Sunday 17 April 2016

Just like murals, I shy away from blogging commercial or marketing ploys  – but sometimes they are exceptionally creative or interesting. For example, the ANZ ATM machine. Usually they are branded with the corporate colours – they are ok and the colours remind you of which bank it is. But ANZ rebranded their ATM machines in honour of the Sydney Mardi Gras, and now, in April, in honour of the ANZAC commemoration.

What a coup! I guess the other banks cannot copy these, but I wish they would! It would brighten the street immeasurably!

By the way, why is the rainbow a symbol for Gay culture? I resent that. I like to dress in colours – not the corporate grey and blacks. And the rainbow has a long symbolic history: the bridge, the journey’s end, the connection from heaven to earth, of rebirth and reconciliation.

Saturday 16 April 2016

I espied a collection of butterflies – almost a mural, I guess – on a wall of a building at Victoria University Wellington. It was intriguing. Not the sort of item that usually appears in a university.

The sign revealed all. School of Education, Educational Psychology Clinic.

The symbolisation, the aura or the mystique about butterflies is fascinating. Some say that the animal symbolism of the butterfly is about profound changes of the soul. The lesson of the ‘butterfly’ is letting go of old behavior and expounding into the next phase of existence – its conveys ‘transcending’, and is therefore the greatest symbol of our power to choose the path of our destiny.

It involves the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly. Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross said that ‘Death’ is simply a shedding of the physical body like the butterfly shedding its cocoon.

Rudolf Steiner was both more pragmatic and more poetical. “The butterfly flutters above and over the earth, borne on the air and shimmering with light...” he said. “We ought really to see them as nothing other than beings of light, joyous in their colours and the play of colours. All the rest is garment and luggage.”

Friday 1 April 2016

Well, I’m back!!!

A good holiday – camping (despite gale-force winds), visiting family (and farewelling a son off to Estonia and a new life [lives!]), and a a dose of ‘flu…

I am NOT going to continue with a survey of murals – I have a new survey instead! – but I have to draw attention to another pigeon-photocopy-pasteup in Wellington Central (cf: my blog on Tuesday 1 March 2016).

Most of them have been sizeable. This is gigantic!

It is on the corner of the Tudor-house on Willis and Ghuznee Streets and it is about 4mx6m long. The rough surface of the plaster lends a life-like texture to the image. Again, I am awed that the artist has completed this patchwork mural with some much care and precision. Maybe he/she has a image-reproduction-programme on their computer? This time the artist has A3 photocopies, not A4, but I estimate that the complete bird comprises of 55 sheets of paper.

Hopefully this bird will peruse the traffic and pedestrian for a long time to come. It is not a Phantom Billstickers site, and not a particularly sought-after position.

 

Sunday 6 March 2016

This is my 353rd blog – almost each day for almost a year now.
I wanted to complete the year’s work, but I am going for a holiday for about 3 weeks. We are journeying to remote places where the internet doesn’t reach.

My survey of murals in the Wellington region could be a lifetime work. There are some many of them, and new ones are created all the time. So … this is the last one for a while.

The wall of the Countdown Supermarket in Johnsonville, Moorefield Road, has 13 painted panels. They were designed by the students of all the Johnsonville schools – primary, intermediate and secondary. A graphic artist was commissioned to realise the pupil’s concept. The paintings depict the history and the people in the Johnsonville area. I am sure that the school’s history, geography, art, writing, maths, sport … lessons were enlivened by the process! They are quite stunning.

So, that’s all from the mural survey. I am going on holiday now …. see you in April!

Saturday 5 March 2016

A brief one today.

This is a electrical utility box on the intersection on Wallace and Rolleston Street….

I usually miss this box because I like to use a shortcut to the hospital via Massey University. The painting is evocative – the Māori  influence is apparent with the transformed tiki carving-template on the right. An ancestor? or a spiritual guide?

Friday 4 March 2016

I have mentioned the City to Sea Bridge on other occasions. It is a pedestrian overpass from Civic Square to Frank Kitts Lagoon across the bustling Highway 1 on Jervois Quay. The bridge is remarkable (Blogs of 12 August 2015, and 28 December 2015) but there is another art work, below the structure.

The inscription beside the mural says:
WAITUHI
by Wharehoka Smith (Taranki, Te Āti Awa, Ngā Ruahine, Tau Iwi)
Commisioned to Matariki 2015

The work, which can viewed from left to right, acknowledges the actions of the atua (spiritual beings), tangata whenus (the people of the land), tauiwi (the new people to the land), wairua (the spirit) and mauri (the life force).
….
The artist uses traditional Māori design elements to illustrate aspects of Matarili (Māori New Year), like thriving communities working together, sharing knowledge and resources, while respecting each other’s differences.

Certainly the abstract painting has a look of graphic design and structured, formal approach rather than ‘free’ painting – the strong diagonal elements, the iterative characters, the band of rainbow colours, the cubist and geometric designs and the strong, block density of opposing colours.

Below is a close-up of the right panel. The characters are planted kumara – thriving communities working together. The tool in their hands is a ko, a digging stick (and a useful word for scrabble games too.) The

On the right, there are winged creatures. They are like the traditional Māori kites –  made famous by the New Zealand’s Untouched World clothing brand. In November 2007, Untouched World became the first fashion company in the world to be given permission by UNESCO to carry the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UN DESD)logo on its labeling.

Wharehoka Smith is an artist researching and interpreting traditional indigenous Taranaki art forms patterns and design across the painting weaving and sculpting disciplines.  He has a facebook page detailing some of his works.

 

Thursday 3 March 2016

The ‘pigeon’ artist has struck again!

My blog two days ago was featuring the collage work of a pigeon-fancier. He /she posted multiple A4 photocopies for urban pigeon – roosting, resting, flying. About the time I was publishing my blog, the artist was carefully arranging another mural about 100 metres from my apartment. You can see the collage effects on the image below, right.

This is on the intersection of Karo Drive (the Bypass) and Cuba Street and you can see the scale of it from the traffic signal. This is not a haphazard graffiti artist. She/he has great care about the resulting image, the density of the photocopies, and the careful layout including cut the shape out of the frame.

Cool!

[I see a ‘Pigeon Poster Fanciers of Wellington‘ group has been formed on facebook. Most of them are Wellington sitings (sitting? sighting? signtings?) but some are from Auckland and Hamilton too.  An article in the Christchurch paper The Press said: “…a Wellington artist known as Bent … He is known as the “Wellington pigeon artist” for his prolific pigeon pastes in the capital region.“]

 

Wednesday 2 March 2016

This is an interesting one. It is a visual pun, or I suppose, because the painting has words included, an amusing marketing ploy. The archetypal genre is the pop-art  images from Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein – cf: Oh, Jeff…I Love You, Too…But… or many others. 

This is a mural on the facade of a BPM Recreation Centre run by Massey University, Wellington in Tasman Street. Shame about the windows. I’m not sure whether the building is functional or not, but the message is clear (and large!)

The ‘visual-pun’ was designed by Louise Cooper with three artists executing the painting. It was commissioned in 2001 so it has passed the test of time – physically and conceptually! I hope Brad took the advice….

Tuesday 1 March 2016

What is a mural?

Does it have to be painted? (or a tile?)
What about a photocopy? Or several scores of photocopies!

Over the years, I have seen posters of pigeons – the urban kind, not the kereru – on all sorts of walls and fences. Someone has taken a lot of trouble. Each bird has multiple photocopies, each A4 poster overlapping the form of the bird. Many of them had 15 or 20 pieces of paper completing the collage of the bird. They usually survive for a few weeks before they deteriorate in the wind and rain, or are stripped by a judicious cleaner or a poster-‘putitupper’.

Several monumental pigeons were posted to the wall of the former Defence General Headquarters Building of Buckle and Taranaki Streets. They were removed so the ANZAC WWI soldiers could be displayed. Another set of pigeons flying in midair were displayed on a fence protecting the renovations of the building on Taranaki and Manners Street – you used to be a Mr Bun. Now it is a travel agent.

It can be difficult to catch the ‘murals’ because that are too transient. Below are two example. One is a gigantic pigeon surveying Courtenay Place – again, on a fence protecting the renovations of the new ANZ Saving Bank. You can see the detail of the collage effect of overlaying the A4 posters. The other one have a very brief existence – a flock of pigeon crowding a Phantom Billstickers pillar. It only lasted about two or three days.

Some are feeding, some are roosting, some are flying. The flying ones are the best – their glorious, expansive wings in mid-flight, fanning the air like angels.
It is a antithetical opinion of the reputation of the city pigeon – ‘rats with wings’!

Monday 29 February 2016

Where do mural-artists practise their craft?

On their bedroom walls? Too smelly.
On the garage wall at home? Too much trouble with the tomatoes plants.
On a neighbourhood fence, clandestinely? Too much grief from the neighbours!

Maybe they should practice with a wall that is hidden from view most of the time? Or conveniently inaccessible? Like a gun emplacement!
These are on view at the gun emplacement above the Massey Memorial and Point Halswell, north point of Miramar peninsula. It is a effort to get there, but what a view (on a good day!)

I suspect the artists have perfected their craft away from the prying eyes of the general public. ‘Wolfe’ – I have not seen his/her work before. It reminds me of the graphic work of Ben Shahn, a Lithuanian-born American artist, 1898–1969.