These banners were designed by Gordon Crook and made by Nancy Seaton and others in the early 1980s, along with a set of wall hangings that remain installed in the venue.

The banners are a uniform size and shape, long hanging rectangles with a rounded bottom edge. Made from colourful collage-like geometric forms, each banner is edged in one of the colours taken from the design.

As Mark Amery described them, the “Twelve long banners hang with great pageantry, as if a phalanx of medieval trumpeters might pop up anytime and burst into an anarchic fanfare. Rich, festive heraldry-like clusters of different coloured shapes, lines and graphs feature. In design, it’s as if an office supply cupboard had a wild party outside work hours, reacting to the daytime drudgery of use within the grids of the city’s ledger.” (Dominion Post, 2021)

The designs for the wall hangings and banners were made of cut-out coloured paper shapes, adhered one over another like a collage, and are held by the Wellington City Council Archives.

All 12 banners were remade in 1990 in wool using funds from the International Arts Festival. The original material suffered from UV deterioration due to overhead windows. Numbered pattern pieces from 1990 are held by Wellington City Archives.

All banners were temporarily removed in Jan 2023 for cleaning on site by conservation company Carolina Izzo Studio, with some minor repairs undertaken.

See also:

• Gordon Crook's designs for Michael Fowler Centre wall hangings and banners (Wellington City Council, Archives Online)

• Banners (Wellington City Council City Art Collection website)

• Gordon Crook Artworks at Michael Fowler Centre (Vivienne Morrell blog)

• Mark Amery, ‘Te Hīkoi Toi: It's time to introduce Gordon Crook’s work to a new generation’, The Dominion Post, 3 July 2021

• Peter Stupples, 'Gordon Crook: Banners and Wall Hangings', Journal of New Zealand Studies, No. NS38 (2024)