Place in time

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.'

Through the Trees was born from a series of trips Mitchell Bright took to the outskirts of rural parts of the South Island, mostly in an effort to escape the confines of the city.

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.

(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.

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.