The Night Shift

Sue Crockford Galllery, Auckland

The Night Shift (2003) works arose out of an enormous project; the imagined transfer of Little Barrier Island situated in the Hauraki Gulf, Auckland, New Zealand, to the harbour of Venice. Set aside as a nature reserve in 1894, Little Barrier Island (Hauturu) has been described as one of the most significant conservation islands globally in recognition of the wide range of rare South Pacific bird species that inhabit its rugged forests. The Night Shift contained a series of blueprint plans, large photographs and a computer animation of the island. The latter shows an animated depiction of the island's shift from a harbour in the Southern Hemisphere to one in the Northern Hemisphere; it provides a structure for how this shift may appear and be possible. The photographs displayed were taken on the island using a photo-cinematic filtering process called 'day for night'. The blueprint plans function as mental maps designed to establish and reference the project's underlying conceptual structure. One of the questions in this blueprint reads, "Is colonization reversed?"