Te Wheke-a-Muturangi – Giant Octopus

Auckland, Auckland, 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.

A spectacular 15-metre floating octopus artwork displayed in Auckland’s Viaduct Harbour in 2025.

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.

Te Wheke-a-Muturangi – Giant Octopus

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

Approximate location · 36.840° S, 174.760° E

FIELD GUIDE

The story

A fifteen-metre octopus floated on the water of Viaduct Harbour for four weeks in 2025, and then it was gone.

Te Wheke-a-Muturangi is by Lisa Reihana, an artist whose work has been shown from the Venice Biennale to major presentations in Australia and Singapore. It belongs to her Kura Moana series, originally commissioned for the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of Arts in 2022, and it anchored the inaugural Aotearoa Art Fair Sculpture Trail, which ran through Viaduct Harbour from 16 April to 14 May 2025 with nine large-scale works.

The subject is drawn from Māori pūrākau. Te Wheke-a-Muturangi is a giant female octopus pursued across the Pacific and ultimately slain by the navigator Kupe – a story of ocean voyaging and pursuit that the artwork brings, in the council's own description, into powerful storytelling on the water it concerns.

Floating the work rather than mounting it is what made it exceptional. Auckland's Viaduct is enclosed, busy and reflective, and a fifteen-metre cephalopod lying on the surface between moored boats reads quite differently from the same object on a plinth. It was the first time the piece had floated on Tāmaki Makaurau waters.

It was presented by Viaduct Harbour Holdings and Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert with Auckland Council support, the council contributing $10,000 towards installation from the city centre targeted rate.

The Auckland presentation ran only to 14 May 2025. This is a record of a temporary work, not a standing landmark.

Floating works also raise questions this record cannot answer: where the piece is stored between showings, what it is made of, and whether it will return to Auckland. None of that is established in the available material.

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PRACTICAL

Plan your stop

WHAT TO EXPECT

Auckland Council and the Aotearoa Art Fair documented Lisa Reihana’s 15-metre-wide floating sculpture as the anchor of the 2025 sculpture trail. The Auckland presentation ran only until mid-May 2025.

ACCESS

Historical temporary-installation record only. Do not direct visitors to the Viaduct expecting the work to remain there.

COMMUNITY

Visitor Log

WHAT'S NEXT

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Current

Wāhine – Te Waihorotiu Station

Auckland CBD, Auckland

A 3.7-metre bronze figure performing a karanga at the Te Waihorotiu Station precinct.

Public art

1.0 km away

TRANSPARENCY

Sources & research

Aotearoa Art Fair – Sculpture Trail 2025

Aotearoa Art Fair · recorded 2026-08-23

Official sculpture-trail record.

Official

OurAuckland – Te Wheke-a-Muturangi

Auckland Council · recorded 2026-08-23

Official 2025 temporary-installation record.

Government

What we're still checking

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.

This records a temporary 2025 Auckland display and is not a current visitor destination.

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