Julia Holden

Wish You Were Here, Postcards from the Red Zone (2013)

Wish You Were Here: Postcards from the Red Zone was my response to the radically altered city I encountered when I moved to Christchurch, New Zealand, from Melbourne late in 2012, eighteen months after the devastating earthquakes that struck, February 2011, claiming 185 souls. 70% of the city’s unstable and collapsing buildings were being demolished and cleared, leaving a once charming English-style city an empty building site. Suburbs earmarked as beyond repair were eerily abandoned, apart from the stubborn few who refuse to leave their beloved homes. The city was nearing its lowest point in the transition between full demolition and its potential future renewal and rebuild.

This body of work acknowledges the city as I first experienced it, revealing absent buildings, absent people and entire suburbs boarded up awaiting the wrecker’s bulldozers. This was the on-going reality Christchurch’s shaken community. I created postcards from the portraits of the city to send to friends locally here and overseas. The concept was further developed the following year into the billboard and postcard series, #WishYouWereHereChch,