Saturday, November 23, 2013

Kaiapoi's Got Mail!

Abandoned letterboxes in various Canterbury "Red Zones" have recently become prized property, as several artists wanted to turn them into artworks.
The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) allowed two groups to collect the boxes: the Avon-Otakaro Network, and Kaiapoi's Rubble Rousers.
The Rubble Rousers have recently erected a 5m-high totem made of letterboxes collected in Kaiapoi's earthquake-blitzed Golden Grove area.
Artist Mark Larsen made copies of the road signs from the streets where the letterboxes came from. They, and the letterboxes, were secured to a pole and the whole creation was coloured red with black numbers. The red stands for the Red Zone, black for the region's blackest day...and of course red and black are Canterbury's sporting colours.
The sculpture is prominently located on an empty lot at the corner of Williams and Charles Sts., where it will stay until that land is redeveloped. It's ultimately planned to form part of a new sculpture park for Kaiapoi, along the River Bank Walkway.
Meanwhile the Avon-Otakaro Network is still gathering letterboxes for its project to build about ten sculptures.

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