Our three monuments

Over the past weeks our three monuments have stood as testament to events which may have been overlooked. We would like to reproduce here an image of these monumental moments along with the accompanying text from the plaques which this bulletin has elaborated on. In the coming weeks we will be turning out outer eye to other events across the municipality while our inner eye searches for new moments in the psychic ocean. With that we declare the close of our virtual Arcadias, we hope it was a meaningfull experience. Please stay attuned.

Walter the Tireless 1853-1882

Walter Jarry was the brother of the famous absurdist
playwright Alfred Jarry. Walter emigrated to New Zealand
in 1876. He shared with his brother an enthusiasm for
bicycles – preferring off-roading to riding around and
around in circles, which his brother Alfred loved to do.
Walter became known among the artistic avant-garde of the
time as ‘The Pastoral Flaneur’.
He died tragically in 1882 while swearing to avoid a curb.


The Spectre of Conceptual Art

Few Wellingtonians would remember the public amenities
riots of 1932. Many newly constructed conveniences were
closed for several months due to an epidemic of missing
urinals which swept through the city. This was finally
attributed to the removal of Marcel Duchamp's ‘Fountain’
from the Academy of Fine Arts.
The subsequent serial theft of urinals perpetrated by overly
enthusiastic conceptual artists rocked the capital and caused
considerable inconvenience. Thankfully we have come a
long way since those darktimes, and yet the threat of our readymade past lingers on.

Slow progress

It is rumored that Jules Verne, author of the epic nineteenth
century underwater adventure Twenty Thousand Leagues
Under the Sea, visited Wellington as a young man. He was
enthralled by the tale of Kupe's battle with the giant wheke.
In French literature of the time a Giant Octopus or Squid
often symbolised the struggle of workers against capitalism.
Verne also envisaged the first submarine known as the
Nautilus. Whether he chose to name his submarine after a
humble seashell is a riddle unanswered. However, being
composed of calcium carbonate, the seashell is a repository
of greenhouse gas – a mystery of the ocean and more of a science fact than a science fiction, a hidden player in our climb toward a radiant future.