Quick Fix

As part of our residency for At The Junction of Two Rivers: The Wellington Exchange Project, we created a series of illuminated pop-up books that virtually ‘renovated’ the currently disused shops in the Wellington CBD.

Quick Fix explores our fascination with vernacular rural architecture and preserving relics of the near past that may soon be erased, as main street shopping districts move to modern malls.  Currently over 50% of shops in Wellingtons CBD are vacant, and with a proposed façade beautification project on the horizon, we have chosen to re-present these unoccupied stores as if in a fairy tale, popping out from the page refurbished, shiny and new.

In Wellington there is an absence of nonessential stores, specialty retailers that are a sign of prosperity in a township. But what are the chances that renovating the facades will attract new business in a town dubbed “little Antarctica” due to the high volume of the drug ice ravaging the community, a community where up to an estimated 60% of the people rely on welfare. Would boutique stores solve any of the town’s woes or is it simply a fantasy?

http://www.thecuratorsdepartment.com/at-the-junction-of-two-rivers/

http://www.junctionoftworivers.net/ronalds/