Kōrero: Memorials and monuments

This remarkable monument to Henry Holland, leader of the Labour Party from 1919 to 1933, was put up in Wellington's Bolton Street cemetery, near former premier Richard Seddon's tomb, in 1937. The Holland memorial was the work of the Auckland sculptor Richard Gross. The nude male figure represents emancipated youth, looking upwards to higher things. Beneath are two figures, one male, the other female, which symbolise primitive humanity struggling out of the primeval slime. Here Labour Party members Gerard Hill (top) and Nick Bennie give the memorial a spruce-up in 1987.