Pink and White Descriptions: Ekphrasis and the Eighth Wonder of the World

Abstract

This paper presents a discussion of ekphrasis and also engages in its practice as a means of encountering architectural conditions resisted by representation. Figurative language is employed with reference to images of the Pink and White Terraces, once located in the North Island of New Zealand and now destroyed. The practice of ekphrasis reveals a domestic condition in the nineteenth century representations of the Terraces, here linked to a contemporary film, Pink and White Terraces , which addresses suburbia. From colonial descriptions to present day representations of New Zealand suburbs ekphrastic writing is undertaken as an interruption of conventional flows of architectural history.