Christchurch’s big heads and small minds
5th September 2009

From time to time we visit the Arts Centre in Christchurch, usually to watch a play at the Court Theatre. Over the years the Arts Centre has become a cross between Ye Olde England and Toytown, a colourful clatter of hawkers and a jumble of civic art and architecture – both praiseworthy and execrable.

A recent addition to the panoply is a row of bronze heads, the busts of a group of famous Cantabrians set upon plinths, gazing across Worcester Street like a pantheon of Roman senators. They are mostly knights, Sir Thingummy and Sir Whatsissname, Canterbury’s favourite sons – and a couple of token favourite daughters for balance.

As works of sculpture they are pretty good, albeit with a Rodinesque lumpiness that gives the venerable company a bad case of acne. However, as a piece of civic art they are distasteful and disturbing.

The problem is partly location. Shoe-horned among the ice cream stalls, coffee-to-go caravans and purveyors of handicrafts, the sculptures at first glance are straight out of funfair alley at the A&P show. I expected to pay $2.00 to throw balls at them and perhaps win a soft toy for knocking over Sir Tipene O’Regan or Margaret Mahy.

The effect is not aided by the sculptures’ curious mix of gravitas and comedy. Bronze commands respect but as a medium for Sir Richard Hadlee’s drooping moustache or Sir Robertson Stewart’s spectacles it is slightly ridiculous.

Besides, there is something grotesque about monumentalising the living as most, if not all, the subjects are at present. Statues are supposed to be of dead people, aren’t they? Monuments to the living are inevitably self-aggrandising and should remain the preserve of megalomaniacs like Saddam Hussein.

The least comfortable dimension of this little hall of fame, however, is its self-conscious provinciality. For the 25 years I have lived in Canterbury I have observed Christchurch attempting to shake off the smug parochialism that sets it apart from most other major centres. This is exhibited in subtle codes of class (where you went to school), place (Fendalton or Burnside) and pedigree (First Four Ships or waka).

It makes Christchurch a daunting place for newcomers and results in the city being strangely fragmented considering its accommodating geography. Where Wellington and Auckland have become buoyantly multi-cultural and multi-ethnic Christchurch retains a slightly prurient English reserve in which communities rarely mix. Hornby is a world away from Cathedral Square, far more so than Manukau is from downtown Auckland, or Porirua from Parliament.

One effect of this fragmentation is an underlying tension that bursts forth in apparently random acts of violence. Successive civic leaders have defended Christchurch’s reputation as a safe place to live, arguing that it is no more violent than anywhere else. Statistically they are probably right but all the same Christchurch has a uniquely visible culture of brutality.

My daughters, both presently living in Dunedin, recently attended separate parties in Christchurch involving celebrations in several inner city bars. Both remarked how unsafe they felt on the streets and in the pubs compared to Dunedin. There was a predatory atmosphere among the people around them that they had not experienced elsewhere.

Christchurch’s dark underbelly is not the responsibility of the people captured in bronze at the Arts Centre but the sculptures are indicative of an old stuffiness that maintains divisions and clamps Christchurch in its small town past. I cannot imagine a similar project on Wellington’s waterfront or in Aotea Square. In a way, I’m surprised the subjects consented to the idea. Surely modesty is a better measure of greatness than civic vainglory.