A recent trip to New Zealand gave rise to the privilege of a visit to the Te Papa museum in Wellington. Te Papa's vision is to be a forum for New Zealand "to present, explore, and preserve the heritage of its cultures and knowledge of the natural environment". It is a brief well met.
Currently Te Papa has an exhibition entitled "Gallipoli: The scale of our war" that is a moving and sombre commemoration of New Zealand's involvement in WWI. With ANZAC Day approaching it seemed appropriate to reflect on the amazing storytelling that has taken place in this exhibit.
Te Papa teamed up with a number of Wellington companies to produce the exhibition, of particular note Weta Workshops, known for their work in the movie industry with projects such as Lord of the Rings, Avatar, Mad Max Fury Road and many others (our visit to Wellington also included a visit to Weta :-)).
Weta are known for their amazing special effects skills, which has included the development of software ('
massive') to simulate large crowds; think of the battle scenes in Lord of the Rings - Return of the King. While a topic like "the scale of our war" may prompt the museum audience to expect a crowd simulation, and certainly the immensity of loss endured may invite the use of such simulation, the team rightly created a very personal journey which needed no crowd simulation to impart the scale of the war experience. Instead the visitor is taken on a journey through the war punctuated by the lives of eight individuals. These eight are chosen as representatives of the nearly 3,000 people who left New Zealand's shores to participate in WWI (93% of whom were killed).
The 'eight' are people whose lives have been well researched and for whom a 2.4x life size mannequin has been created. The mannequins are both imposing and deeply intimate, placed in rooms that are small enough that the visitor is compelled to be close enough to observe detail down to the level of individual hairs on the bodies. The mannequins alone represent 24,000 hours work.
But these 'eight' are also placed within a specific, somewhat labyrinthian, timeline that the visitor walks along guided via a red line on the floor. Crosses at each date in the time line symbolise the number of New Zealanders who died on that date. It is very confronting. So confronting in fact that I needed to visit the exhibit twice, having bailed out on the first attempt from being overwhelmed and then coming back the next day.
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| Map of the display, showing its labyrinthian construction. |
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| Floor decoration showing the use of crosses to acknowledge the New Zealanders killed. |
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| A cut away uniform with cut away packs, which on closer inspection reveal the contents. In the midst of a display about war this seemed a fitting tribute to the 'unknown soldier' a young man who had become a ghost. |
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| Lieutenant Spencer Westmacott, the first of the 2.4x mannequins |
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| Lieutenant Colonel Percival Fenwick, 2.4x mannequin. |
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| Three gunners, part of the Maori contingent, 2.4x mannequins. |
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| One of the mannequin arms showing the attention to detail, each hair was added individually. |
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| Private Jack Dunn, a man condemned to execution for falling asleep at his post. Penalty commuted due to extenuating circumstances - pneumonia 2.4x mannequin with 2.4x flies. |
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| Charlotte Le Gallais, Staff Nurse aboard the hospital ship the 'Maheno'. 2.4x mannequin with 2.4x letters. For Queensland readers the name 'Maheno' may ring a bell. It is a shipwreck on the eastern shore of Fraser Island, having been run aground by a cyclone in 1935. |
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| Another depiction of 'Lottie' this time as a miniature onboard a cutaway version of the Maheno. This repetition of themes was a clear indicator of the care that had been taken in constructing the display narrative that went through this exhibition. |
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Sergeant Cecil Malthus wades through a sea of remembrance poppies, part of the interactivity of the display.
Visitors were invited to write on a poppy and leave a message with the soldier. |
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| An opportunity to cleanse oneself at the end of the exhibition. A profound and touching finale to a profound and touching exhibition. |
This is a very well constructed exhibition, worth seeing for the skill with which it tells the story it is seeking to tell and the workmanship in the models. Entry to the museum is free, and from what I can tell the exhibition while listed as temporary will run until 2018.
Below are two links with more information.
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