Quasi – Christchurch/Wellington

Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

Public art

Historical – no longer at this location

Historical record · Aug 2026

This Big Thing is recorded for its history. It is no longer at this location, so it is not a stop to plan a trip around.

Ronnie van Hout’s five-metre giant hand-face sculpture, formerly displayed on gallery roofs in Christchurch and Wellington.

Private to your Passport.

PLANNING A VISIT?

Not a stop to travel to

This Big Thing is recorded for its history. It is no longer at this location, so it is not a stop to plan a trip around.

Quasi – Christchurch/Wellington

This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.

Approximate location · 41.290° S, 174.780° E

FIELD GUIDE

The story

Quasi is a five-metre hand with the artist's face on it, and for eight years it crouched on gallery roofs in New Zealand, looking down.

Ronnie van Hout made it from steel, polystyrene and resin, based on scans of his own hand and facial features – a partial self-portrait, in the most literal sense available. The name references Quasimodo, the bellringer of Victor Hugo's 1831 novel: misshapen, misunderstood, hated by the people, and ultimately the tragic hero.

That reference did a lot of work, because Christchurch Art Gallery commissioned it in 2016 to sit on its roof following the 2011 earthquakes, in a city then arguing constantly about what should be rebuilt and what should be mourned. A giant unsettling hand watching over the recovery was not a comfortable object, and was not meant to be. Plenty of people disliked it, which is arguably the clearest evidence that it worked.

It moved to the roof of City Gallery Wellington in 2019, in a joint project with the Wellington Sculpture Trust supported by Wellington City Council, the Wellington Community Trust and Richard Burrell – the Trust's seventh temporary installation in the city. It spent five years surveying Wellington and its inhabitants before being removed in November 2024.

Current evidence places the sculpture in Australia. Van Hout was born in Christchurch and now lives in Melbourne, where Quasi was made in the first place, so it has in a sense gone home rather than away.

No version of it remains on public display in New Zealand.

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PRACTICAL

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WHAT TO EXPECT

Quasi was Ronnie van Hout's five-metre giant hand-face sculpture, first displayed atop Christchurch Art Gallery and later Wellington City Gallery.

ACCESS

Historical New Zealand record only. No current New Zealand visitor destination exists.

COMMUNITY

Visitor Log

WHAT'S NEXT

Find another Big Thing nearby

Current – limited access

Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War – Giant Figures

Wellington, Wellington

Eight monumental human figures form the centrepiece of Te Papa’s Gallipoli exhibition, each rendered at 2.4 times human size.

Characters and mascots

0.2 km away

✓ Recommended arrival recorded

TRANSPARENCY

Sources & research

Christchurch Art Gallery – Quasi

Christchurch Art Gallery · recorded 2026-08-23

Commissioning gallery documents original Christchurch installation.

Government

City Gallery Wellington – goodbye to Quasi

City Gallery Wellington · recorded 2026-08-23

Official gallery release confirms five-metre work left Wellington in November 2024 for Australia.

Official

What we're still checking

Quasi has left New Zealand; any future New Zealand return would require a new current location.

Open-licence image search completed 24 August 2026. No defensible reusable image with file-level commercial-use provenance was verified in the completed Commons, government/open-licence and archival/open-collection sweep.

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