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    Richard Shepherd, On Borrowed Sand, 2010. Still from DVD. Image courtesy of the artist.

Richard Shepherd

17 October - 6 November 2011 in the Square² Gallery

This work traces the boundary of Wellington’s pre-1840 shoreline, drawing a line in sand along Lambton Quay through the city’s central business district. The artist silently performs a gesture of reclamation, marking the site of land originally co-opted—dredged from the harbour—as part of colonial settlement projects in the early 19th century. In doing so he creates a gently absurd, temporal monument to a founding principle in New Zealand’s modernity, the idea that land may be arbitrarily gridded up possessed, worked for security in the form of capital gain.

Shepherd cites E.G. Wakefield, British founder of the New Zealand Land Company, whose programme for methodical appropriation of local land significantly influenced the shape of the city today. Wakefield wrote the slogan ‘Possess yourself of the Soil and you are Secure’. A diligent propagandist, Wakefield was a driving force in the campaign to bring British settlers to New Zealand. Shepherd is interested in the role of fantasy and propaganda in effecting change—the displacement of indigenous people, the degradation of the natural environment and large-scale civic transformation—and as a foundation in our lived experience.

On Borrowed Sand suggests that the same logic exists today. Dispute continues around Māori entitlement to foreshore land, and instances such the Wellywood sign debate reflect the currency of entitlement to land and its branding as power. The sand (itself uplifted from Nelson beaches) used in Shepherd’s performance is borrowed from an artificial beach at Oriental Bay, a site constructed in the interests of leisure-as-spectacle. Largely going unnoticed by the pedestrian body, the artist in his high vis vest draws yet another impermanent line in the sand.

This is the fourth work in 'Tidelines', a 13 week series of short video works linked by the idea of tidal currents, the waterline and the navigation of history and everyday daily realities.

Richard Shepherd
17 October–6 November 2011
On Borrowed Sand   2010
DVD
Duration: 4:36 minutes, looped
Courtesy of the artist