VAANA Peace Mural

VAANA Peace Mural - corner of Karangahape Road / Ponsonby Road, Auckland
by The Auckland Psychogeographer

Recently restored and today stylishly presented behind a protective screen, the VAANA (visual artists against nuclear arms) Peace Mural is a permanent reminder of Auckland the activist, not Auckland the estate agent. This Auckland could hardly find a more ironic and transient location, perched on the wall of a concrete water reservoir, overlooking the forecourt of a multinational petrol station.

But perhaps that’s the lot of public art - operating outside of the refinery of the gallery, instead forced to ply its trade on a K’Rd street corner. The city is certainly lucky it has survived. Since early planning stages in 1985, a legendary group of Auckland artists have worked to create, maintain, add to, and advocate for the mural, as intricately documented in this document hosted by the Disarmament & Security Centre, a branch of the Peace Foundation.

An original collective of a hundred artists convened in 1984 at Elam School of Fine Arts by artist Margaret Lawlor-Bartlett to organise a response to the crisis of nuclear arms proliferation. It was that era of dread and angst, when Reagan and Thatcher stalked the world stage - and Robert Muldoon held sway in Wellington.

The original eight murals were by Pat Hanly, Jill Carter-Hansen, John Nicol, John Eadon, Nigel Brown, Vanya Lowry, Claudia Pond-Eyley and Margaret Lawlor-Bartlett, with a further eight in 1986 by Marie McMahon, Richard Collins, Kate Millington, Claire Mortimer, Maria Rodgers, Delyn Williams, and a further two in 1995 by Jim Viviare and Lydia Pond-Eyley. Yet more have been added in 2006 from Kate Millington, Andy Leleisi’auo, Jonny Wartmann and Miriam Cameron, along with contributions from students from nearby Auckland Girls Grammar and the Media Design School.

The mural is not one work, and there’s little that stylistically joins the pieces together, instead it hangs together collectively, anarchic and noisy. It is a robust reminder from the end of the Cold War era, and from the years of the Springbok protests and the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, that Auckland was and remains a place of conscious, lively political dialogue, resistance and personal commitment. That it persists - despite storms, graffiti, bureaucracy, property developers - is quite the achievement, and the work is now part of the permanent collection of the Auckland Council Art Collection, meaning it will be continually protected. At a crossroads where those crucial fluids, water and petrol, are stored, Auckland is now also stockpiling artwork.

Image Credits: The Auckland Psychogeographer