Creative Bay of Plenty worked with Keep New Zealand Beautiful and Chorus to get some beautiful art onto Tauranga’s telecommunications cabinets as part of the ‘Paint Your Cabinet Beautiful’ campaign.
This initiative is a paid opportunity for several local artists to paint a cabinet each, gaining local and national exposure, while helping to bring vibrant public art to our region.
2018’s project was around the theme ‘Our Places and Faces’. Papamoa artist Shannon Wright is to thank for the depiction of Tiki Taane at the corner of Elizabeth St and Cameron Rd. Juanita-Louisa Karora created a portrait of Tamapahore, a renowned 14th century warrior and leader from Papamoa, across from the Papamoa Library. Shane Walker’s painting of the Katikati harbour entrance is located on the corner of Valley Rd and Golf Rd in Mt Maunganui, and Jimmy Robertson’s piece indicating the importance of the sea can be found on Aerodrome Rd.
We repeated the initiative in 2019. The four winning artists were Shane Walker who painted ‘Captain Johnny’ on Marsh St, Alex McLeod who painted two boxes (‘Crayfish’ on Fraser St and ‘School of Sushi Soy Sauce’ on Eighteenth Ave), Elise Perie who painted a kina on Courtney Rd, and James Robertson who painted ‘Deep Blue Dog’ on the corner of Fraser St and Eighteenth Ave.
These telecommunications cabinets would otherwise fall victim to tagging and graffiti. Keep NZ Beautiful and Creative Bay of Plenty found that through the programme, would-be taggers are far less likely to vandalise cabinets with murals on them, out of respect for the artwork.
