The Sixth Great Extinction installation view

Manhattan Special - NYC

The Sixth Great Extinction has been a process heavy exhibition, involving strict parameters for where and how materials have been sourced. I have decided after much deliberation to leave text absent from the physical exhibition and use this online space to elaborate on my methodologies and motivations.

My art and filmmaking practice over the last few years has involved purchasing and importing a lot of materials and equipment. The ease of our globalised marketplace has shifted from being a means to creating a body of work to being a significant aspect of the work itself.

To gather the material which is displayed in custom perspex vitrines I asked a group of five friends who are living in major centers around the world to assist me. Drawing on a crowd-sourcing sensibility, I made all this happen via email. I supplied each individual with an identical brief that described the type of detritus I wanted them to collect. My request for anthropogenic materials from demolition/construction sites was interpreted in various ways, adding layers of narrative to each vitrine.

I’ll describe the source of each material supplied below:

Auckland
In the suburb of Ponsonby, a development was undertaken by Auckland based Marlin Group in 2006 to construct 53 apartments, 35 retails stores, offices and cafes in one complex. This controversial construction incensed its surrounding community by drastically changing their agreed upon plans. The nearly 100 year old historic building was demolished to make way for construction in 2008 and a concrete foundation laid. A combination of factors meant the development failed and the company responsible went into receivership with nearly a $100’000’000 debt. Ever since the site has been stalled in this early stage of construction. in 2009 an Auckland artist arranged a ‘pool party’ to draw attention to the wasted space in this affluent part of New Zealand. Small chunks of concrete and dust were gathered from this site for my exhibition.

Copenhagen
Copenhagen was an unexpected location but one that has worked well in the overall mix. My collector in this case was In Berlin when he initially contacted but ended up gathering material from a construction site in the capital of Denmark. Copenhagen has been described as a contemporary boom town and is one of the most expensive cities in the world. It has a reputation as being environmentally friendly but is also home to some of the worlds heaviest industry. I have recently read that the Maersk (HQ in Copenhagen) shipping fleet could be are likely responsible for an enormous proportion of global emissions. This displacement of effect and veneer of image are underlying themes of the show.

New York
NYC is undoubtedly a perceptual focus point for many citizens of the earth and probing this fact has long been of interest to my arts practice, especially centering on the events of 9/11. The concrete, ‘Manhattan Special’ bottle caps, steel chain, and bookstore receipts gathered for me in NYC provide subtle clues that the material in this show is of exotic origin. The material from NYC was gathered from a waterfront construction site near East River Park in Manhattan.

London
2011 has been rich with politically charged events of global consequence. One of these events, the London riots in August coincided with my call for materials. The following is an excerpt from correspondence with my friend in East London. “Picked up a cup worth of shattered safety glass yesterday, it’s from the front door of a DJ supply store, the metal shutter behind it looked like it kept people out… it was just up the road from a main (high) street that had most of its windows smashed and a couple buildings set alite by looters.”
This package was the only one that was obviously opened by NZ customs.

Sydney
During my brief visit to Sydney last year I was struck with the obvious wealth and physical enormity of the cities financial institutions. The material gathered from Sydney is from a domestic porch, a place of transition between public and private.

Invercargill
Collecting material myself while living in Burwell House as part of my recent residency was a way of having a voice in this ‘design by committee’ process. Burwell house is an interesting and loaded site, sitting between a Mcdonalds 24 hour drive through and the Invercargill mens prison. It was being based here and thinking about the histories of these locations that helped to seed the concept for this exhibition. The construction of Mcdonalds saw the demolition of the main block of the nearly 150 year old Maternity hospital. The architects employed to ‘match’ the aesthetic of Mcdonalds to the remaining buildings mistakenly assumed that they were constructed from Oamaru stone and ordered Mcdonalds to be built from this material.

I look at a Californian grape; I see an ocean.

I look at someone proclaim something with certainty on the news at six; I see the pushy director, the grumpy sound guy, the lack of time to do the conversation justice.

I look at a child’s helium balloon; I see a nearly exhausted resource with an irresponsible custodian.

I look at a stack of fridges and washing machines outside my neighbour Smith City’s house; I see poor Indonesian working conditions and fresh water pollution.

I look at the aluminium smelter at Tiwai point; I see the raw energy of a mountain.

It’s easy to see how interconnected and delicately balanced our object market is, it’s harder to critically engage with the cultural and environmental issues this brings without falling into the very ditch you are trying to bridge.

Its always hard to get a sense of the timeline of human civilization and development in New Zealand, the youngest country on earth (most recent land mass discovery). I recently suggested a young German tourist go and look at the Dunedin railway station because it was old. She literally laughed at me! It is shame that Kiwis don’t use the opportunity this youth brings to invent alternative modes of societal operation rather than approximating monarchal and capitalist systems that by virtue of construct resist responding to challenges posed a collective realization of finite resources, this slow calender.

I did experience a new understanding of time yesterday when I ventured into the Clifden cave system. An unassuming hole in the ground guarded by a lone chicken sporting strange lamb ears led to an hour and a half journey through the dark, under the ground. A fantastic example of overzealous health and safety regulators keeping away from where they are not needed. This place could really eat you up if your not careful, but the first muddy crawl is surely enough to turn off those who aren’t prepared or serious about the risk. This strange hollow world instantly shifts your reality. Populations of glowworms become the glistening night sky, A rock pool that is too perfectly round becomes a vast sea, graffiti from over a hundred years ago looks so fresh its author may be just around the next cave wall.

No doubt the taboo of scrawling your name in such a pristine environment didn’t exist in 1890, and I am fascinated by the juxtaposition in these cave signatures. Jones – Department of tourism 1894 / James – was here 1994. Whale blubber, the very first petrol cars, strict class divisions.. / Affordable jet flight, satellite television, plastic packaging.

©Heather Bauchop - NZ historic places trust

There is something exhilarating about winter in the deep south. Its amazing to think a windstorm can be so fierce that it turns a seemingly rock solid building into something that feels more like set jelly. Thunder and hail so loud it snaps your sleeping eyes open, and then leaves you wondering if the rotten cabbage tree outside is going to snap like a toothpick and crush your car. Yawwwwwn. Might have to go for another drive to the bottom of the world (Bluff, actually the 19th most southern settlement) to stand in the rain and wake up a bit.

I’ve sown a number of seeds in my art garden since I arrived. Most of them will sprout, grow to a few inches and then I’ll forget to water them and they’ll shrivel and die. Hopefully one or two will grow into big and healthy flowers. Its nice to not know exactly what variety of flower they might be, my bag got mixed on the way down here.

Today I eagerly await the arrival of a huge box of printmaking paper and darkroom supplies and revisit two processes that have excited my imagination in the past… and the tank of helium, new video camera, model planes, topographical maps … mmmmmaterials.

Resilience