We had carefully planned out a weekend of hiking on the Banks Peninsula. But, as with most planned adventures, the weather didn't cooperate. After a week of gorgeous sunny, warm days, this morning dawned rainy and dreary. Scratch the day hike, we decided to hit up city central again. Not really having a plan, we wandered for a while until we reached the Christchurch Art Gallery. The art gallery had the most appealing nature of being completely and utterly free.
Some of the work was typical historic paintings and such, both from New Zealand and from England artists. There were some pretty cool Maori work, and then a couple special exhibits. One was about the "secret" sites of the U.S. It featured pictures of things like the body farm in Tennessee, the modern KKK, a white tiger so inbred that he's mentally retarded and many other topics that are sort of hushed up. It seemed just slightly ironic to be learning about the underside of American culture in a New Zealand Art Gallery.
The second really interesting exhibit was a modern art sculpture exhibit.. at least I think they would be considered sculptures.I'm not sure exactly how to describe it, but I think the idea was the combine the human body, machines, earth and movement. Some pieces contained pieces of coal that were affixed in glass tubes, jars, and other glass objects and then the entire contraption was made to move, another piece was a blue stream that pulsed like a heart beat. The entire exhibit was.. odd.. to say the least.
At one point in the exhibit I was standing next to a father and son, who was about 5 years old. Their conversation summed up all of our feelings towards these bits of art.
Son "What's that Dad?"
Dad "That's Art"
Son "Yeah, but what does it mean?"
Dad "I don't know, I'm not intelligent enough to understand it.."
Some interesting art you found this day. Good place to go on a rainy day.
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