i’d written a while ago about the council’s destruction of askew’s art work on poynton terrace. that issue has since blown up a whole lot more (go to chapter 2), particularly because the council’s action was waaay out of line. the mayor has apologised, and hopefully askew will do the wall again, and council will pay for it. there have been a lot of reassuring sounds made about making the city attractive for the rugby world cup and cleaning up illegal graffiti and such.
thing is, however many times i look at it, i cannot understand how the picture above shows graffiti having been ‘cleaned up’. it *was actually–you can see the grey paint that was used over the original piece, the piece you see was painted *over the grey. this was then destroyed by the white paint smeared over it. thing is, the original piece has been on anzac ave since we moved in here last year…i can’t quite see a neighbour (or anyone else) doing that. would the council do something so spiteful though?
mayor len brown says he loves this city, and wants it to be the most beautiful city in the world. i want to believe him. i want to believe that council would not do something as ugly as this…but honestly, i just do not know.
