1935 Cycling Hazards

Entitled “Every Christchurch person who buys a car goes white-haired within a week,” this cartoon appeared in the June 1935 issue of The New Zealand Railways Magazine. Although cycling is less popular 74 years on, the subject is still quite topical.

Victoria Square 1949

Curator's Choice

This is an humourous Christchurch postcard dating from circa 1937, an era when the city was still in the waning clutches of the Prohibitionists and the Social Purity League. The wowsers were increasingly becoming the butt of humour from the more liberaly minded locals, as the quaintly class-conscious subject indicates.

The lower part of the image is a flap, behind which is a folding sequence of twelve Christchurch streetscapes by Arthur Bendigo Hurst (1880-1964), which can be dated to the early Spring of 1936.

From his Broma Studio at Napier, the former Nelson photographer and founding President of the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography, regularly undertook commissions for the Tanner Brothers of Wellington, publisher's of the postcard. But Hurst is probably best remembered for his images of the 1931 Napier earthquake devastation.

Swamp City Verité

Artbash is an online community of New Zealanders who love art and love talking and writing about art. Inside Artbash you will find forums of art criticism, a calendar of exhibitions, a guide to New Zealand art galleries and an online art store where members exhibit and sell their art online.

A recent article satirises Christchurch's High Street Off-site Art Project:

"Booze buses (vomit comets ) will cruise the entertainment inner-city districts - discharging inebriated riders into a series of low and middle-brow pubs.

Large screen TV's will broadcast sport tests and music videos featuring pneumatically titted anorexics. Visibly bored cover bands will play short sets of stereotypical classic rock (which will be ignored by drinkers).

Entering and exiting the booze buses lads will jostle, threaten and body-check pedestrians. Booze bus patrons will projectile vomit on the interior surfaces of the buses and on each other"

Read on...