Brushing up Christchurch walls

Press, 18 December 1985, Page 22

Brushing up Christchurch walls

Gary Collins, the fine arts supervisor for the Arts Employment Scheme, spent a few valuable minutes recently lying on the floor of the new Burwood Hospital gymnasium. It gave him a perspective on how many of those who will use the gym will see the building’s walls.

As co-ordinator for the 64m long mural which is being drawn and painted on those walls, he is anxious that the mural adds colour and life to the building. And that it draws in the walls so that the gym space does not seem large and empty after the smaller space patients have been used to.

Gary Collins has been arranging murals for Christchurch’s walls and buildings for the last 3Vt years, for the last 2% as the supervisor for the Arts Employ-

ment Scheme’s murals programme. A graduate of the Ram' School of Fine Arts, he began by working on site, paint brush in hand. From there he has moved on to co-ordinating the location, design and painting labour for murals. Several of the murals have been on Canterbury Hospital Board walls and Gary Collins is now a member of the Aesthetics and Murals Design Committee. He is delighted that he has managed to sell Gary Freemantle’s bold, colourful design for the Burwood gym to the committee.

As well as getting hospital board approval for the design it has gone to the Christchurch City Council parks and recreation division, which administers the Arts Employment Scheme, and to the staff and patients

at Burwood Hospital. Comments from the staff and patients have brought changes in the designs to make it more appropriate for the setting. One change in the mural designed to show movement was to some disabled figures amongst those on the walls.

“Some of the figures are obviously able bodied. Others are more ambiguous and include movements that are not beyond those using the gym. The aim is to encourage the people using the gym.”

Another change was a practical one. The original design included the wrong sort of wheelchairs.

The design began 14 months ago when the new gym was on the drawing board. Gary Collins wanted a mural as part of the new building rather than some-

thing to be added later. The mural painters are at work at present while the construction of the building is still being completed. From the vague idea the specific design developed and was worked on by Gary Freemantle, who was employed on the summer murals programme as an artist and designer.

Freemantle is a local Arts School graduate who had been working in the city as a painter. Once the design was finalised and approved it was enlarged to a size which enabled the painters to transfer it to the 2.5 m high Wall area for painting. About 10 painters and brush hands are employed on the scheme through the summer.

Gary Collins wants the Burwood mural finished by late January when he finishes with the scheme. The gymnasium is due to be opened in March. His successor, Peter Clifford, is administering the other murals to be done under the summer programme. They will include a mural at the Aranui Creche, a toilet block in Ferry Road, a Moorhouse Avenue warehouse and the Sumner Surf Lifesaving Clubhouse. Approval for some of these has still to be got and designs finalised.

Gary CoUins says there are plenty more walls and buildings in Christchurch for the mural painters to decorate.

He is anxious, however, that the quality of the public art be maintained. The murals done under the Arts Employment Scheme have so far gone through a sometimes lengthy process of approval but that has stopped any deterioration in or sacrifice of quality.

“Some murals that have been done - not by us - are not very good. I’m not saying the scheme is the only group providing good murals but some that have been done are . . .”

, The scheme’s reputation has got around. The Moorhouse Avenue warehouse mural which has been approved, was initiated by the company which will run the warehouse.

Something innovative was wanted for an otherwise bland wall. It will eventually sport an Italian building scene complete with columns and rubble - all two dimensional but creating the illusion of depth. Gary Collins’ time with the scheme has been almost solely devoted to murals. The workers on the scheme have also touched up the heraldry at the Sign of the Takahe but have primarily

spent their time brushing up the city’s walls. Industrial acrylic is the most common material - often to cover industrial surfaces. It is also cheaper and more readily available than some other mediums. Most of the workers on the scheme are employed as brush hands rather than designers. Local artists are sometimes approached if their work would suit a particular space. The gymnasium mural is not the first the scheme has completed at Burwood Hospital. What used to be an uninteresting corrugated iron wall that the patients had to pass every day is now a garden scene.