325 litres water drawn from Te Waihou / The Blue Spring, Putaruru, New Zealand; 2 x 200 litre plastic drum UN Rated in transparent blue; custom-made shipping pallet; sea freight journey from Port of Tauranga to Port of Jakarta via Singapore; Email correspondence 02/06/15 - 30/10/15 printed on 1kg A4 copy paper manufactured by APP (Asia Pulp and Paper Ltd, Indonesia); single A4 page with Email dated 11/11/15. Maddie Leach was invited by lead curator Charles Esche to develop a new work for the Jakarta Biennale. The project proposed shipping two barrels of New Zealand spring water from Putaruru (a small town in the North Island producing 70% of New Zealand’s bottled water) to Jakarta – with the intention of giving them to the Indonesian corporation Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) in exchange for 1kg of paper produced with the imported water. This seemingly simple request resulted in an endless stream of email exchange as the global trade system tried to accommodate this rogue shipment. Neither customs officials nor the paper manufacturers nor the Biennale itself knew best how to respond. The bulk water shipment left New Zealand with relative ease then encountered increasingly opaque importation barriers and payment demands in Indonesia, failing to be released by customs officials and subsequently disappearing from view. The participation of the New Zealand artists in the Biennale was funded by the NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade. In part that funding relationship was tested by The Blue Spring/Mata Air Murni, its non-arrival at the exhibition and the alleged payment of bribes as a regular practice at the Indonesian border. Leach’s work often begins with an exploration of movement or displacement. She is interested in what happens when things are in transition - from one place to another; one category to another; or one form to another. In doing so, her work often reveals a part of the invisible processes through which the global economy conducts its business. It might be possible to link Leach’s work to Marx’s ideas of circulation and how a commodity only really makes economic sense when it is in movement, but this aspect of her work is secondary to investigating the physical transformations that take place within a system of exchange.