More and more it strikes me that New Zealand is like a teenager. Through much of it's history it has been clinging like a needy child to the skirts of mother England or the USA in the fifties. Now it is beginning to rebel. Stick two fingers up at the US with it's no nuclear policies. And trying to find it's own identity. Like a teenage punk with it's mohican, New Zealand has branded itself with the fern leaf - either furled or open. They are everywhere. From corporate logos to manhole covers. In this sculpture exhibition by different artists, over half the exhibits portrayed the emblem.
To be honest, I love the adolescence although some of the self-consciousness and insecurity at an individual level can be painful to witness. There is a sense of idealism that is stifled in older civilisations by the weight of what has gone before. Whether it manifests itself in a progressive environmental policy, the aforementioned no nukes policy, or the recent adoption of proportional representation, it's a brave new world, but not as Huxley envisioned it.