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Overview
This kākāpō soft sculpture is called ‘Little Robbie’. He was made by Sayraphim Lothian, a public artist from Melbourne, Australia, who works in the field of craftivism.
In March 2014 Lothian presented a public art project in Christchurch called ‘Journey: the Kākāpō of Christchurch’. She made 124 hand-sewn kākāpō soft sculptures and left them around the streets of Christchurch for people to find and take home in an act of guerrilla kindness. ‘The main aim of the project was to make the people of Christchurch’s day a little brighter after having been through so much.’
She chose to focus on kākāpō because their recovery over the last 30 years has been remarkable and she felt their journey mirrored Christchurch’s recovery after the devastating earthquakes of 2010-11. ‘I wanted to make the kākāpō as a little mascot for Christchurch, a symbol of hope and recovery.’ The project was supported by Gap Filler and the Department of Conservation's Kākāpō Recovery project.
The project
‘I wanted to do a guerrilla kindness work for the people of Christchurch since they’d gone through so much during the past couple of years. The project, Journey: the Kākāpō of Christchurch, was in two parts. Putting the soft sculpture kākāpō out in the streets for people to find and adopt and then the free craft workshops for the general public at the Pallet Pavillion on the weekends.
When I first conceived of the piece, I was thinking I’d make around 30 of the soft sculpture kākāpō to put around the streets. I emailed the Kākāpō Recovery project to get their blessing for the project, and they were super keen! They asked how many I was planning to make and reminded me that there were only 124 kākāpō left in the world (at that time) and wouldn’t it be great if I made 124 soft sculpture ones, one for each kākāpō remaining. So it was at that point I knew I had to make 124 of those! Each soft sculpture kākāpō was named after one of the real kākāpō, but with a ‘Little’ added to differentiate the soft sculpture kakapo from the real. Each soft sculpture kākāpō was made out of second hand clothes I bought at charity shops, so there’s a number of different patterned and textured birds.
I chose to use the kākāpō because I wanted to have a symbol that resonated with the people of Christchurch. I didn’t want to come in and give them koalas or something Australian, I wanted something uniquely New Zealand so that the finders would have a connection to the gift.’
12 a day
Lothian placed 12 kākāpō soft sculptures out a day for ten days from 13–23 March, 2014, announcing the day before via social media where the next ‘release’ would be. These places were: the Pallet Pavilion, ReStart Mall, the library, Canterbury University, New Regent Street, Canterbury Museum and the Botanical Gardens, Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, New Brighton, and Christchurch Hospital.
‘Somehow Little Robbie got caught in the dark recesses of my bag and wasn’t placed out on the final day.’ Now he lives in Te Papa's collections.