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de-building

Billy Apple, Gordon Matta-Clarke, Monica Bonvincini, Eddie Clemens, Susan Collis, Fiona Connor, Glen Hayward, Pierre Huyghe, Liz Larner, Callum Morton, Peter Robinson, Kay Rosen, Santiago Sierra, Rachel Whiteread
Andrea Bell
Eyeline 75
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‘De-Building’ was originally scheduled to be on display from 5 February to 15 May 2011. However, the exhibition was closed after being open for only twelve days following the destruction caused by the 6.3 magnitude earthquake. Christchurch Art Gallery, with its curved glass façade still intact, became the centre of operations for Civil Defence and other agencies involved in the rescue and recovery effort. At the time of writing, the Gallery remains closed to the public as it continues to fulfill this role, while most of the inner city remains cordoned.

Press material for the show stated that it was ‘inspired by a moment usually hidden from viewers—when an exhibition ends and the “de-build” begins’.1 This follows on from the success of Neil Pardington’s exhibition ‘The Vault’ (2009, also at Christchurch Art Gallery) which explored the idea of bringing what is usually hidden behind the walls of the museum to light; bringing the backstage to centre stage. Both exhibitions reflect the trend of curators, artists and institutions exploring the processes, discourses and relationships in which they are engaged, whereby, as Daniel Buren has noted ‘more and more, the subject of an exhibition tends not to be the display of artworks, but the exhibition of the exhibition as a work of art’.2 Or more cynically, yesterday’s radical institutional critique of the gallery is appropriated by the gallery, watered down, repackaged and sold back to the consumer as reflexive practice. After all, what could be more validating than being able to present your day job to the public as Art.

In any case, by drawing together local and international artists from across six nations, and mixing installation, sculpture, and video