Jewel like lake Tekapo
A Mt Cook carraige at Fairlie museum
Fairlie Museum photograph of the MT Cook transport. Conne & M always rode 'box'which is thetop seat looking backwrads. It was licenced to carry 14 passengers.
Lyttleton Harbour.
Sumner beach near Christchurch which Connie visited by steam tram and remarkedon the locals enjoying the pleasures of the beach as they still do today.
A very Victorian pose by Victoria, Andre and Ina at Margaret Stoddart's cottage.
Warners hotel where Connie stayed now being converted into a Novotel.
Christchurch's new gallery of contemporray art.
Christchurch Museum, visited by Connie who was very enthusiastic.
I used to teach Maori culture here in 1962 beleive it or not!On my journey back to Christchurch, via the turquoise coloured lakes of Pukaki and Tekapo , I stopped at Fairlie after a 2 hour drive – a journey that took Connie 3 days by horse and carriage. I went into the Fairlie Museum for a quick visit only to spend at least an hour talking with the Curator there. An excellent display of horse drawn transport gave a feel for the discomfort of Connie’s expedition, and started our conversation that then ranged through farming, the economy, the nature of travel, her ancestors in Scotland etc. When I said that I had been the Mt Cook Schoolteacher in 1962, she asked if I therefore knew Sandra Burke. Well Sandra was the only girl in my 5-pupil school and it turns out that this lady’s daughter had become a good friend of Sandra in their later schooling. Another expected co-incidence?
Well they do keep cropping up, and here in Christchurch my first stop has been to call on Veronica Larsen. She contacted me from NZ many years ago asking where she could obtain a copy of my Dye book ‘The Colour Cauldron” She added the information that although she now lived in New Zealand, as a child she had lived for a few years in our farmhouse, Newmiln, in Scotland which at that time had belonged to her grandparents. A co-incidence that became even greater when I looked at her Christchurch address; she lived just round the corner from my home in Christchurch, indeed we later worked out that the corners of our long gardens actually met at the stream that ran between the properties. Had we known each other in 1962 we could have chatted over the garden fence! It is good to keep in touch and like so many ex-pats Veronica still relishes talk of her’ homeland’ and has just given me a photograph of her family outside our front door at Newmiln taken about 1900.
With A few other haunts and artists to meet I must start packing for my departure from here in 2 days time.
I am now concluding this blog in Tasmania not having had any time before I left New Zealand. My last two days in Christchurch rushed passed . At Lyttleton, a short drive from Christchurch, which Connie recalled as lacking interest and surrounded by brown hills I had a very different experience. Meeting artists, Victoria Edwards, Ina Johanne and Portugese visiting artist Andre Guede. We had a glorious sunny day and took the ferry across to Diamond Harbour enjoying lunch and tea in the colonial properties and gardens there. The little tea house of painter Margaret Stoddart interested me as her style of painting is very similar to a work we found at Connie’s house. Margaret is another woman artist undervalued in her day and now being’ re-discovered’. I will check out the work again when I get home.
I also caught up with Michael Reed at the Polytechnic art school. We first met at Impact 5 in Tallin 2 years ago. It was interesting to hear how the art school / education system in New Zealand is facing many of the same issues and restructuring and funding cut backs as In Scotland and indeed other countries. The Arts generally feel pressurised everywhere by the need to tick enterprise based boxes.
Most of the old Christchurch buildings in which I attended lectures in the 60’s are now converted to either residential or tourist related art centre uses. Christchurch has a very sensible development programme which retains old buildings but allows modern ones to co exist in what some would call a jumbled fashion but which I find exciting and refreshing. They don’t do pseudo historic, its either old or new. The museum which Connie enjoyed and in which I did a teaching stint in 1963 is still small -as Connie liked it- with some really excellent displays. My final event was to attend a talk by Gary Hill at the new glass fronted Contemporary Art Centre. The talk was very slow with more emphasis on describing the physical appearance of the work than its intent, but the building is large light and impressive.
As I flew out of Christchurch heading for Melbourne we flew right over Mt Cook. The turquoise lakes of Pukaki. Tekapo and Ohau sparkled like jewels and Mt Cook itself shone white with glaciers on all sides. The pilot dipped the wings and told us to feast our eyes as even they rarely saw it as brilliantly as that. My camera of course was in the overhead locker so this is my final memory of New Zealand which I will just have to carry with me until next time.
Well they do keep cropping up, and here in Christchurch my first stop has been to call on Veronica Larsen. She contacted me from NZ many years ago asking where she could obtain a copy of my Dye book ‘The Colour Cauldron” She added the information that although she now lived in New Zealand, as a child she had lived for a few years in our farmhouse, Newmiln, in Scotland which at that time had belonged to her grandparents. A co-incidence that became even greater when I looked at her Christchurch address; she lived just round the corner from my home in Christchurch, indeed we later worked out that the corners of our long gardens actually met at the stream that ran between the properties. Had we known each other in 1962 we could have chatted over the garden fence! It is good to keep in touch and like so many ex-pats Veronica still relishes talk of her’ homeland’ and has just given me a photograph of her family outside our front door at Newmiln taken about 1900.
With A few other haunts and artists to meet I must start packing for my departure from here in 2 days time.
I am now concluding this blog in Tasmania not having had any time before I left New Zealand. My last two days in Christchurch rushed passed . At Lyttleton, a short drive from Christchurch, which Connie recalled as lacking interest and surrounded by brown hills I had a very different experience. Meeting artists, Victoria Edwards, Ina Johanne and Portugese visiting artist Andre Guede. We had a glorious sunny day and took the ferry across to Diamond Harbour enjoying lunch and tea in the colonial properties and gardens there. The little tea house of painter Margaret Stoddart interested me as her style of painting is very similar to a work we found at Connie’s house. Margaret is another woman artist undervalued in her day and now being’ re-discovered’. I will check out the work again when I get home.
I also caught up with Michael Reed at the Polytechnic art school. We first met at Impact 5 in Tallin 2 years ago. It was interesting to hear how the art school / education system in New Zealand is facing many of the same issues and restructuring and funding cut backs as In Scotland and indeed other countries. The Arts generally feel pressurised everywhere by the need to tick enterprise based boxes.
Most of the old Christchurch buildings in which I attended lectures in the 60’s are now converted to either residential or tourist related art centre uses. Christchurch has a very sensible development programme which retains old buildings but allows modern ones to co exist in what some would call a jumbled fashion but which I find exciting and refreshing. They don’t do pseudo historic, its either old or new. The museum which Connie enjoyed and in which I did a teaching stint in 1963 is still small -as Connie liked it- with some really excellent displays. My final event was to attend a talk by Gary Hill at the new glass fronted Contemporary Art Centre. The talk was very slow with more emphasis on describing the physical appearance of the work than its intent, but the building is large light and impressive.
As I flew out of Christchurch heading for Melbourne we flew right over Mt Cook. The turquoise lakes of Pukaki. Tekapo and Ohau sparkled like jewels and Mt Cook itself shone white with glaciers on all sides. The pilot dipped the wings and told us to feast our eyes as even they rarely saw it as brilliantly as that. My camera of course was in the overhead locker so this is my final memory of New Zealand which I will just have to carry with me until next time.
UPDATE January 2011
The Exhibition 'Paradise No Exit' about this project took place at Birnam Institute in Perthshire in October 2010. Images can be seen at www.sugrierson.com ( Installations, Paradise No Exit)
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