Ruined Christchurch Houses Released with Light

“For centuries, crosses and circles have been used to mark houses either visited by disease or targeted for burglary. This act of externalising the interior life of a home is something that artist Ian Strange explores in his Disturbed Home monograph, which contains works created over the past 12 years across his native Australia, New Zealand, the US, Norway, Japan and Poland,” Baya Simons writes for the Financial Times’ books pages.

“After the 2011 earthquake in New Zealand’s Christchurch, Strange removed the walls and ceilings of some of the city’s 16,000 ruined houses and beamed light out from the gaping spaces left behind, mimicking the damage wreaked by the event. This stripped the home of ‘any sense of safety and stability’, says the artist, but ‘I was interested in filling these marks with light, and perhaps in a sense of release’.”

Original article by Baya Simons and Mark C O’Flaherty, Financial Times, July 22, 2022.

Photo by Ian Strange.