Ulex


In 19th century New Zealand, divinatory practices were often focused around crystals, glass, liquids; looking through or over the shimmering surfaces of bodies of water. These surfaces - mirrored openings within the landscape - sometimes presented visions that, within the settler imagination, folded one hemisphere into another. A mirroring of landscapes; disorientation, dislocation, the projection of one world onto another. Species are introduced that attempt to erase difference and to replicate the familiar European landscapes that would comfort rather than disturb.

This ‘folding’, imaginatively traversing the oceans of the Atlantic, the Pacific and the South Pacific, brings with it forms of violence that leave the settled landscape imperilled, terra nullius onto which cultures, ecosystems and livelihoods will be more-or-less successfully transplanted. Ulex, commonly known as gorse, a thorny species of shrub native to Western Europe, was introduced in Aotearoa New Zealand as a means to establish cheap boundaries, to delineate and enforce settler land ownership; a concept that itself reflects profound dislocations - ideological, legal, ecological and cultural.

Gorse thrived in the NZ landscape and climate, spreading over deforested land and native coastline landscapes with devastating urgency. This is just one of many stories of the unintended consequences; introduced species that find their way into habitats, eclipsing and disrupting native ecosystems, as well as indigenous relationships with the land.

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