Site 10. Nathan Coley (United Kingdom)
The Black Maria and Places Where Something Has Happened
The Physics Room Gallery
6th September - 5th October 2002

Exploring notions of the frontier, the facade and location, The Black Maria brought a distinctive icon of the Western to the urban centre of Christchurch. Coley's saloon stage-set was located high on the roof of the Physics Room building and towered over the intersection of Christchurch's High and Tuam Streets. This new addition to the city skyline brought yet another facade to a streetscape already loaded with architectural fragments, which evoke a nostalgia for another place.

Coley's project took both its title and capacity to rotate in pursuit of the sun from the first film studio to be built, Thomas Edison's Black Maria of 1893. In choosing to restage the 'saloon' Coley drew on the nostalgic silent westerns of the 1930's, where the romance and drama of a frontier conquered and now the subject of myth is played out on the screen in flickering black and white.

Inside the Physics Room Gallery Coley has constructed a second structure and further architectural proposition, a prop for his series of digital prints Places Where Something Has Happened.

Curator: Juliana Engberg