Sign 185 Empty Chairs Online Guestbook

Keep the chairs, a stark reminder of what the city lost.

Very best wishes as you embark on this challenge - I love the art and the ideas it conveys and hope you can get this project across the line!

Very best wishes as you embark on this challenge - I love the art and the ideas it conveys and hope you can get this project across the line!

I welcome many overseas visitors and always recommend they spend a moment or two at the 185 Empty Chairs and I often visit there myself. The place always has an impact on people and I am always very reflective on the human and other losses we have suffered as a city. I feel strongly this needs to have a permanent place so that in years to come when the city is bright, shiny and new we never forget the deep losses we all suffered as a collective community.
If it does not strike the right tone with the bereaved families that is OK, each grieve in their own way but this installation speaks to many in a very profound way

This is a very powerful installation and I would love to see it made permanent. The concept of an empty chair at the table to represent a loved one who has died is common amongst many Western cultures and Christchurch is a Western City so is appropriate in my opinion. Perhaps it's not common in Japan, but that shouldn't make a difference to 185 Chairs. We need to respect cultural differences, so the Japanese must respect that in our culture, this installation is appropriate, respectful and poignant.

I didn't lose anyone in the earthquake. I can't claim to feel what its like to lose someone in that event. I was however in Manchester St in my office that day. I lost other things around my business, house, lifestyle, the city i love. Peter is clear this installation is about loss, not just from the earthquakes, not only lives lost. For me this is my remembrance place for the things I lost, and I would like to keep it. I respect the need for an official 'memorial' with loved ones names, and I'm glad that is happening too, but it won't be the place for me to remember. In a city that hurt together and held each other up, I hope we can accommodate two sites.

The 185 chairs will always be the real memorial for me, I really hope the permanent installation goes ahead.

We find the symbolism of the missing chairs to be an extremely poignant reminder of those lost in Christchurch and would love to see the memorial placed in a central location on a permanent basis with permanent materials being used. We are prepared to support the installation finanancially

I hope it will be made permanent and in particular I hope that the permanent version will as much as possible reproduce the existing chairs in all of their variation. It is the individual shapes and sizes of each chair that makes the artwork more personal and more meaningful and invites people to stop a while to observe the different parts. I would hate to see it replaced with simplified uniform chairs, like rows of identical white crosses. That would absolutely destroy it and would give no reason for visitors to engage with it. I'm sure that like me there are many Christchurch residents who have walked passed the chairs many times yet continue to notice different parts of the artwork. To me it is that engagement that makes it worth keeping. I am prepared to support the installation financially.

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