An amazing piece of graffiti has popped up in the basement of Parliament House, and far from being labelled an act of vandalism this mural was actually commissioned by the Government.
Lower Hutt urban artist Chimp was surprised when he was approached to create the piece at Wellington's iconic building.
"When I first got the email I was flattered, I told my dad and we had a laugh about how I'd started off in the garage," Chimp said in a video posted to the New Zealand Parliament Facebook page.
"To come from that to probably the most professional client I've ever done work for and probably more advanced than I ever saw myself going with art," he said.
The mural is by the seismic base isolators in the basement of Parliament House and Chimp was asked to incorporate that into his mural.
"I was very impressed with the amount of artistic freedom they gave me. They said 'we want to relate it to the earthquake strengthening of the building' so I noticed there's a break in the wall, so I decided to use that as a tectonic plate," Chimp said.
The mural features two Kiwi birds, the kereru and the bellbird.
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