By Tim Binnall
Residents of a New Zealand's capital city were taken aback this week when a strange and sizeable sculpture of a hand sporting a face was unveiled sitting atop an art museum. The weird piece, titled 'Quasi' by its creator Ronnie Van Hout, was reportedly installed on the roof of the City Gallery Wellington on Monday. Weighing a whopping 880 pounds and measuring sixteen feet tall, the sculpture was brought via a helicopter to the site from the city of Christchurch where it had previously been on display for the last three years.
As one can imagine, the weird hand gazing out over the city with its somewhat stern expression has conjured a variety of opinions from residents. On social media, a number of people who noticed the sculpture now looming over their community posted pictures of the piece and largely lambasted it with one particularly clever observer labeling the hand as a "Lovecraftian nightmare." However, in an interesting contrast with the online world, residents interviewed on the street about the piece offered more favorable reviews.
Regardless of how they feel about the hand, they're going to have to get used to it as the museum, which spent a jaw-dropping $47,000 to procure the piece, says that it will "grace the Gallery roof for up to three years." While that may not thrill those who find the piece to be an unsettling sight, it seems that there is one constituency that is very happy to hear about the hand moving to Wellington: people in Christchurch who have been looking at it since 2016. "So glad it's gone," one relieved resident declared on Facebook to the agreement of others living in the city that the hand once called home.