This artwork will take place on Wellington Harbour on Saturday the 14th March. If that day is unsuitable due to inclement weather the work will take place the following day, or failing that Sunday the 22nd March. Please consult the East by West ferries website the Thursday before for an update.

This work will appeal to an audience that is interested in contemporary art, social change, local history, and human rights. I very much hope that people who have been affected by the things I have outlined below will come and view the work, which is why three cruises that day will be free of charge. 

We now live in a time where deregularisation, restructuring and the free market has isolated and alienated individuals in different ways, for example “on-call work is associated with poor sleeping patterns, mental health issues and disrupted personal lives”, and research on the casualization of the workforce that has been found to be “similar to evidence on the social and health impact of poorly paid and insecure work that was found in government inquiries into sweating, factories, casual dock labour and the like more than a century ago” Women, the young and the old, Maori and Pacific Islanders are more likely to be affected by the casualization of the workplace. “The growth of contingent work has been linked to an overall increase in socioeconomic inequality. “Contingent workers constitute a significant proportion of the expanding category of ‘working poor’ identified in Europe and North America” Inequality, as the run up to the 2014 New Zealand general election showed, is increasingly becoming part of the New Zealand consciousness.

This work posits the idea of a community of the vulnerable, and as such cuts across what a “traditional” community has previously been seen to be, such as race, religion, etc.I would like any debate about this work to be around how society has been changed since the 1980’s. Has the free market and restructuring made it harder or easier for the majority of New Zealanders to flourish in this country. Has management culture and monetarism been beneficial for New Zealand or has it gone too far?