Mike Beer: artist on his new Ghosts On Every Corner exhibition

Ghosts of Christchurch’s past are currently on display in an exhibition of mini replica buildings. 

Made by artist Ghostcat, the replicas are scale models of the city's former buildings, some of which were destroyed in the 2011 earthquake.  

Ghostcat, aka Mike Beer says many iconic Christchurch buildings were destroyed in the earthquake - but plenty of memories still lingered.

"I had this idea of how places can be gone - because we lost a lot of these places after the earthquake - but how the memory can still exist, like a ghost."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgan
from news Talk ZEDB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Ghosts of christ Church Past are currently on display in
an exhibition of many replica buildings made by artist Ghostcat.
The replicas are scale models of the city's former buildings,
some of which were destroyed in the twenty eleven earthquake.
The exhibition is called Ghosts on Every Corner. The artist's
ghost Cat is also known as Mike Beer and he
joins me. Now, good to have you with us. Mike,

(00:33):
good morning, Thank good morning.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
How's it going good?

Speaker 2 (00:37):
This project? It is extraordinary. I haven't seen these in person,
but I have looked at the photos. How did this
project come about for you?

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Oh? Wow? So this has been like a four year
project now, so it's been a long time in the making.
But initially I'd had like my very first exhibition as
an artist here, and I've built like a really iconic
place called the Volcano bar Lava caf that was in Littleton.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
I am solamiliar with it, would you believe?

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah? Yeah, Bill Hammond dused to frequent that place, so
it's got some wild stories. But it was like this
kind of bright yellow and blue building in Littleton, and
I just built it without any internal It was just
the external of the build And it was interesting on
the opening night watching people kind of share their stories
and talk about their experiences just from this one establishment.

(01:23):
How many stories had created from this. So I was like, Oh,
there's something in this. And so I was kind of like,
I've always been a big fan of like nostalgia and
you know, our memories and the things that they kind
of evoke in us. So I'm like, do you know
what I'm going to do a book? And then like
four years later, Yeah, this kind of project kind of
is here.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
It's amazing. How did you come up with the name
for the exhibition?

Speaker 3 (01:45):
I had loads of different names, some weird ones, but
then something just I had this idea of like how
places can be gone because we lost a lot of
these places after the earthquake, but how the memory can
still exist like a ghost. So it's kind of like
an the corner represents where the buildings were kind of thing.
So yeah, that's where the name came from.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
And then how did you choose what buildings to make
riplicas of? Did you just did it have a personal
connection to them more?

Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yeah, Well, I mean I've been you can tell from
my terrible accent. I'm from Birmingham, so I'm not originally
from christ Church, but I've been here like twenty years,
and essentially we had like forty or fifty builds that
we've got and we need to narrow them down. So
what's been great atouse projects It's been really collective and
collaborative in and around people from christ Church getting their stories,
people that own these places, people that kind of grew

(02:32):
up around these places, and we kind of narrowed it
down from that. So in a sense, it's not just
been me being oh, well, I'll choose this place because
it's very biased opinion. It's essentially been like it's been
narrowed down from talking to lots of people throughout the community,
which has been great.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Mike.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
These models are so intricate, and if you take a
look at the Smith's bookshop, I mean it has tiny
books inside. I can kind of see them lither boxes
and side. I mean, how long, yeah, did it take
for you to build these models?

Speaker 3 (03:04):
Well, that build, I think I lost the will to
live towards the endermaking that because it was like honest flavor. Yeah,
oh my lord, I mean it's been great, but just
like those those things have been really kind of like
I wanted that level of detail. But like in Smith's
I think there's just under five thousand individual books. I've
got some help from some people, but that was that
was It's just a labor of love. I mean, obviously,

(03:26):
I've been so passionate about this that I've wanted it
to get to a point where people when they come
through they can look inside the window and see that
level of detail and like almost like be transported back
to that time without sounding cheesy, as kind of the
impact it's had, which has been amazing.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
What are they made out of?

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Ah, lots of different things from MDF case border me.
It's called scratch building. So it's like model making, but
you're you're using lots of different materials from normal stuff
like MDF to you know, I'll have stuff from the
each I saw our stript wiring and stuff out of
video players, and you can use that. So you use
all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
I think at one point you were struggling to make
lace curtain, so you use toilet.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
Papers, they're right, Yeah, yeah, So I used tiss toilet paper,
which is really classy, but I mean it worked. You know,
it's scale. I tried so many different things, but it
was just like oh man, and then tried toilet paper.
I was like, oh, that actually looks like a net curtain.
So yeah, loads of loads of different and different stuff.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
The exhibition is now at the christ At Center, but
it started off inside the cathedral. What was it like
to have these riplicas of old buildings displayed inside the cathedral?

Speaker 3 (04:35):
Well, I think it was amazing that let us use
that space, and I think it evoked again like lots
of different emotions because that was a space people hadn't
been in since the earthquakes. So the way we ran
it was it was throughout the day and because of regulations,
you can only have fifty people in our time with
like their hard hats and high vis and so it
was just it was quite an emotional day because it's

(04:56):
that connection of people. Obviously the understanding of what happened
to is with the earthquakes and being in that space
was quite emotional. But then also remembering the places we
used to have, So it was a really interesting day.
But it was incredible and incredible space to use which
has been great.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
Mike, are you still making models or are you just
enjoying taking a little bit of a break at the moment.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Well, I'm at this exhibition space for another four and
a half weeks, so I promised my door a holiday,
so I think I'm going to go Hey for a
bit another break.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Sounds like a good idea, Mike, Thank you so much
for joining us this morning. Really nice to talk to you.
Ghosts on Every Corner is on now until the end
of the month at christ Church Art Center. And look,
if you can't get to christ Church, just go online
and google it ghost to Christich. You will see some
of the photos and you'll see what we're talking about.
Just how intricate these models are. It almost makes you

(05:49):
want to start model making yourself. And then you hear
Mike going almost lost the will to live, and you go,
I think I'll just leave it to the experts.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.