Projects
National Aquarium of New Zealand
Napier, New Zealand
The aquarium mural stretched nearly 350 feet along the Napier waterfront. Created with Cinzah Merkens through PangeaSeed Foundation’s SeaWalls: Artists for Oceans programme, it was among the largest and fastest projects I had undertaken.
Cinzah was the primary organizer of this festival edition. I worked alongside a small on-site production crew, helping the participating artists get their own walls underway.
Most artists had the better part of ten days. Crew turn came after the busiest stretch of getting everyone else up to speed, leaving roughly five days for the kraken.
I painted the majority of the wall alone.
The opening days were a production scramble: paint deliveries, equipment, access, schedules and the countless small problems that needed solving before people could work.
Once the wider production had settled enough, I could turn more fully to the aquarium. Cinzah – a volunteer himself – continued carrying the festival’s administrative responsibilities alongside his contribution to the painting, and to his young family.
The scale of the wall would have been demanding on its own. Coming to it after that first push made the remaining days particularly intense.
The wall wasn’t especially tall. Its length was the challenge.
Walking from one end to the other took time. Moving a ladder, refilling a bucket or retrieving something left at the far end added up over the day.
The composition followed the building’s curved architecture. Each passage needed to connect with work that could be a considerable distance away. I was constantly moving between the detail in front of me and the larger painting.
Visitors encounter it in much the same way, following the shoreline path as different parts come into view.
You could never take it all in from one position.
Cinzah painted a luminous long-finned eel at one end. Fish, seabirds, aquatic textures and a large octopus extended across the wall.
The imagery drew on marine life connected to the region and the aquarium. The building stood between the animals housed inside and the Pacific Ocean immediately beyond it.
Months after we finished, Inky the octopus escaped from the aquarium and reached the ocean through a drainage pipe.
The story travelled around the world. Having spent those days painting across the building, I found it hard not to picture his route to the water just beyond our wall.
Inky had made his own connection between the two.
The festival depended on people moving between creative work and the practical tasks that allowed it to happen.
Volunteers carried supplies. Local supporters kept crews fed. Photographers worked long hours documenting projects across the city. Organizers continued solving problems as the paintings took shape.
I experienced that support from both sides: helping others begin, then relying on the same wider effort to finish my own work.
Cinzah’s role ran through all of it. His eel was one visible contribution to an undertaking he had helped bring into being.
The painting gave marine life a presence along a route connecting the city, aquarium and shoreline.
For me, it also holds the memory of an enormous amount of work compressed into very little time — first across the festival, then along that seemingly endless wall.
I painted most of it, but the conditions that made it possible were the work of many people.
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© Jason Botkin