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Dr Reuben Woods: graffiti expert and advocate of street art.
Iain McGregor / The Press
This story by John Pearson originally appeared in Mainlander section of The Press.
Graffiti art: two words that have no business being next to each other, according to some. Surely graffiti is ugly, illegal and ephemeral, whereas art is beautiful and timeless. The latter belongs in a gallery to be revered by the cognoscenti; the former should be power-washed out of existence. Right?
Well, no. Many in Christchurch would now beg to differ, including the city council.
This shift in attitude has, in recent years, allowed the previously prim and proper Garden City to emerge from its grey civic shell with a painterly flourish. Graffiti art — or street art, if that makes you more comfortable — is everywhere: drab concrete walls now act as blank canvases, inviting a range of adornments from the hasty scrawls of those simply keen to be seen, to huge meticulously planned murals sanctioned by the authorities.
The city is a canvas
Dr Reuben Woods knows a thing or two about paint on walls; he achieved his doctorate at the University of Canterbury by penning a dissertation entitled Painting Ruins: Graffiti and Street Art in Post-Earthquake Christchurch. Woods is now creative director of Watch This Space, a charitable trust formed to promote street art in the city.
Another high-profile local proponent of the artform is Selina Faimalo, project manager of the Flare Ōtautahi Street Art Festival. She can identify the moment when Christchurch began the process of swapping its stuffed shirt for a paint-spattered hoodie: a moment in the city’s history when the authorities were generally just too busy to chase spray-can-rattling outlaws.