Place in time

This small portfolio of photographs, made between odd jobs on the way to and from work, is a metaphorical tribute to the people that helped keep Tim Veling upright following the Christchurch earthquakes of 2010 and 2011.

Bloodlines​ documents places of cultural and historical significance associated with Ngāi Tahu Māori and uses photography as a means of retracing the footsteps of Arabella's ancestors.

As the devastating series of earthquakes that destroyed and subsequently closed off much of Christchurch city continued, residents in large areas of the badly affected eastern suburbs began for the first time to hear the words, Red Zone.

To revisit time and again. Days, months and years – a decade already. To study sites from multiple vantage points, ponder the changing light and respond to shifts in weather and seasons. A work in progress drawn from my unwieldily archive.

The images in this gallery form a representative selection from Vestiges, Tim J. Veling’s ongoing body of work documenting post-earthquake change in the red zoned suburb of Avonside, Christchurch.

A body of work about Blair Barclay's grandfather, Clem Derreett, and his search for peace near the end of his life, his attachment to place and the solace he found there.

A body of work about Selwyn, one of the fastest growing districts in the country, both in terms of commercial and residential development.

A project by Uiga Bashford–then in her fourth year of undergraduate study at the School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury–revisiting the same stretch of road documented by students ten years prior.

‘Over the course of a year (2005/06), I worked closely with a Christchurch firm of funeral directors and with families who had recently lost loved ones.'

Examining relationships with immediate family, close friends and the natural landscape, the Winter Garden negotiates the complexity in reconciling Christchurch as the place McFetridge grew up in and an earthquake affected city.

Think about it: What's a place of significance to you? What makes one place more important to you than another? What's your connection with this place and what is it that continues to make it important in your life today?

(Re)Orientation is a work in progress and idiosyncratic guide to sites of significance to Christchurch’s post-earthquake narrative and the built and psychological landscapes that have come to define it.