Graffiti has played major role in Christchurch's

recovery - researcher
N/A
Band Aid Bandits, 'Best Demo 2012,' Victoria
Street
Recently completing his PhD at the University of
Canterbury, researching graffiti and street art in
post-quake Christchurch, Reuben Woods
maintains that graffiti and street art have played a
central role in the city's recovery and renewal.  

He also comments that he does not envy anyone who is striving to stop graffiti art. "It is an
impossible task, because it is always going to find a way to exist.   Graffiti has a history of being
unsanctioned that is fundamental to its evolution.  We will continue to see it progress through
the unofficial nature of its activities on public buildings and public spaces."
Woods' doctorate, Painting Ruins: Graffiti and Street Art in Post-Earthquake Christchurch, is the
most comprehensive research undertaken on public art in Christchurch following the February
2011 quakes.  As a post-graduate in the Art History and Theory Department, he brings an
objectivity and independence to his subject that remains absent from all published material to
date.
He began writing about graffiti art as an art history student in the mid-2000s.  At that time, it had
become more prominent, partly due to the rise of international hip-hop culture, but in New
Zealand there were also artists like the Auckland-based Askew, who belonged to a new
generation of graffiti art. "I was at the University studying art history and wanted to know; why
wasn't any one talking about graffiti art?" 
Crypnz, 2012, New Brighton
Woods also travelled through North America and Europe
and acknowledges experiencing graffiti art as a genuinely
international art movement was also important. He
returned to Christchurch more conscious of the connection
of local artists to a history of graffiti.  "I got in contact with
Icarus, Wongi 'Freak' Wilson and Jacob Yikes.  Wongi and
Icarus were the first two that really helped me out, especially in talking with artists in different
settings for graffiti art.
"The earthquakes provided a context for it in the city.  The Christchurch landscape itself was
going to provide inspiration and there was already this global explosion.  The interesting
question was how would that play out in Christchurch?"
Various artists, 'Such a lovely place Bro!' 2012, New Brighton Creative Quarter
In Painting Ruins, Woods describes the unique nature of post-quake Christchurch, detailing how
graffiti and street art responded out of necessity and instinctively to the city's environment.  "The
historic significance, the emotional impact of the quakes, the widespread and highly visible
damage, and the constant change… all rendered this complicated urban space an attractive
one for intrepid artists."
Woods' thesis documents artists whose work "filled and marked these spaces with a multitude
of issues".

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"Their unsanctioned nature revealed the need to engage with the altered environment with a
sense of immediacy." 
Christchurch Art Gallery, Installation of Tony
Fomison's No! (1969-71), graffiti by Slepa High
Street, December 2013
He highlights Christchurch residents' need to
make sense of the "loss of sites of intimate
memories – houses and halls, schools and sports
clubs, community centres and churches and
corner dairies".
Unsanctioned public art took up the challenge.
For example, Lyttelton street artist Delta placing small crosses created from salvaged material
as memorials to lost buildings. "The crosses were not grandiose markers of place in the manner
of 'official' memorials, but were ephemeral, guerrilla additions." The cordoning of the central city,
prohibiting entry, also fuelled responses. 
Woods considers street art in its broadest sense, noting works like Band Aid Bandits' Best
Demo 2012, in Victoria Street, and the "variety of public interventions in Christchurch's worst
affected suburbs and the cordoned-off central city: hand-painted messages and 'independent
public art'."
Jacob Yikes, street art mural for From the ground up
He also discusses how graffiti and street art changed
when George Shaw, a collector of works by Banksy
arrived.  "Shaw was a huge boost because of the
opportunities he presented to local and international
artists. The impact of Rise is significant.  It cannot be
undervalued.  One thing it was able to achieve was
to bring a lot of people into an engagement with the
works of artists they may have not considered
previously."
Woods maintains that differences in the aesthetics and ideologies of graffiti and street art
became more evident. "While celebrated by many, Rise and From the Ground Up inevitably
raised questions about the connection between the presentation of graffiti and street art and the
appearance of uninvited 'vandalism" around the shattered city."   
Woods also asks for a wider consideration of graffiti art's relationship with the culture of the city. 
Has public art produced by the Christchurch Art Gallery (CAG) or SCAPE encouraged
unsanctioned graffiti, as a rebuttal to the inner-city presence of these more "official" arts
organisations?  Graffiti artist Slepa's response, "Keep your s... 4 the gallery", to the CAG's
reproduction of Tony Fomison's No! on an inner-city building, suggests this is likely.

Jacob Yikes, (or Icarus), DTR, Smegal,

Misery and Berst, Sydenham murals
He also draws attention to the City Council's
response, which, surprisingly sought to define
an art form it had previously never given
serious attention to categorising.   Woods

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observes that its anti-graffiti programme, maintains that street art "involves a relationship
between the property owner and the artist… whereas tagging is damage to property, there's an
invasion of property owners' rights".  Highlighting the outsider and insular nature of graffiti
culture as central to its how it defines itself, Woods says that "now you have the total opposite –
the sense of definition coming from authority".
"While many artists embrace both the opportunities inherent in working with permission and the
traditions of working without permission, other artists remain adamant that their work loses
power when sanctioned.  The question of how the divergent strands of these art movement
might continue to exist is a pertinent one, not just in post-quake Christchurch, but in a wider
global sense."
His comments on the public response to graffiti and street art draw attention to the reality that,
like all good art, they reveal as much about their audience as they do about the artist's
aesthetics and ideas. 
"When Rise was at the Museum, I was standing in the alleyway space of the exhibition.  Within
five minutes, three children ran into the alleyway and one excitedly said to the others, 'This is
real graffiti'. Then two old ladies came in, and one said, 'This I do not really get. I don't really like
it'.   
"The art world has generations and generations of artists and audiences, and now the definition
and experience of art that many have grown up has been graffiti art."