Bucket Fountain

By Celia Walker

The quirky Wellington landmark Bucket Fountain has a childish charm that most Wellingtonians feel a proprietary fondness for, despite its disconcerting habit of dousing passing pedestrians. The 1960s aesthetic fits right in to the vintage retail precinct of Cuba Mall – urban designers Burren and Keen created this ‘Water Mobile’, as part of the transformations of this section of Cuba street into a mall in 1969.

The bucket fountain has a tendency to behave like an annoying, slightly out of control dog when compared to the more sedate motion of other kinetic sculptures around Wellington. The city’s characteristic wind can whip up the water and send it flying onto unwary passers by at some distance from the fountain, and even on relatively still days the water never quite seems to stay in the pool at the fountain’s base. Refurbishment of the fountain in 2003 accentuated this more erratic behaviour which most see as part of its essential charm, with a shortening of some pipes and a re-aligned bucket causing even more water to spill out onto the footpath than previously.

Formal and informal interventions have caused further disruption, with detergent, a simulated oil spill, and even clay transforming the fountain at times into an art event. John Radford’s Transplastic Bucket Fountain has been the most elaborate of these, the artist coated the fountain in clay and implanted the form of an upturned car in the pond as part of a four day installation in 2006.