. We always felt that we were seeing the best of emerging artists there and the annual Select exhibition at Ilam was also a really informed offering.”

A highlight of CoCA’s programme was Kushana Bush’s second solo exhibition, The Slump Series, works on paper of figures in multiple states of sleep and death, lying in close proximity, yet metaphorically distanced in body and mind from one another. The Slump Series is chillingly represented in the Wrightmann Collection by Coffin Boat and Fetish Pile.

CoCA temporarily closed in February 2011, and the annual Select exhibitions gained ever greater significance for Manning and Wright. Manning recalls: “There wasn’t a lot of money around post-quake so people weren’t really stepping up and spending a lot. People were trying to settle with insurers. We were worried that the arts students were going to move to Wellington or Auckland and some of them did. We were really keen to be part of the community that encouraged them to stay.”

Wright adds: “The whole art scene was so dislocated and disrupted but Ilam was having these regular shows and we were going out to almost all of them, so we got to know four or five years of the best students really well.”

In 2010 Select featured a painting by first class honours graduate Josh O’Rourke. Growing up in New Brighton, O’Rourke’s passion was surfing – also the subject-of-choice for his work, realised in painterly, symmetrical silhouetted figures and colour fields. Wright says that they began collecting O’Rourke’s work, initially acquiring Untitled in 2010, a colourful acrylic-on-board painting of two figures in teal and orange following that Select showing. O'Rourke went on to have a work purchased from the 2011 Select exhibition for the university’s collection. His paintings may take their subjects from surf culture but an encounter with them is also about the artist’s refinement of the attributes of his materials and their potential.

Exhibiting in Select in 2011, recent graduate Charlotte Watson held the closing exhibition/installation Exurbia for 183 Milton Street in September. Working with discarded kitchen planks and joinery, cut and shaped to form interlocking models of makeshift buildings, her choice of materials and objects were a post-February 2011 moment that made perfect sense to all attending. The Wrightmann Collection features three works by Watson from 2012, including Spearmint Ice Crush, a work that shares in Exurbia’s imagery, a tectonic-plate and constructivist sculpture, and response from the artist about seeking to assume or create order in a time of chaos.

2012

In 2012 new galleries and artist-run spaces continued to open. Aware that it was going to be closed for an indeterminate period, the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū established Outer Spaces, curating a programme of local artists exhibitions in a temporary gallery on the first floor of NG Design at 212 Madras Street. Its opening exhibition in March 2012 was Sam Harrison’s Render.

Room Four at 336 St Asaph Street was opened in April by artists Rosalee Jenkin and Daegan Wells, and Dog Park in Wilsons Road in June by Ella Sutherland, Chloe Geoghegan and art historian Barbara Garrie. Emerging artists were also accommodated by the three-month Art Beat summer programme in Cashel Street’s Container Mall. Art Beat ran from November 2012 to February 2014 with a three-month programme each year of performance and exhibitions in retail outlets.

A postgraduate from the SFA in 2012, photographer Michaela Cox’s colourful and otherworldly digital images are represented in a number of series, including Nightgarden in 2011 and Faux Arcadia in 2013. Cox’s large-scale botanical photographs are, as their titles suggest, heavenly and utopian, as well as an experience about an immersive and tangible reality.

2013

In February 2013, following two years of development and seeking funding, Artbox opened in Madras Street, adjacent to CPIT’s Art and Design School. Conceived and designed by former graduates Pippin Wright-Stow and Andrew Just of F3 Design, it was based on the idea of interlocking modular-designed containers stacked to create site-specific gallery and studio spaces. In July the Jonathan Smart Gallery opened its new space at 52 Buchan Street in Sydenham, and in October, the city’s first sound-art gallery, The Auricle, opened in New Regent Street.

It was also the year in which the Wrightmann Collection acquired its first of many works by Francis van Hout. His solo exhibition in 2013, Painted Some Things, at City Art Depot, wryly reflected on a history of Western art with a curiosity about the merit of its subjects and genres. In Painted Place Mat (J C Hoyte, Pink and White...), 2013, van Hout’s pixelation of a portion of the image implies its realisation in the present moment and its reality as a once-popular historical tourist destination. Van Hout’s understated humour is an essential aspect of his work, making him a favourite artist of both Wright and Manning.

Also from 2013 are six photo-intaglio prints from printmaker Paul McLachlan’s Home Ground series at Chambers241 gallery. Working from marble statues of anonymous New Zealand soldiers modelled as the subjects of memorial statues, commemorating the end of the First World War, McLachlan utilised digital sculpting software to bring his subjects to life. Either individually or as a group there is an inescapable sense of the presence of the deceased men in McLachlan’s belated, yet poignant eulogy.

Across town, Artbox’s exhibition programme went from strength to strength in 2013 and among its many highlights was a solo show by SFA postgraduate Rebecca Harris. Her exhibition Pistil (the female reproductive part of a flower) was only outwardly about flower painting; Harris’ images are a kindred spirit of 19th Century French symbolist painting, haunting rather than joyful. Pistil represents a retort to the ‘Garden of Eden’ optimism of Michaela Cox’s photographs, and as one of a myriad of complementary and contradictory relationships between works, is important to the collection.

2014

Opening in November 2014 and closing in September 2016, North Projects was established by SFA students Sophie Bannan, Sophie Davis and Grace Ryder in a vacant home in Bealey Avenue. In July, the artist-run space, Room Four at 336 St Asaph Street held a fundraiser with artworks donated by local artists to secure its long-term growth as a venue for the city’s emerging artists. In 2020, Room Four remains open, although it is now Art Hole and under new ownership, yet still maintaining its commitment to emerging artists, with the acquisition of two works for the Wrightmann collection in 2019 by local artist Tahlia King, weaving kowhaiwhai patterns in wool into the surfaces of clear Perspex.

In 2015, the well-established printmaking studio and gallery PaperGraphica, owned and operated by printmaker Marian Maguire, reopened as PGgallery192. Among its stable of artists was Andy Leleisi’uao, represented in the Wrightmann Collection by works from 2011 to 2015. Leleisi’uao’s paintings are typically populated by crowded silhouetted figures, seemingly ancient and contemporary, yet working collectively as participants in the construction and sharing of a utopian world. Wright observes, “There are religious overtones to his work and he has underworlds and overworlds and political worlds.”

Also in 2015, on 24 July three exhibitions opened in the central city in close proximity to one another over a single evening with 300 attending; The Physics Room’s Persistency and SFA’s Aggregate sculpture show both in High Street, and a group exhibition, Uncaged, in Tuam Street. Senior Lecturer in sculpture, Louise Palmer commented in The Press that it “represented the first time – for a very long time – that it has felt like Christchurch had some kind of centre for the arts”.

Prior to February 2011 the heart of the city’s dealer galleries and artist-run spaces was around the Manchester and High streets intersection. Post-quake, that close-knit network was comprehensively displaced.

2020

In 2020, the city’s galleries reach from SCAPE Public Art’s Studio 125 in Merivale to Arca Gallery in Cashmere. Yet, the resonance of High Street endures. In August 2020, SFA student Millie Galbraith and graduates Lee Richardson and Liam Krijgsman opened Hot Lunch at 227 High Street, citing the necessity for a gallery for emerging artists and curators. And there is more, with another gallery planned for High Street before the end of year. Watch that space.

Words by Warren Feeney, Architectural photography by Simon Devitt

Read more about the Wright of Wrightmann, Anthony Wright, here.