Collage

This collaged panel once hung in Wellington’s Evergreen Coffee Lounge in Vivian Street. 

It is part of a collection of collages and other items that relate to the life of Chrissy Witoko, the Evergreen Coffee Lounge, and the communities of people who congregated in the cafés and night clubs around Cuba and Vivian streets between about 1970 – 2002.

Each panel includes a combination of photographs featuring people that Chrissy associated with, news or magazine clippings, business cards and other ephemera.

This particular panel includes mainly snapshots from a 1980s fundraiser held at the Victory Room cocktail lounge upstairs at the Dominion Tavern on Tory Street. The fundraiser was organised by Chrissy's close friends to raise money to help Chrissy pay her court fines. She had been taken to court for selling liquor without a licence, and was charged with a fine and standard seven-day closure.

Some of the people featured in this panel are:
Mike Bell, Geoff Honor (Jess), Ian Campbell, Yvette Kennedy, Alexis Kennedy (after whom the Chrissy Witoko Memorial Trust was established), Ray Sunbeam, Graeme Heenan, Malcolm Vaughan, Larry and Janiel Phillips, Trevor Lawlor, Chris Pierce, Serena Barrett, Andrew Manuel and Chrissy Witoko.

Te Papa is working in collaboration with LGBTI communities and individuals to discover the histories represented in the panels. If you have any information you would like to share in relation to this panel please contact a history curator at Te Papa on +64 (0)4 381 7000 or email Evergreen@tepapa.govt.nz