Populate Christchurch with Art

Closed, but Open!

Yes, from looking at our shiny fa�ade, you may have thought we were open. But we're closed. We have been for two years, and Cantabrians face another two years of no Art Gallery. That's FOUR YEARS WITH NO MAJOR ART GALLERY IN CHRISTCHURCH! We're doing our best to bring art to the city with our Outer Spaces projects. And because IT'S OUR TENTH BIRTHDAY IN MAY, even though we can't invite you into our building, we thought we'd still throw a party for the city to enjoy (and so MORE PEOPLE can see MORE ART).

Help us with Populate!

Christchurch needs an art boost. To celebrate our tenth birthday, Christchurch Art Gallery is inviting a vivid cast of characters to town. Populate! is a new wave of works of art we're planning for the transitional spaces of the city, to be launched on our birthday weekend at the end of the May School holidays.

Populate! includes around a dozen new artworks - from cartoon figures crowding all over a wall, to an enigmatic face on a billboard, through to a sculpted figure standing high on a rooftop, and a very heavy metal gnome. As well as marking our birthday, Populate! will respond to the post-quake setting, bringing faces and figures (and some bursts of humour and strangeness) to the depopulated inner-city. We also want to produce a way-finding trail for Populate!, as well as to host various public events and tours along the way.

How will this make a difference?

We're thrilled that the Arts Foundation has chosen to support this initiative and, with your support, Christchurch Art Gallery can 'populate' more of Christchurch's empty spaces. Elements of Populate! are already being planned, but to deliver more faces for the people of Christchurch and to develop trail signage, we need a hand-up. Help the Arts Foundation help us populate as many spaces as possible and, in turn, help Populate! our broken central city with people who can have fun meeting this cast of characters in the most unlikely of places.

Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu