Tag: Loss

‘Valkyrie’ Vandalised

by Ebb Then Flood

‘Valkyrie’ Vandalised’

I posted a photo of my favourite Auckland statue just a few weeks ago in Statuesque Sunshine , and some time ago in Statue: ‘Valkyrie’.

The statue, a fountain actually, had suffered losing its flow of water during a recent drought, and the gates to it had been locked for the past couple of years for reasons unknown.

But now this final indignity:

A local newspaper reports of the vandalism and ruin of the bronze and marble monument.

I was quietly stunned, and saddened.

Utterly pointless…

The statue may not be able to be repaired, the news article states.

I hope some restorative magic can be applied to the once lovely work, I really do.

If not, I feel that I have lost a friend of sorts.

Half Buried Memories

by Ebb Then Flood

IMG_3986 (3)

‘Half Buried Memories’

No, it’s not the results of a New Zealand earthquake, but rather a sculptural piece in Auckland commenting (perhaps) on the loss of historical buildings, and that greater emotional loss which accompanies that process.

While I was taking the picture on the weekend, a colourful local approached and told me that he had opposed the sculpture’s installation years ago. A “waste of money” ,”not actually real”. Just attracted people wanting to take photos (“like me?”, I asked smilingly).

That was as may be, but there was no getting around the period in  the 1980s when developers, according to the bloke, were hell bent on pulling down old buildings and replacing them with new and shiny edifices, before new “heritage” planning rules prevented them doing so without some preservation measures being undertaken.

It is a burial site of a kind, even if “not real”, and evokes the feelings you associate with those places.

In the background, the newer high rise buildings of downtown can be seen through the trees.

There will come a time when they too will be demolished to make way for something “better” and more progressive.

And only memories will remain.