Elliot O’Donnell, known as Askew One, completes his street art piece on Morrison Square on Selwyn Place last week.

More street art for Nelson

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The blank walls of Nelson CBD are slowly being replaced by the colourful art works of talented artists.

The latest mural to hit Nelson streets was painted by internationally regarded urban artist Elliot O’Donnell, known as Askew One, after Gigatown Nelson supporters won the mural in a Chorus Gigatown mini competition. Nelson City councillor Gaile Noonan says she fully supported seeing more street art come on to Nelson streets and that Nelson has always had a reputation for being a street art city. “Nelson is a natural place for art to come out of and I’m sure we’ll see lots of it in the future.”

Gigatown is a competition between 50 towns in New Zealand to gain the fastest internet speed in the Southern Hemisphere and now, thanks to this latest win, Nelson has moved into second place.

The competition called for campaigners to create a 30-second video that showed what high speed internet would do for their cities. Nelson’s winning video was created by Gigatown Nelson campaigner Michelle Lang and can be seen on the Gigatown website.

Karen Lee, from the Gigatown Nelson group, says they wanted to tell the story of the increasing links between online and real life communities. “It’s an environment that children thrive in, and they will benefit from the opportunities new technology brings.”

Rex Johnston, one of the two children who modelled for the mural, says he’s extremely excited at having his face up for the public to admire.