Timaru Civic Trust: Street art

Christchurch reimagined its identity through a riot of colour and cultural reclamation.​

In the wake of the 2011 Earthquakes, the city’s fractured walls became sites of transformation with bold murals throughout the city.

These tributes to urban resilience have drawn global acclaim. The FLARE Ōtautahi Street Art Festival and Lonely Planet’s 2017 designation of Christchurch as a global street art capital have turned these works into social media pilgrimage sites.

Timaru, too, has embraced the street art as a civic mirror and a celebration of the community.

Our masterpieces deserve to be far more widely known.

Flox’s The Shelter (2018) honours Te Maru, the place of shelter, with a native bat, moa skeleton, and huia unfurling across George St.

Aroha Novak’s Wall Flowers, a delightful remembering of the Mount Cook Airlines Mt Cook lily logo, and fantasy Caroline Bay-scape Te Tihi-o-Maru evoke nostalgia on Strathallan St.

Dunedin artist Toothfish’s Plankton mural in the Royal Arcade links carbon cycles to oceanic fragility. And Matt Willey’s Scout Bee, part of his global Good of the Hive initiative, marks Timaru as the first New Zealand town in a worldwide swarm of bee-themed murals.

These are only a few examples, but they are not incidental.

The Timaru Civic Trust, in partnership with artists, businesses, and organisations like Alive Vibrant Timaru, has funded, facilitated, and curated much of this urban renewal.

Their stewardship of heritage buildings and commitment to public art has turned walls into canvases where ecology, history, culture, community, civic pride and turangawaewae converge.

Andrew Paul Wood