Award-winning exhibition on way

ABANDONED: A photo by Andrei Krementschouk, showing a tree growing through an old hotel bar's floor in Pripyat, Ukraine - left empty after the Chernobyl disaster.

The rural, arguably tranquil Wairarapa is to showcase an art collection featuring the darker side of big-city living.

Aratoi Museum of Art and History will be housing The City - Becoming and Decaying, a exhibition from German photography collective OSTKREUZ, which explores life in major urban areas - and the economic struggles, pollution and alienation that go with it.

Aratoi will be the only New Zealand venue to host The City, which has been touring internationally since 2010.

The award-winning spectacle features about 200 large-scale photographs from 22 cities, spanning from Liverpool to Las Vegas, from Detroit to Dubai.

"It'll be a massive, massive show," said Aratoi director Alice Hutchison, who co-ordinated the Wairarapa showing in partnership with the Goethe-Institut in Wellington.

"There will be people in Wairarapa who don't have the budget to travel to other places. So, this will be an opportunity to experience snapshots of life in these environments.

"People will be able to see this whole global context in one room."

In the photographs, big cities are portrayed as centres of futurism and innovation, but also sites of decay and cultural loss - filled with abandoned buildings, boarded-up shops, industrial pollution, slums and lonely, disenfranchised people.

Ms Hutchison said the photos may serve as a reminder to Wairarapa locals dreaming of a new life in the city that urban living comes with its own price.

"[The pictures] might be overwhelming for some people, because of the total contrast between the cities and the countryside," she said.

"In Wairarapa, there'll be people hoping to move to the city to fulfil their aspirations or find employment - chasing that mirage of success. But what happens when you get to the city and you reach a dead end, and there's no turning back?"

"In these photographs, the premise of the city being the future isn't always so."

Some of the most poignant images, said Ms Hutchison, come from the "artificial" Dubai, the radioactive ghost town of Pripyat in the Ukraine (abandoned after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986), the decrepit former Motor City of Detroit in Michigan and Gaza as it is levelled to the ground by Israeli forces.

"They're certainly not the pretty tourist pictures people are used to," said Mrs Hutchison, who said settling in Wairarapa was a relief after living in New York.

"There are a lot of feelings of abandonment and disconnect in these cities. There's a real sense of loneliness in the people, even though they've got so much around them."

Ms Hutchison said the Goethe-Institut is advertising the Aratoi showing of The City in Germany and is hopeful the exhibition will be a drawcard for European tourists coming to the Wellington region.

"We're hoping to attract a whole new international audience," Ms Hutchison said.

"At Aratoi, we've been very fortunate to have a close relationship with the Goethe-Institut and this huge exhibition is the culmination of that."

"The City - Becoming and Decaying" will be displayed at Aratoi from March 1 to April 12. Entry is free.

For more information, contact the museum on 06 370 0001.