Tony Watkins

I arrived at work one morning to find “City with orange river” by Robert Ellis (1552 x 1216mm) (1966) on its way to the tip, leaning up against a jumbo bin. It was tempting to rescue it and take it home, but no one would have believed the story.

The Planning Department of theUniversity of Auckland was born of a rather belated but nevertheless well intentioned response to the Industrial Revolution. That early idealism and warm humanity of Robert Kennedy was unfortunately slowly consumed by a lust for bureaucratic power and control until by the time Jenny Dixon finally killed off the Planning Department the brave new world had been reduced to a legal wrangle creating a built environment which would eventually lead to the collapse of the planet through global warming. Little wonder that Jenny sought to deny the history of the Department. It had all the grandeur of a Shakespeare tragedy.