The Art Precinct voices its view on the Khartoum Place upgrade

An open letter about Khartoum Place


To whom it may concern:

It's ironic that the suffrage mural, a monument to the importance of change, should become the very thing standing in the way of it. If there is one imperative the suffragist movement embodied, it was progress.

Those of us in favour of a structural redesign of Khartoum Place are pro-development, not anti-mural.

Any significant redevelopment necessitates the removal of the existing steps and fountain, and, as a result, the mural attached to them.

A new $135 million dollar state-of-the-art gallery redevelopment deserves a surrounding environment that complements and enhances it. In its present configuration, no amount of ‘freshening’ and ‘refurbishing’ will make Khartoum Place that environment.

The debate surrounding the mural is heated and misdirected. Its proposed removal and relocation is neither a comment on the mural’s artistic merits, nor on the noble cause it celebrates; it is a matter of good urban design.

When this debate first arose in 2005, then Mayor Dick Hubbard halted the mural’s removal stating: “The people have spoken, and they say there are parts of our city that we are proud of and we want to protect.”

Indeed there are. However, anyone who walks through Khartoum Place between 6 pm and 9 am would be hard placed to be proud of it.

The square and steps are littered with cigarette butts, food wrappers, chewing gum, and puddles of vomit and spittle; the tiles are sprayed with urine and other unidentified fluids; the fountain is a receptacle for powdered soap, bottles and cans and serves as a bathing and laundry facility for the local homeless.

For those of us who live and work in this strategic cultural precinct, Khartoum Place is a source of shame, not pride.

While none of us relish the intense disruption that further construction work would entail, we support the redesign because we recognise the importance of such development to the future of our city.

We are determined to march forward with the times.

Signed on behalf of the businesses in The Auckland Art Precinct

Jennifer Buckley (OREXART)
Kathlene Fogarty (FHE Galleries)
Tim Melville (Tim Melville Gallery)
Rex Armstrong (OREXART)
Roger + Helen Parsons (Parsons Bookshop)
Alan Preston (Fingers Jewellery)
Michael Couper (Fingers Jewellery)
John Gow (John Leech Gallery)
Georgina Barr (John Leech Gallery)
Gary Langsford (Gow Langsford Gallery)
Anna Jackson (Gow Langsford Gallery)
Antoinette Godkin (Godkin Gallery)