Transforming Empty Spaces Into Creative Showcases With 'LiVS Art Windows'
Life in Vacant Spaces (LiVS) is thrilled to launch LiVS Art Windows, a vibrant pilot initiative that transforms vacant shop fronts into eye-catching public galleries featuring the bold and brilliant work of our young artists in Ōtautahi.
These once-empty windows are now full of colour, creativity and community spirit. By showcasing art in unexpected places, the project brings a sense of vibrancy and possibility to underutilised spaces, while uplifting local rangatahi and their creative mahi. Prints of the works currently on display can be purchased by scanning the onsite QR code, with proceeds supporting the artists involved.
The first installation is now live at 3 Marine Parade, New Brighton, displaying 14 powerful pieces by young artists aged 15–18. LiVS hopes to take the concept citywide.
Mikayla Morris - Project Manager:
'Even a simple gesture like putting art in an empty window can change how a space feels and how a neighbourhood feels. It tells people there's creativity here, that there's life here. It's a small shift that can have a big impact. Ōtautahi has so many empty windows and so many incredible artists. LiVS Art Windows brings those two things together. Filling gaps, uplifting voices, and reminding us all that beauty and meaning can be found anywhere. When we make use of vacant spaces, even temporarily, we're investing in possibility. Projects like this show that we don't need big budgets or permanent venues to support our artists and activate our city.'
A community collaboration
The Art Windows pilot has been made possible through collaboration with local organisations who share a vision for supporting creativity in Ōtautahi. A special thanks goes to Artstart, who played a key role in connecting LiVS with the incredible artists featured in the exhibition.
With funding support from Wild in Art and the Waitai Coastal-Burwood-Linwood Community Board, and installation assistance from the teams at Future Signs and Plain & Simple, the pilot has come to life in full colour.
What's next?
As the pilot gains momentum, LiVS is actively seeking additional windows, supported by funding, and fresh ideas to expand the project across the city. The team believes that every empty space holds creative potential and that art has the power to reimagine our urban environment.
For anyone who has a vacant window, an idea for a space, or a desire to support young creatives in Ōtautahi, now is the time to get involved. LiVS Art Windows is not just about art on display—it's about building a city where creativity is visible, valued, and woven into the everyday.
Life in Vacant Spaces (LiVS) is a Ōtautahi-based organisation that activates empty buildings and sites for creative, community, and enterprise use, breathing life into underutilised urban spaces.
The art and artists featured (in order of how they appear on the building left to right): Marine Parade side:
'Haze' by Breana Vosper – Artstart
'Verona' by Annabelle Goodwin – Artstart
'Daffodils' by Jessica Cournane – Artstart
'Daydreamer' by Jack Williams – Artstart
'Fragmented Cliffs' by Emma Lilly – Artstart
'Symbiotic Glory' by Annabelle Yee – Artstart
'The Breadmaking' by Ruby McCallum - Artstart
'Forest House Kitchen' by Phoebe Laird – Artstart
Brighton Mall side:
'The Euphoric Vision' by Laura Phillips – Artstart
'A Plains View' by Sarah Wilcox – Artstart
'Kea' by Jasper Fischer – Artstart
'Daffodils on a Slope' by Holly Patchett – Artstart
'Synchronicity' by Tatyana Rautenbach – Artstart
'Ataraxia' by Anna Wilkinson – Artstart
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scoop
8 hours ago
- Scoop
Transforming Empty Spaces Into Creative Showcases With 'LiVS Art Windows'
Life in Vacant Spaces (LiVS) is thrilled to launch LiVS Art Windows, a vibrant pilot initiative that transforms vacant shop fronts into eye-catching public galleries featuring the bold and brilliant work of our young artists in Ōtautahi. These once-empty windows are now full of colour, creativity and community spirit. By showcasing art in unexpected places, the project brings a sense of vibrancy and possibility to underutilised spaces, while uplifting local rangatahi and their creative mahi. Prints of the works currently on display can be purchased by scanning the onsite QR code, with proceeds supporting the artists involved. The first installation is now live at 3 Marine Parade, New Brighton, displaying 14 powerful pieces by young artists aged 15–18. LiVS hopes to take the concept citywide. Mikayla Morris - Project Manager: 'Even a simple gesture like putting art in an empty window can change how a space feels and how a neighbourhood feels. It tells people there's creativity here, that there's life here. It's a small shift that can have a big impact. Ōtautahi has so many empty windows and so many incredible artists. LiVS Art Windows brings those two things together. Filling gaps, uplifting voices, and reminding us all that beauty and meaning can be found anywhere. When we make use of vacant spaces, even temporarily, we're investing in possibility. Projects like this show that we don't need big budgets or permanent venues to support our artists and activate our city.' A community collaboration The Art Windows pilot has been made possible through collaboration with local organisations who share a vision for supporting creativity in Ōtautahi. A special thanks goes to Artstart, who played a key role in connecting LiVS with the incredible artists featured in the exhibition. With funding support from Wild in Art and the Waitai Coastal-Burwood-Linwood Community Board, and installation assistance from the teams at Future Signs and Plain & Simple, the pilot has come to life in full colour. What's next? As the pilot gains momentum, LiVS is actively seeking additional windows, supported by funding, and fresh ideas to expand the project across the city. The team believes that every empty space holds creative potential and that art has the power to reimagine our urban environment. For anyone who has a vacant window, an idea for a space, or a desire to support young creatives in Ōtautahi, now is the time to get involved. LiVS Art Windows is not just about art on display—it's about building a city where creativity is visible, valued, and woven into the everyday. Life in Vacant Spaces (LiVS) is a Ōtautahi-based organisation that activates empty buildings and sites for creative, community, and enterprise use, breathing life into underutilised urban spaces. The art and artists featured (in order of how they appear on the building left to right): Marine Parade side: 'Haze' by Breana Vosper – Artstart 'Verona' by Annabelle Goodwin – Artstart 'Daffodils' by Jessica Cournane – Artstart 'Daydreamer' by Jack Williams – Artstart 'Fragmented Cliffs' by Emma Lilly – Artstart 'Symbiotic Glory' by Annabelle Yee – Artstart 'The Breadmaking' by Ruby McCallum - Artstart 'Forest House Kitchen' by Phoebe Laird – Artstart Brighton Mall side: 'The Euphoric Vision' by Laura Phillips – Artstart 'A Plains View' by Sarah Wilcox – Artstart 'Kea' by Jasper Fischer – Artstart 'Daffodils on a Slope' by Holly Patchett – Artstart 'Synchronicity' by Tatyana Rautenbach – Artstart 'Ataraxia' by Anna Wilkinson – Artstart
NZ Herald
10 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Horror, budgeting and tracking meteor showers: Kiwi app makers score global wins in Apple competitions
Apple has named winners of two global app competitions in the buildup to its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this week – and the lineup includes several Kiwis. Christchurch-based Black Salt Games' Dredge, billed as a 'Sinister fishing adventure', was one of 12 winners in the Apple, which honour stand-out apps and games made by independent developers.
Scoop
a day ago
- Scoop
Lifeguard Release Focus Track
Out Friday on Matador Records, Ripped and Torn is the eagerly awaited debut album by Chicago trio Lifeguard. Today, listen to the band's churning third single 'Like You'll Lose.' The dub-inflected track takes inspiration from Lee Perry's tight drum sound and expansive lo-fi atmospherics, with Asher Case 's baseline providing a center of gravity for skittering rhythms and tumbling echoes. Listen to 'Under Your Reach.' It's among the band's hardest-hitting tracks to date, expertly blending their experimental and pop-leaning impulses. Gritty drones and dub-inflected bass give way to a laser beam riff, with guitarists Kai Slater and Asher Case delivering the vocal in loose harmony. The song is drawn from the Chicago-based trio's forthcoming debut album, Ripped and Torn, out June 6th on Matador Records. The youthful trio of Asher Case (bass, baritone guitar, vocals), Isaac Lowenstein (drums, synth), and Kai Slater (guitar, vocals) have been making music together since they were in high school, nearly a quarter of their lives. Noisy and immediate, cryptic but heartfelt, they draw inspiration from punk, dub, power-pop and experimental sounds, and bring them all together in an explosive cacophony. Recorded last year in Chicago with producer Randy Randall (No Age), the album captures a claustrophobic scrappiness that evokes the feeling and energy of house parties and tightly-packed rooms, where ears are easily overwhelmed, and ragged improvisations connect with the same force as melodic hooks. Praise for Lifeguard: "Some of the year's tightest, catchiest rock songs, full of hooks that will ricochet around your head all summer." – Rolling Stone ('Artist You Need to Know') "Lifeguard may conjure sounds of the past but crucially, they make the future seem more exciting for their existence." – FADER "Ripped and Torn is renaissance post-punk with a twist of anthemic, post-Y2K bombast" – Paste "If you believe they don't make 'em like they used to, you'd better check these kids out." – Stereogum 'The Chicago three-piece (…) draw on the dissonant, melodic sounds of alt-rock heroes, but forge their own path' – The Observer 'Artist To Watch' 'A fresh addition to US alt rock's rich canon, headbangers everywhere will approve' – Music Week 'urgent, existential noise-rock' – NME '… nothing short of pure, menacing excitement' – DIY David Keenan on Ripped and Torn: Ripped and Torn, the debut album by Chicago three-piece Lifeguard, may or may not take its title from the legendary Scottish punk fanzine of the same name. Or perhaps it references the torn t-shirts that rock writer Lester Bangs claimed the late Pere Ubu founder Peter Laughner died for 'in the battle fires of his ripped emotions.' Or maybe it points to the trio's ferociously destabilising take on melodic post-punk and high velocity hardcore, signposting their debt to the kind of year zero aesthetics that would reignite wild improvisational songforms with muzzy garage Messthetics in a way rarely extrapolated this side of Dredd Foole & The Din. Either way, Lifeguard stake their music on the kind of absolute sincerity of the first wave of garage bands, garage bands that took rock at its word, while simultaneously cutting it up with parallel traditions of freak. The half-chanted, half-sung vocals are hypnotic. Songs aren't so much explicated as they are exorcised, as though the melodies are plucked straight from the air through the repeat-semaphoring of Asher Case on bass, the machine gun percussion that Isaac Lowenstein plays almost like a lead instrument, and that flame-thrower guitar that Kai Slater sprays all over the ever-circling rhythm section. Indeed, the trio play around an implied centre of gravity with all of the brain-razzing appeal of classic minimalism, taking three-minute hooks into the zone of eternal music by jamming in – and out – of time. And then there are the more experimental pieces – 'Music for Three Drums' (which surely references Steve Reich's Music For 18 Musicians), 'Charlie's Vox' – that reveal the breadth of Lifeguard's vision, incorporating a kind of collaged DIY music that fully embraces the bastardised avant garde of margin walkers like The Dead C, Chrome, and Swell Maps. But alla this would be mere hubris without the quality of the songs. The title track 'Ripped & Torn' suggests yet another take on the title, which is the evisceration of the heart. Here we have a beautifully brokedown garage ballad, with the band coming together to lay emotional waste to a song sung like a transmission from a lonely ghost. 'Like You'll Lose' goes even deeper into combining dreamy automatic vocals with steely fuzz on top of a massive dub/dirge hybrid. 'It Will Get Worse' is pure unarmoured pop-punk crush while 'Under Your Reach' almost channels the UK DIY of The Television Personalities circa 'Part Time Punks' but with a militant interrogation of sonics that would align them more with This Heat. Plus the production, by Randy Randall of No Age, is moody as fuck. Are they really singing 'words like tonality come to me' on 'T.L.A.'?! If so, it would suggest that Lifeguard are one of those rare groups who can sing about singing, who can play about playing, and who, despite the amount of references I'm inspired to throw around due to the voracity of their approach, are capable of making a music that points to nothing outside of the interaction of the player's themselves. And sure, there's a naivety to even believing you could possibly do that. But perhaps that's what I have been chasing across this entire piece, the quality of openness that Lifeguard bring to their music. You can tell these three have been playing together since junior high/high school: the music feels youthful, unburdened, true to itself, even as it eats up comparisons. Lifeguard play underground rock like it might just be as serious as your life, but with enough playful ardour to convince you that youth is a quality of music, and not just of age. With a sound that is fully caught up in the battle fires of their own ripped emotions, Lifeguard make me wanna believe, all over again.
