Sign post

Over the last few months the sign for Peter McLeavey’s Gallery in Cuba Street, Wellington has been tagged not once but four times. The first strange thing about this is that the sign has been pretty much left alone since it was put up. The second is, that although every square inch of the doorway and sign have been covered with tags, labels and posters, the small disk that displays Peter McLeavey’s hours have remained untouched. We asked Peter if he knew why, but he is as puzzled as we are. He did mention that he is getting a new sign made and that he has kept every single sign the gallery has had since it opened - tags and all.

Some more gallery sign stories. One of the earlier sign for the Peter McLeavey Gallery that simply said GALLERY in red lettering on white, was designed by Billy Apple. From memory, putting up the Apple sign on the day of Billy’s opening, also involved the removal of the Elva Bett Gallery sign. A Neil Dawson opening was slated at Elva’s - just across the hall from McLeavey’s where Enjoy is now - for the same night. Tempers were heated as Neil took Billy to task for the removal of the Bett sign during his show. Sign rage. And wasn’t there also a sign rage incident in Auckland when someone attacked the Barry Lett Gallery, or was it RKS sign, with an axe? Sounds too good to be true. Details anybody?

Another Gallery sign, this time from Auckland’s Artspace, was kidnapped and taken for a ride to Otira by artist Dane Mitchell. The Artspace sign also attracted attention - well Billy Apple’s anyway - when, unsolicited, he cleaned a Malone tag off it during Daniel’s exhibition.

The best art gallery sign story, or useful correction and addition to the ones above, gets a overthenet table tennis ball signed by an artist of note.
CORRECTION: Billy Apple's cleaning of the Artspace sign (removing Crazy Dave's 'malone' tag) was in fact commissioned by Daniel, and documented by him as a work of his own for his Artspace show.