Contemplating ghostly seats
Miraculously only two of the white chairs commemorating the lives of those lost in the February earthquake have disappeared from the art installation 185 Empty Chairs, which has graced the grounds where the Oxford Tce Baptist Church once stood on the corner of Kilmore St next to Chester St East.
Like the library fridge parked close by in the vacant lot of Barbadoes and Kilmore, for the most part these two projects – particularly the chairs, the creation of Peter and Joyce Majendie – have both been treated with deep respect by the public.
In an age where vandalism of public art is almost a given, the removal of only two chairs – the wheelchair and the peacock chair – during a three-month period indicates that the community has taken the poignant significance of these chairs to heart.
Wanting to procure chairs to represent the personalities of all the individuals who died in the earthquake, the makers went on Trade Me and were touched that most people, when told they were wanted for, waived the asking price.
Stephen Hannen, a tetraplegic and one of four survivors of the Cave Creek tragedy, gets old wheelchairs from the hospital and fixes them up to send to the islands. He provided the wheelchair that has disappeared.
Peter Majendie thinks the wheelchair was probably wheeled off by a drunk or may have ended up in the river, and talks of quake survivors visiting the installation who have reflected on being rescued in a wheelchair, or having wound up in one.
Two comment books have already been filled by members of the public, who are invited to sit on the chairs and take time out to reflect, or walk among them and be part of the installation. While the piece is reflective, there is nothing hushed and reverential about it. Majendie has seen people drag chairs together to have a chat, and arrived one day to find half a dozen guys in suits sitting on bar stools with a can of beer each.
Buddhists, Jews, secularists, Christians and former worshippers of Oxford Tce Baptist Church have all visited the same foot plan the church once resided on, now with the chairs facing the other direction. Majendie sees the space as a remembrance place more than amemorial, and talks of the pressing need for places of contemplation.
Many families of the dead who attended a small ceremony there this past February 22 have revisited the space, commenting that they felt they had nowhere else to go for remembrance.
The chairs were individually hand-painted twice, rather than spray painted to make it more personal. The father-in-law of one of the dead painted the chair that represented his son-in-law himself.
Many white generic plastic chairs were donated but rejected because they were deemed to be too cheap and mass-produced to represent an individual of any worth and didn’t ‘‘speak to me’’, Majendie says. He admits the installation of rows of white chairs has a tombstone aspect to it and he tried to put the chairs in circles or groups but found the effect chaotic. Painting them white was for purity and the al fresco installation fits well with a Kiwi spirituality he believes is very much located in the outdoors. Funded out of the Majendies’ own pockets, the installation cost about $2000 all up – the people who delivered the ready lawn never sent the bill – the piece is lit up at night. Being subject to the ravages of autumn and winter weather, and perhaps more chairs being spirited away by non-believers in karmic come-uppance, one wonders about the shelf life of the contemplative exhibition.
The bentwood chairs have proved the most vulnerable, the wood bloating and exploding from the damp, with the rest standing up remarkably well to the elements. Majendie is open to any suggestions for the future but has ideas of putting a pagoda round the installation and watching nature take over till the chairs are covered with plant life, eventually breaking it down.
‘‘But we’re all breaking down,’’ he says. ‘‘The pain of loss will get significantly less and less, but like the chairs it will always be there.’’