Yikes! Artist reaches new heights as NZ’s tallest mural unveiled in Christchurch

• The mural by Jacob Yikes in Christchurch is the tallest in New Zealand at 55m high.
• It took 3.5 weeks to complete, using 250 litres of paint and 200 spray cans.
• The 2025 Flare Festival added 15 more street art pieces, enhancing Christchurch’s reputation as a street art hub.

It started out as the biggest mural in the South Island – by the time it was finished, it was the tallest in New Zealand.

Selina Faimalo, project manager of Flare Street Art Festival, said: “There was another one in Auckland, but I personally didn’t research it.

“We tried to contact the artist, but he didn’t know himself.”

It wasn’t until the work was half finished that they realised the Christchurch site, behind the Distinction Hotel, was bigger than the Auckland wall.

The mural by Christchurch artist Jacob Yikes stands a whopping 55m high and 27.5m wide. It is the headline act in the Flare Festival.

It took around 3.5 weeks to paint, and roughly 250 litres of Dulux paint and 200 spray cans were used.

“The biggest that I had painted on my own would have been less than half the size of it. Around 23m or 24m [high],” says Yikes.

The scale of the artwork, and access to the large wall, created a challenging project for artist and organiser.

“I had to find a lift that went that high - and all the lifts were at the stadium [construction site],” says Faimalo.

“We had to make do with the biggest we could get and then there were time restrictions on that. I was doing like 14-hour days just to get as much as I could done with that,” says Yikes.

“I had to get abseiling to do the top part of it.”

Artist Jacob Yikes resorted to abseiling to complete his 55m high mural. Photo / George Heard

The difficulties continued.

“I was planning to project the image on [to the building] because, just the whole nature of that mural, that was the best way to attack it.

“And then we had somebody call noise control on us on that night that I was painting it and had to basically shut it down,” says Yikes.

The 2025 Flare Festival has added 15 pieces of street art to Christchurch CBD – New Zealand’s most significant collection. Faimalo says the visiting artists were in love with the city’s works.

“They were like, ‘Christchurch is the hub, this is the place that I want to be’,” says Faimalo.

Cantabrians had feared that the rebuild would see ornate architecture replaced by grey walls after the 2010-11 earthquakes.

“I had the same sort of fear really, like, it’s gonna be a visually boring city,” says Yikes – who now views the rebuilt city as a blank canvas for street art.

“Because we have so many works here already, you do not have to really convince people.”