The Duke Festival of Surfing has become a much-loved event in New Brighton. Amongst the celebration of surfing, the STOKED art exhibition is an anticipated part of the wider festival – showcasing an array of local talent, and creations that range from surf and skate-inspired, to abstractions and beyond. Over the years, a number of Watch This Space favourites have been included in the exhibition and the 2024 iteration continued that trend. Staged in the picturesque Carnaby Lane, STOKED 2024 presented a variety of styles and approaches and we captured some of our favourites…
Dove – Locals Only 2 Nick Lowry – Between The FlagsDark Ballad – Variousteethlikescrewdrivers – Finds a Way (top) and Us Kids (bottom)teethlikescrewdrivers – More Action (top), Parallels (middle) and Better (bottom)teethlikescrewdrivers – Broken NegativeLydia Hannah Thomas – Surf WaxLydia Hannah Thomas – Sun ScreenLydia Hannah Thomas – After Sun
If you have a show coming up – let us know! Email hello@watchthisspace.org.nz and tell us about it!
March is often a final flurry of activity before the weather slowly changes, sunlight lessens and opportunities for public projects get a little bit harder and people start to prefer the warnth and shelter of studios and indoor spaces. Despite this, we found a lot to like out there in Ōtautahi over the month of March and now it is our pleasure to share our finds! From small pleasures to collaborative productions and even an exhibition or two, here are some our favourite things…
A Tribute to Hamish Kilgour
I Go Side On at the Pūmanawa Gallery at The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora provided a beautiful and poignant tribute to the life and art of Hamish Kilgour – one of Aotearoa’s most beloved musical figures (he founded The Clean alongside his brother David). The show, created by Paul Kean and Alec Bathgate, collected a range of works, including paintings, drawings, doodles and ephemera, all accompanied by recollections of encounters with Kilgour. The urgent creative drive and earnest personal narratives combined for a touching experience.
Riccarton Jam
The popular trackside spot on Riccarton Road received a freshen up with a jam by some of the city’s most respected graffiti artists past and present, including Ikarus, Lurq, Morks, Dcypher, Pest5, Post, Drows and Foul. With a few flashes of nostalgia (CatDog anyone?) and a heap of history, the wall is a testament to Christchurch graffiti…
Youth Art at the Climate Campus
The Climate Action Campus, located on the old Avonside Girls High School site, is quickly amassing a heap of striking art on its walls – from the Amaze-Ink project initiated by the Christchurch City Council’s Graffiti Projects Team, to a small collection of works by students – all with a focus on climate action. We have been lucky enough to help with the latter, and with support from Phantom Billstickers, we loved seeing the work “Stop Fish Fashion”, by Emily Brickwood, come to life!
STOKED – The Duke Festival of Surfing Art Exhibition
New Brighton’s annual Duke Festival of Surfing hosted STOKED – its companion art exhibition in March and some of our favourite artists were in on the action – including teethlikescrewdrivers, Dove, Nick Lowry, Dark Ballad and Bloom. With a variety of styles and good vibes, it was well worth the visit!
A Little Fix Up…
Ikarus’ Wish You Were Here, the lightbox installation for The Little Street Art Festival was given a spruce up in late March, thanks to a generous festival supporter, who kindly donated the replacement perspex frontage. Ultimately, these works are temporary, but it is always so touching that people want to help give them just a bit of a longer life – thank you!
These were our picks – what would you add? Let us know in the comments! And if you want to let us know about events or projects that we can spotlight on our blog – email us at hello@watchthisspace.org.nz!
After several years of developing, planning and piecing together the logistics, Watch This Space was proud to finally bring the Little Street Art Festival to life in Otautahi Christchurch in late 2023!
The festival was conceived as a platform for alternative approaches to street art, especially smaller scale and materially diverse practices. As such, serves as a point of difference from established mural festivals and provides artists who either don’t fit the profile of large-scale muralism or want to push to new directions with their work. For the inaugural festival, we gathered nine local creatives, a mixture of established names and newer artists and helped them take their work to the streets – Jacob Yikes, Ghostcat, Ikarus, Jessie Rawcliffe, Bloom, Dark Ballad, teethlikescrewdrivers, Nathan Ingram and Kophie a.k.a Meep, all contributing whimsical, meaningful and striking pieces. The installations ranged from paintings to sculptural pieces, interactive and participatory approaches and ephemeral interventions. With over 50 individuals pieces scattered throughout the city, the festival encouraged exploration and new ways of looking. In addition to the featured artworks, the festival also presented a programme of free events, including walking tours, an artist panel discussion, treasure hunts, workshops and activations (including Tink’s installation at festival sponsor Westfield Riccarton). We were blown away with the response to the festival and we can’t wait to bring the Little Street Art Festival back soon! For more information, check out our website: https://www.littlestreetartfestival.co.nz/ – but for now – check out some of our favourite pictures captured by festival photographer Centuri Chan…
A massive thank you our sponsors: Westfield Riccarton, Antony & Mates, Phantom Billstickers, Christchurch City Council, Toi Otautahi, Creative Communities and all our Boosted donors!
May is notable for a few things: the final fling before winter really kicks in and a celebration of a galaxy far far away. With fewer large-scale projects, this is a perfect time to explore the things that are a little bit smaller, a little more understated or in the case of one of our entries, focused on the audio rather than the visual. From bright blooms and beats to darker images, scary monsters and anime heroes, here are some of our highlights for the month of May…
Local Elements – Learning CurvesEP
Local rapper and producer Local Elements released Learning Curves, his first solo EP, on May 22nd, a four track effort with the artist also producing the majority of the songs. The result of hard work and hustle, the EP’s title refers to the literal learning curves of the task, but the final result is a funky piece of head-nodding hip hop with a distinctly local flavour. Stream Learning Curves on Spotify and via Local Elements’ website…
Bright Blooms
As the days get a bit colder and the nights a bit longer, I’m thankful for the small, but bright, blooms appearing throughout the city. Ōtautahi’s urban gardener Bloom has been planting the small wooden blocks adorned with her stylised flowers across the city, often in unassuming places, places where a spot of colour and joy is most definitely needed. Keep your eyes out for Bloom’s Urban Gardener project as part of the 2023 Boosted Ōtautahi campaign – support her fundraising effort here…
Dark Ballad
If Bloom’s flowers add life and colour to the darker months, the intense images of Dark Ballad are a perfect fit with the greyer skies – moody, graphic imagery that is equally alluring and unsettling. The artist’s collection of paste-ups in stark black and white are a striking contrast from the colourful walls on which they are found…
Ikarus, Dcypher and Captain Kris in New Brighton
New Brighton is a true graffiti art hot spot, with a selection of legal walls constantly refreshed with slick pieces and productions. One of the most impressive is this latest collaboration between the DTR crew’s Ikarus and Dcypher and Ōtautahi ex-pat Captain Kris – the formers’ pieces either side of the latter’s Goku character – a winning combination. Teeming with crackling energy, this Dragonball Z themed production is yet another reason to head out to the beach for some wall walking…
May the Fourth be with you…
May the Fourth is, of course, synonymous with Star Wars and here in Ōtautahi, May the Fourth means the likelihood of some fresh paste-ups by resident vintage toy enthusiast Mark Catley… This year to celebrate the galaxy that George Lucas built, Catley added some nasty looking creatures to the central city streets, including a Rancor on Hereford Street…
These were our highlights – what caught your eye? Let us know in the comments – or send your pictures to hello@watchthisspace.org.nz
Friday, 18th February saw the opening of the collaborative exhibition Liminal Beings – a collection of work by Jonny Waters, Dark Ballad (Joe Clark) and teethlikescrewdrivers at TyanHAUS. While the mix may not seem like an obvious one, the infusion of pop and urban culture – from Dark Ballad’s skateboard decks referencing iconic cinema (the carpet of the Overlook Hotel a particular favourite), to Waters’ remixed album cover paintings and, of course, teethlikescrewdrivers’ treasure trove of repurposed objects, from old maps to place mats, cricket bats and more, provided a sense of chaotic unity. The placement of each artists’ work interspersed rather than delineated into separate sections added to the overall effect. With aspects of typography, punky, gestural expressionism, and clean, graphic design work, Liminal Beings had something for everyone. We headed along to check it out…
Nothing like a doodle board when you are inspired…Rather than each artist having a defined space, all three artists’ works were intermingled through the space…teethlikescrewdrivers, 2023teethlikescrewdrivers, The Kaikouras, 2023Jonny Waters, Electric Warrior, 2023Jonny Waters, London Calling, 2023Dark Ballad, The Terminator, 2023Dark Ballad, The Shining, 2023
If you have a show coming up, please let us know – email hello@watchthisspace.org.nz or contact us on social media @watchthisspacechch and we can share your creative goodness!
