Price of Wellington // Bruce Mahalski, April 2010

The Ancient and Royal New Zealand Land Trading Company (since 1839) is proud to announce the opening of their new retail premises.

Do you have some land that you’d be happy to trade in?

We will give you top value in quality modern goods for your piece of unwanted real estate!

Goods swapped for land include:

• ALCOHOL

• CARS

• CIGARETTES

• FOOD

• CLOTHES

• WEAPONS

Come in and see what we will give you for your piece of land!

Spot prizes for lucky winners!!!

The proposed exhibition references the 1839–40 land transactions of the New Zealand Company, who believed that they had swapped goods worth £5000 — including tobacco/umbrellas/guns/fishhooks — for about one-third of the land in the country.

The practice of swapping goods for land in perpetuity evolved in North America in the 1620s when English Puritans bypassed the English Crown and started swapping goods for land with the local inhabitants.

Not much has really changed since, except we now use tokens i.e. money in exchange for goods where land deals are concerned.

I have always found it interesting that it is possible to swap a piece of land which is permanent with something as insubstantial and impermanent as a keg of tobacco (or a carton of cigarettes).

The proposed exhibition will not attempt to critique the ‘wrongs of the past’ but will rather ask the questions: ‘What is land ownership?’ and ‘Should land really be sold — or swapped — at all?’.

The exhibition space will be decorated with large posters advertising past and future goods for land deals and promoting the fact that ‘It’s time to think short term not long term!’

It will also be decorated like a stockroom, full of large cardboard boxes labelled ‘FOOD’ ‘ALCOHOL’ ‘CLOTHES’ etc., which will of course be full of nothing at all . . .