Principals.

Martin Creed’s response to don’t misbehave! coincidentally refers to Christchurch’s status as the Garden City of New Zealand, with a garden of his own.¹

In relation to the first principle² raised in Michel Foucault's Of Other Spaces³: Martin Creed's Work no.215⁴

from the Scape 2006 Biennial ties neatly into some locally specific issues. Our first reading from Theatre Country⁵ introduced me to the notion of the populated landscape, and that it could be regarded as a condition of sorts. Creed's Work no.215, treats native plants in a very particular way, it designates them a place within a space that is both populated and transient. They are in a sense, both framed and isolated within the movement around them.

In the heart of the city, Work no.215 functions much like the eighteenth century cemeteries mentioned by Foucault in the second principle⁶. Lined up in three groupings relating to height: (from a distance) these plants lose their traces of individuality. They serve as a monument for the ground on which the city stands, it's scared and immortal heart⁷.

This combination: of the (usually sterile) median strip and the collection of native plants juxtaposes in a single real space... several spaces...that are in themselves incompatible⁸. It is therefor true to the third principle⁹ laid out by Foucault.

In the outline of his fourth principle¹, Foucault states that the heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time¹¹. One of the things that I've always liked about this work is it's resemblance to a hardware store gardening section. Hardware stores are a special sort of place: a world of possibilities and connections to be made. The sort of place where people go without the intention to achieve or retrieve anything, an intersection in suburban making.

This work looks almost like a mirage. Like most modernist, public works it can be experienced without the viewer exerting any physical wear upon the object. As the fifth principal¹² describes, the visitor...is...absolutely the guest in transit¹³.

According to the sixth principle, for a situation to be a heterotopia, the situation in question must sit between two extreme poles¹⁴. This work is not dystopian: it is not an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad¹⁵. Nor is it Utopian, the polar opposite of Dystopian: where nothing is wrong. This work seemingly highlights problems - At the same time it has an almost grandiose calm about it. We know, that if the trees are not watered and pruned this work will fade away. However it's

something that this viewer is willing to ignore, I don't think about the logistics behind it. The work sits on that patch of grass, almost isolated in space and time – a suitable illustration for something that I can't quite put my finger on.

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1 Scape 2006 Biennial. 2006. Christchurch Art Gallery. 7 June 2009 (http://2006.scapebiennial.org.nz/artists.asp?id=8).

2 Foucault, 3.

3 Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias.” Michel Foucault, Info.
[http://www.foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia]

4 Creed, Martin. “Work no.215.” Scape 2006 Biennial: Don't Misbehave. 2006. Christchurch.

5 Park, Geoff. “A Moment for Landscape.” Theatre Country: Essays on Landscape and Whenua. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2006. 196-204.

6 Foucault, 3.

7 Foucault, 4.

8 Foucault, 4.

9 Foucoult, 4.

1⁰ Foucault, 4.

1¹Foucoult, 4.

1² Foucoult, 5.

1³ Foucault, 5.

1⁴ "dystopia noun" The Oxford Dictionary of English (revised edition). Ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 2005. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Auckland University. 7 June 2009 <http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/views/ENTRY.html subview=Main&entry=t140.e23522>

1⁵ Foucoault, 5.