On this particular sunny mid-winter’s day, walking up to the ruins of the Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Lyttelton, Aotearoa New Zealand, one would have been met with a peculiar mise en scène, framed through the wire mesh barricades that have become a familiar part of the rebuilding furniture of post-earthquake Canterbury. Four speakers on stands straddle centre stage with a new (old), transplanted weatherboard church to the left; torn plastic sheets fluttering in its still glassless windows; and behind it all the lovely vistas of Whakaraupo. It’s quiet apart from the mild breeze until the four speakers spark up, multilayered with laughter, people talking and what appear to be vocal exercises for a choir – and so the work begins….
A review of Olivia Webb’s Voices Project.