Category: Dundas Street

Land of Pleasure on Dundas Street

This vibrant sign comprised of magenta boards and yellow 3D letters is an homage to the residents’ favourite band, Sticky Fingers, and their album, Land of Pleasure. The sign itself references the colour palette and font used on the album cover, the lettering was created with ply and cut using a bandsaw.

The residents of the flat meet in Hayward Hall last year, all loved the band and were very excited to see them play at O’ Week 2015. This is their first year flatting and their mutual appreciation of the Sticky Fingers has meant they are now committed to living in the “land of pleasure” on Dundas Street!

“That is why we decided to capitulate just how much Sticky Fingers has meant to us and bring it with us as we moved into our first year flatting. Sticky Fingers are living gods and as “Land of Pleasure” is the most glorious album in existence that is what we titled our flat.” Sydney Coffee (17.2.16)

Listen to Land of Pleasure on Soundcloud.

Pic’s Flat – more peanuts than you can poke a stick at #flatnames

108 Dundas Street (2014)

108 Dundas Street (2014)

Pic’s Flat on Dundas Street is a new addition to the named flat community this year and has received it’s name from the (in my opinion) best peanut butter company on the shelves, Pic’s Really Good Peanut Butter.

The five flatmates arranged a 12 months sponsorship deal with Pic’s and now receive a 2.5kg bucket of the peanuty goodness weekly.

Find out more about the flatmates on the Pic’s webpage, and also their Facebook page.

The Embassy#flatnames

40 Dundas Street (2014)

40 Dundas Street (2014)

40 Dundas Street hasn’t been graced by a flat name for more than ten years. It appears we now have a proud Samoan Embassy in Dunedin North!

The last recorded name for this flat was the infamous “Greasy Beaver Lodge”. The (unconfirmed) word on the street was the then landlord banned further naming.

40 Dundas Street (2001)

 

The Greasy Beaver Lodge will live on in the record of NZ art history however, as it was one of the many named flats in Dunedin that inspired artist, Scott Eady‘s  Frances Hodgkins Fellowship in 2002.

 

 

A reinterpretation of The Greasy Beaver Lodge sign featured in Scott Eady’s exhibition “Signs” at The Blue Oyster Gallery in 2002. The sign currently resides in the Hocken Collections (record).

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The Greasy Beaver Lodge, Scott Eady (2002) at The Blue Oyster Gallery

The Greasy Beaver Lodge reappeared in April 2016 shortly after 40 Dundas Street was sold.

Under Flagstaff / Law & Murray

In Visions of Dundas Street through student coloured glasses, Hamish Mckenzie recalls Dundas Street, pater familias of  local scarfies, bridging the Water of Leith and slowing speeding cars with its double dose of hemorrhoids. A more gentile work referencing Dundas Street is Bernadette Hall’s Lacework, recalling the iron lace on the verandah of her childhood home at number 118.

Just around the corner from Dundas Street, Castle Street is refered to, infamously, in Baxter’s A Small Ode on Mixed Flatting, where he says he dipped his wick back in the day where mixed flatting was a social no no.

Joanna Preston recalls “… scarfie flats with names and legends passed down from pisspot to pisspot …” up the Valley, in A visit to Nicky’s place. I particularly enjoy the later, and what this infers in terms of the project I’m working on.

jacket design of Under Flagstaff

View the OUP page about Under Flagstaff

The lazy boys / Carl Shuker

I finally picked up a copy of Carl Shuker’s novel, The Lazy Boys, set in 1994. While delighted to find the main characters live in a named flat at 126 Dundas Street called Strangeways (named for the Smiths final studio album, Strangeways here we come) I was simultaneously riveted and repelled by the book. I was my 3rd year at Otago at the time the book was set. It brought back memories.

Carl is currently writing a screenplay of the book. Here’s article by the Timaru Herald about him.