Artwork nearly ready to fly

It may have taken eight months, but a damaged $35,000 artwork bought by a Wellington businessman is finally about to be restored to its original state.

Chris Parkin went as far as getting a gun licence to bring the decommissioned AK-47 covered in butterflies into New Zealand from London, only to discover it had been damaged in transit.

Beat of a Wing, created by British photographer-turned-artist Bran Symondson, is intended to be a symbol of hope. It will take its place in Parkin’s art collection in the QT Museum Wellington hotel foyer.

More than a little miffed by the state of the piece when it arrived, Parkin decided to fly Symondson over from London to fix it.

‘‘It was sort of like death and destruction really, opening that package,’’ Parkin said. ‘‘It had all the dead butterfly wings on the base of it. Unfortunately, it looked a little bit too much like what it was supposed to remind us of, and the horrors of butterfly warfare.’’

Having Symondson stay with him in Wellington while restoring the piece had allowed Parkin to learn more about the idea behind it.

‘‘It’s quite funny really, because when I saw it in the gallery it took me about a millisecond to decide, ‘I want that piece of art’,’’ he said. ‘‘I went inside and talked about it with them, and they probably told me all the things about the artwork that Bran’s been talking about since he’s been here, but I didn’t hear any of them. It was just the look of the thing itself [that drew me to it].’’

Symondson arrived in Wellington on Thursday and immediately started work on rehydrating the 300 or so dried butterflies he had brought over with him. That process took about 12 hours, plus another day to gently prise the wings open and position them ready to be stuck on to the firearm.

Of the 150 butterflies applied to the piece so far, only three were salvageable from the original, Symondson said.

‘‘It got damaged en route, which has never happened before, so I think somewhere along the route the case got badly knocked, and in doing so the butterflies got disturbed and broken,’’ he said.

‘‘These have been shipped all around the world without any damage, so I know they can travel.’’

Symondson had spent about 12 to 18 hours repairing one side of the artwork, and would probably spend the same amount of time on the other side.

He was disappointed the piece had been damaged considering the hoops Parkin had to jump through to get it into New Zealand.

Beat of a Wing was a symbol of hope that butterfly wings might inspire changes in the atmosphere, which would ultimately restore the world to its inherent innocence.