Big Clark portrait salvaged from tip

An enormous portrait of Helen Clark has wound up on Trade Me after it mysteriously appeared at the tip in Wellington.

‘‘It was dropped off where people dump their rubbish,’’ Wellington City Council spokeswoman Victoria Barton-Chapple said.

‘‘One of the chaps up there noticed it and said it deserved a better resting place, so they cleaned it up and put it on Trade Me.’’

The listing pitches the painting as ‘‘a portrait of our first-ever elected female prime minister, Helen Clark’’.

The painting started with a $1 reserve.

The council has promoted the auction on Twitter and the former Labour leader herself has reportedly been looped into the conversation but so far has said nothing about the find.

‘‘It’s probably night-time where she is, so we will give her time,’’ Barton-Chapple said.

The unsigned and undated portrait is done on two sheets of plywood and measures 2.4 metres high and 1.2m wide.

There is no signature and no telling who dropped off the painting.

‘‘It’s a mystery,’’ Chapple said.

‘‘The other thing we’re hoping is that someone will recognise it and come forward.’’

However, an image in The Dominion Post archives contains the same image, with the caption: ‘‘A portrait of Helen Clark by artist Chris Finlayson is erected as part of a GE protest on an Evans Bay boatshed by Peter Russell (left) Alex Barnes, Morgan Cox and Maibritt Pedersen.’’

Not to be confused with the politician, artist Chris Finlayson is a Kiwi mural artist from Golden Bay. In 2015, he lost his life’s work after his Takaka house was razed in a fire.

It remains unclear what happened to the portrait after the protest and how it came to wind up at the Wellington transfer station. Barton-