A new exhibition at TheNewDowse allows you to get up close and personal with Wellywood's most famous cinematic gorilla.

Becoming King Kong celebrates the creative process of creating King Kong and invites you to unlock the door of Weta to see the artistry, workmanship, and inventiveness that helped bring the film to life.A new exhibition at TheNewDowse allows you to get up close and personal with Wellywood's most famous cinematic gorilla.

Becoming King Kong celebrates the creative process of creating King Kong and invites you to unlock the door of Weta to see the artistry, workmanship, and inventiveness that helped bring the film to life.Exhibition takes you behind the scenes

Developed in partnership with internationally celebrated Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, the exhibition Becoming King Kong takes you behind the scenes to reveal the amazing creative journey that took King Kong from the imagination of Kiwi filmmakers to the world's cinema screens.

The exhibition sprawls across four galleries, enabling visitors to pore over original sketches, animal skulls, life-sized sculpted models, detailed maquettes, stunning digital artwork and rarely seen moving-image footage used in the development and production of the movie, King Kong.

One of the most exciting aspects of the exhibition is the insight into the depth and complexity of the work, from studying ape behaviour in Rwanda to spending time at an ostrich farm to understand avian motion.

Creating King Kong even harder than Gollum

"People thought that after we created Gollum, that Kong would be easy," says Richard Taylor. "But King Kong was far harder than Gollum to create. Kong demanded more computing power to drive the fur of King Kong than the whole of the third film of Lord of the Rings.

"Kong also posed a whole different set of problems to creatively solve - unlike Gollum he didn't have the power of speech. We had to enable him to communicate in a whole range of other ways."

TheNewDowse Director says exhibition "perfect" for museum

"We are interested in innovations in creativity that are opening up new possibilities. And we want to be a place where young creative New Zealanders can be inspired to believe in themselves, and see creative and enterprise-based futures," he said. "This project really delivers on both fronts."

When: 30 June - 18 November 2007
Where: TheNewDowse, 45 Laings Road, Lower Hutt

28/6/07