Street Art

We, ‘Alive Vibrant Timaru’ & ‘The Timaru Civic Trust’ have incorporated Street art into the daily life of our city as an urban renewal project, activating our CBD and drawing attention to our beautiful Heritage Buildings.

We are excited to be able to re-imagine our use for public space combining art and architecture, enabling the community to renew their sense of belonging to that space and its shared history.

Wall Flowers

Jessie Johnson Container Mural

Street art locations

Gallery

Wall Flowers

Aroha Novak, Dunedin based artist

After much googling and research at the library about the history of Timaru, Aroha decided to keep this particular composition simple but nostalgic “as a little girl, I loved the Mount Cook lily logo, and always wanted to travel on one of their planes”. It references the former Mount Cook Airlines logo of the Mount Cook lily, creating a wallpaper pattern on the side of the building.

The Shelter

By Flox , Auckland based artist

“The Shelter” acknowledges the geographical, historical and cultural significances of Timaru and the greater South Canterbury.

Paying homage to the town’s possible original name “Te Maru” (The Shelter), the natural peak of the building facade was a drawcard in conveying this simple statement. The Cabbage Tree also makes itself known, making reference to another possible meaning of the town’s name:
Timaru was a sheltered spot geographically and deemed worthy by early Maori as a place of rest on their long journeys up and down the eastern coastline. Nowadays, in a more contemporary context, the port has been transformed and refurbished into a modern outdoor environment where people can relax, socialise and come together as a community. The mural aspires to contribute to this.

Like all of Flox’s outdoor pieces, the artwork also pays homage to a number of native species found in the South Canterbury region, both critical and now extinct.
A Huia and the skeleton of a Moa perch against a backdrop of stylised mountains, a representation of our national losses, while beneath a vista of Caroline Bay, the threatened Long Tailed Bat, Weta and local Mudfish take centre stage in a bid for recognition.

Kaupapa

By Toothfish, Dunedin based artist

Toothfish’s wall is a mixture of plant and animal plankton. Plankton are the very bedrock of all of the food chains in the ocean. Without them there would be no fish. Plankton are also the driving force of the carbon cycle. Humans burn coal and oil derived from the remains of prehistoric plankton and a goody percentage of the carbon released in this process is ‘sucked’ up by plant plankton in the ocean who produce oxygen for us to breathe.

You can read more at - http://www.toothfish.org/News/ ID/1003/Vote-Plankton

Te Tihi-o-Maru

The imagery is based on 1930's vintage posters and postcards of New Zealand.
Aroha created her own version for Timaru with Caroline Bay in the background and a cabbage tree in the foreground.
The Maori name for Timaru, Te Tihi-o-maru, a place of shelter, links our heritage with the iconic cabbage tree which is seen shading our South Canterbury landscape.

Birds

by Anthony Fowler

Timaru (Mocca Cafe)

by Zoe Sturm

Container Mural

by Jessie Johnson.