WINTER WANDER: Creative Thinking in the Central City
Opening 3 August, Winter Wander is a week-long pop-up arts event featuring exhibitions, an arts trail, installations and lunchtime life drawing in the city’s centre at The Crossing, Ballantynes and Cashel Mall. Initiated and managed by the recently established Ōtautahi creative production company Glitterbox Pursuits, (Audrey Baldwin and Jennifer Shields), Winter Wander is about a productive relationship between the visual arts and business with the sites for all events in retail outlets and surrounding public spaces. Baldwin describes it as part of a strategy to create the city that she wants to belong to. ‘We are definitely creating the Ōtautahi that we want to see and be a part of. We have chosen to stay here. It was a very conscious decision and I want to make it worth my while. Jen has come back here and has been doing the same, making that move worth it.’ As a free arts event Winter Wander is encouraging residents and visitors to rediscover the central city and a number of new retail outlets are sharing the spirit of their plans. Baldwin comments that ‘everyone benefits from creativity. It engages communities and it creates communities. Owner of The Crossing Philip Carter has an interest in the arts, he understands them and so does Antony Gough from The Terrace. Shields adds that there are now new retail outlets that are creative spaces. ‘In Head over Heels’ the interior decorating and merchandising, there is some fine art going on in there. It is really crisp and architectural.’ How did Winter Wander come about? Baldwin says she was approached by Central City Activation Coordinator Martin Kozinsky in January, asking her ‘to do for the central city what First Thursdays did for Sydenham.’ (Baldwin had curated eight public arts events in retail and public spaces in Sydenham between 2013 and 2016). Kozinsky’s request coincided with the establishment of Glitterbox Pursuits, a project that Baldwin and Shields created, realising there were considerable opportunity in the way that they operated in the arts. Baldwin maintains that their work is ‘sitespecific and outside the box. It is problem solving and it is working with communities. What I learnt from First Thursdays is you have got to make use of what is already there and take advantage of pre-existing communities and facilities instead of trying to build from the ground up.’ Shields adds that an infrastructure is a goal, ‘but the events that we do are taking place in established venues. The big one now is Winter Wander. It is the City Council’s and there is a big structure around it.’ Both agree that Glitterbox Pursuits is a creative company committed to filling the gaps in the city’s arts and entertainment venues, and its community spaces. Shields states that ‘arts events and queer events are the two communities that we are catering to. The last two events that we ran were Revelry, a queer pub night with board games and the Queer History series where we screened a documentary about Miss Major [Griffin-Gracy] who is an American trans activist. At both of those events we saw people that we don’t know turn up, which is always great.’ Both are looking at strategies to reintegrate the arts into the central city, accommodating and cultivating them through studios and outlets for greater representation. Shields comments that ‘no artist can currently afford a space or to run projects in the centre of the city which is what I want to work towards. I think with Winter
Winter Wander: An art in public spaces Pop Up arts project in the central city of Ōtautahi in August brings together the work of local artists in retails spaces in The Crossing, Ballantynes and Cashel Mall. IMAGE ABOVE First Thursdays 2015 in Sydenham. An exhibition at The Colombo that saw artists’ work displayed in the retail centre’s public spaces. Photograph: Centuri Chan
Wander we are making those relationships with property developers and managers. We had a tour through the new Riverside Farmers Market. That is an example of what we will hopefully see more of. It might not necessarily be affordable in terms of rent but Mike Fisher [who is part of the development], was talking about the bar
IMAGE ABOVE RIGHT Mandy Cherry Joass, Puapua Whenu. The artist will create a sculptural installation at The Crossing LEFT Rebecca Smallridge, Biophilia, watercolour. A work on paper from the exhibition Reverie, at the BNZ Centre, 2 – 11 Aug 10-4pm IMAGE
space upstairs and wanting it to be an accessible venue for the arts to hold events and stuff like that. They are definitely looking at making it accessible for artists and creators.’ For Winter Wander, visitors to the central city will be able to see the work of more than 30 artists in the BNZ centre for Reverie, an exhibition of works on paper that respond to its title as ‘a state of dreamy meditation or fanciful musing, “lost in reverie.” There are also four Lunchtime Sketch Club events in retailers’ windows, with a different model and artist for each one, with art supplies and easels for the public to join in from 11.30am to 1.30pm. The first is in The Crossing in the air bridge, followed by the second sketch event in Ballantynes window, then in Scorpio Books, (with the ‘magnificent Aurora Borealis’ the liquid drag queen as the fairy drag mother), and then again in Ballantynes on Saturday, 10 August . Artists’ installations will be located in public spaces with sculptor Mandy Cherry Joass at The Crossing, artists from Fiksate street-art gallery and a collage by artist Kate Maher at The Terrace, and installations by sculptor, Min-Young Her, and Annemieke Montagne and Steven Park in the Guthrey Centre. Following her participation in Shared Lines, (a series of public arts events supportive of the recovery of the township of Kaikōura in February this year), Baldwin is adamant that Winter Wander is what the central city needs right now. ‘Kaikōura reinvigorated me. Its residents were so into it. With Christchurch, you have got to stick it out. I’m still here and I am not going away. I am going to keep doing what I am doing until it dawns on everyone how powerful and important this is.’ Winter Wander is presented with the support of Christchurch City Council, Life in Vacant Spaces, Christchurch Central Business Association, The Crossing, The Terrace, BNZ Centre, Ballantynes, Scorpio Books, Phantom Billstickers & Momentum Creative. For full details of the programme see Gallery listings on PAGE 5 and go to: https://glitterbox.nz/winter-wander/
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