This artwork is made up of bright red, orange, yellow and pink seating oddly placed along the footpath – a surreal version of the classic cast iron garden tables and chairs. The familiar table tops and seat tops are mixed together to create an unexpected place where passersby can stop and rest.

These whimsical, colourful sculptures add a sense of backyard relaxation and restfulness to Auckland's busy Dominion Road.

*Common Exotic* was part of the Dominion Road temporary artworks supported by Albert-Eden Local Board in 2015. It was first launched in March 2015 along with Seung Yul Oh's sculpture *OnDo*, also on Dominion Road (now removed). The artworks were intended to add colour and vitality to Dominion Road during a period of roadworks and were delivered by Auckland Council together with Auckland Transport.

Common Exotic

A series of black and white concrete slabs make up a walkway connecting Sandringham and Walters Roads, with a sporting nod to rugby and cricket. Lamp posts also run the length of the lane and have been positioned based on golden ratio calculations, an important principle found in many of Billy Apple's artworks. An artwork and a walkway, the sculpture and the site are one and the same.

The lane's black and white grid is another interpretation of the black and white flag featured in [*Corner Post*](/artworks/3181), also by Apple, which was commissioned in tandem with *Wairepo Swamp Walk*. Apple used the golden ratio to co-ordinate the function and geometry for these artworks, as well as the black and white pattern. The work takes its name from the Māori word for swamp, in recognition of the former Cabbage Tree Swamp, which was drained to make way for Eden Park at the beginning of the twentieth century.

*Wairepo Swamp Walk* was commissioned for the 2011 Rugby World Cup at Eden Park stadium and is one of three public works by the artist in the Auckland Council collection.

Wairepo Swamp Walk

Seven sets of basalt landings and steps rise up the small hillside in Monkey Hill Reserve between Onslow Road and George Street in Mount Eden. The overall scale and gradient of the slabs of polished granite have been carefully calculated by artist Billy Apple.

*Monkey Hill Steps* uses ideas from two ancient mathematical systems – the Golden Ratio and the Tower of Babel, a ziggurat/stepped temple with seven stories representing the seven planets and their heavens. The seven coloured granite landings match the Babylonian astronomical colour scheme and form the face and top of the stepped sidewall. On the other side a drystone wall has been built from locally sourced scoria, which was extended to the entrance of the Reserve in 2013.

*Monkey Hill Steps* was commissioned by the Albert-Eden Local Board in an initiative to use public art to excite, delight and satisfy the large number of visitors, local and tourists that use or visit Dominion Road.

Monkey Hill Steps

Auckland’s smallest house stands on a tiny plot of land in Potters Park, Mt Eden, surrounded by lush grass. The bronze artwork was created by Auckland-based artist John Radford, in honour of the park’s late landowner, Frederick Seymour Potter. Less than a metre wide, this sculpture is a miniature replica of Potter’s family home, which he built and lived in until his death in 1941.



*The Sound of Rain* points to the New Zealand quarter-acre-section dream and weatherboard villas that were built in the 1900s. There are phrases that refer to the land’s history as a council-run fruit and vegetable plantation, used for fundraising during WWII. Out front is a welcome in Māori and English, with the words *vegetable garden* and *plum tree* inscribed out the back. Radford also created small-scale, hand-crafted furniture and installed fibre optic lighting. At night, a warm glow comes from the villa’s windows, turning the house into a tiny beacon within the park.



Potter, an English-born businessman and philanthropist, donated land to various organisations across Auckland on the condition that they would be used as places for children to play. He gifted the corner section encompassing Potter’s Park to the former Mt Eden Borough Council in 1916 and this work was commissioned by the Eden Albert Community Board for the Dominion Centenary in September 2007.

Katy Wallace

Common Exotic

"Colourful and quirky garden furniture adds a fun resting place for people on Auckland's iconic Dominion Road."

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