LETTERS & EMAILS

HAVE YOU NOTICED ALL OF THE CCTV CAMERAS POPPING UP AROUND OUR STREETS OVER NIGHT? Any idea on who put them up? We certainly haven't had any notice in writing as to why this has happend. If it's to catch criminals, sweet. But if it's for AT to collect revenue then they can get back on the horse they rode in on. It's hard enough trying to work in my own area with the current camera car regime and daily ticketing of my business vehicles. Any ideas or help would be appreciated.

Name suppled but withheld

IT NEEDS TO STOP: THIEVES TARGET HISTORIC AUCKLAND DOMAIN STATUE Chair of the Auckland Domain Committee, Councillor Desley Simpson, on the theft and vandalism of The Valkyrie Fountain.

Last week, I was devastated to hear that one of Auckland’s most beloved public artworks had been the target of a recent ram raid attack and damaged beyond repair.

The Valkyrie Fountain, which was created by sculpture Gilbert Bayes in 1912, has been a popular centrepiece in Pukekawa /Auckland Domain since it was gifted to Auckland almost 100 years ago.

The fountain, which is valued at over $160,000, was first shown at an exhibition of garden sculpture held by the Royal Horticultural Society in England in 1928.

In 1930, while living in London, former Auckland artist Richard Sydney Hellaby, son of the well-known butcher Richard Hellaby, presented the fountain as a gift to Auckland. It has been housed off Garden Road ever since.

Following a spate of similar attacks, the fountain recently fell victim to thieves who ramraided their way through bollards and cut the bolts on the protective fence to steal the bronze statue of the Valkyrie (a mythical female deity) which sits atop the fountain, while damaging the marble base, which also depicts Valkyries on horseback, beyond repair.

This senseless attack on historical and significant public property is heart-breaking and in no way justifiable.

In Tāmaki Makaurau, we are lucky to have a number of beloved public artworks that can be enjoyed for free by Aucklanders and visitors alike. This is a privilege not seen in other areas of the world and is not one that should be taken for granted.

This is just one of the attacks on public art that have taken place in recent months, and we are working closely with the Police to find those responsible. We are also looking at what more can be done to stop incidents like this from happening again.

I implore anyone with any information about these incidents, or if you spot any suspicious behaviour, to please contact the Police on 105 or call the council on 09 301 0101.

Together, we can put an end to this mindless behaviour, and ensure we can all enjoy Auckland’s unique art collection for many more years to come.

Desley Simpson, JP Auckland Councillor, Chair, Auckland Domain Committee

LOCAL ARTIST ANNETTE ISBEY HAS DIED ON 16 MAY 2022 Born in 1927, Annette Isbey enriched our neighbourhood by her presence, and we were lucky to have her strength and focus as an advocate for community. Annette firstly and always was an artist, admired and respected for her portrait and landscape paintings who once said, “I’d like to feel my paintings are visual poems”. But she was also a staunch community protector of our environment and a proponent for the conservation and sensitive care of the forest in Western Springs and for planting native trees under a maintained existing pine canopy.

Annette’s late husband Eddie Isbey (1917-1995) was Labour Member of Parliament for Grey Lynn and then Papatoetoe, so Annette’s political skills were well-honed, and she continued always to work for the betterment of those around her.

Her grand and beautiful landscapes spoke to her feelings for our place and her monumental portraits to her feelings for people. Rest In Peace.

Louise Rive, Westmere

MEMORIES OF PINES - BOB ORR FOR ANNETTE ISBEY They painted fantastic clouds in the sky. Above Western Springs they sometimes set my world adrift — their bitter sweet tang like the hearts of sailors exiled on earth. Their murmurings sheeted my hours into poems. Above the small horse shoe of Westview Road the earth just a way of their leaving the sky nothing more than the time of the day. Have you listened to their stories of a past and a future both speeding towards us. Navigators of the night and wanderers of the day swaying to and fro working the breeze even amongst many each a singularity of self their shadows like fingers pointing out our tin roofs. They were never Dante’s allegorical forest of mid life crisis. Their needles were gills parting to the flow of a blue world — I’m sure that they too had on a Greek Island once stood sentinel awaiting the black boats of Odysseus. At Motuihe they stood on a headland above a naval cemetery halfway between the horizon and the city. Those blue green presences that sometimes sigh like oceans that breathe like life itself might breathe — every day they kept adding new clouds to the sky. I guess I never knew I was living with giants.