Sam Savage's Te Wheke mural decorates the walls of a water pump station in Greenmeadows. Photo / Supplied
Sam Savage's Te Wheke mural decorates the walls of a water pump station in Greenmeadows. Photo / Supplied
Hawke's Bay's latest instalment of the creative has seen a rotating wooden sphere and an octopus mural adorning the streets of the Twin Cities.
Albert Square in Hastings and a water pump station in Greenmeadows are the recipients of the creative talents of local artists Fish Aberadi and Sam Savage.
Aberadi's Kōtahu & The Sphere is a meeting of masculine and feminine energies of order and chaos, of the mathematical and the spontaneous, in the form of a rotating orb.
"I wanted to showcase the importance of foundation and engineering to make something beautiful. In western culture we tend to look at the surface of something for its beauty, rather than the foundation," Aberadi said.
The foundation of the Kōtahu is made from an old digger and the sphere is made from recycled wood from chicken sheds in Haumoana.
"I think recycled materials add something around feel when you're looking at a sculpture. It provides a bit of chaos to balance the order of the mathematical structure.
"I want to create with art a deep feeling of love and beauty, while balancing the energy polarities of order and chaos," he said.
Hastings District Council city centre activation officer Andrea Taaffe was excited to be exhibiting the sculpture for a second time in the region.
"It's been a tough few weeks with the challenges of Covid-19 and to be able to enliven the city centre with this fantastic creation is really uplifting," she said.
Fish Aberadi's Kōtahu & The Sphere sits in Albert Square in Hastings. Photo / Supplied
The octopus/Te Wheke that Savage painted was inspired by the artworks of Rooms 12 and 13 from Greenmeadows Primary School.
"Together the students created a bunch of drawings and there were two really happy little octopuses that I thought were so cool," he said.
Savage painted his mural based on the happy octopus concept, with bold touches of blue and purple colour to bring the sea creature to life.
"I wanted to make it loud and capture everyone's attention, and then hopefully from there the discussions of conservation and protecting what we love will inspire some kind of change or at least talk of change in how we respect our waterways," Savage said.
Napier Mayor Kirsten Wise is a fan of Savage's wall art, particularly for the way it connects people of the inland suburb back to the water.
"It's a long way from Greenmeadows to the sea but Te Wheke will act as a reminder to everyone that waterways go straight to the Ahuriri Estuary and to the ocean.
"To look after the sea, and everything that lives in it, we must look after the waterways," she said.
