This sign seems like a quick note of an impulsive, sensitive girl, with curly, delicate letters and careful but artless lines, faultless spelling. A large, empty, even, white surface of the wall offers space to feel. Someone must have been unable to resist in expressing her bubbling emotions. The message talks about the Rough City. What might she mean? The earthquakes, the rough seal on the roads, the rough representatives of the earthquake repair projects, the rough reality losing familiar faces and being forced meeting new ones? Or the drugs, the poverty, the well below standard houses, the anxiety, the rough drivers? Is she having difficulties fitting in, starting a new school or has a broken heart? Why would one call Christchurch the Rough City?

Meanwhile, the wall goes through a metamorphosis. From a strong divider of inner and outer spaces it becomes a delicately patterned frame of an artwork representing a transient impression of Christchurch.

Someone just parked their moped in front of the graffiti as an illustration.” We don’t need rough vehicles to challenge this Rough city, it’s not rough that way” – it says -” if we keep it slow and simple, we’ll manage just fine.”