Cost of Passage / Utu o te Haerenga reimagines Auckland’s familiar parking-sign poles as unexpected platforms for solidarity. For one workweek, five identical plaster casts of my head—each stamped with personal emblems like the “all-about-me” shields we once made in primary school—will hang in sequence from Karangahape Road, through Albert Park and Aotea Square, past SkyCity, and finally in Britomart Plaza.
Each site holds personal significance in my own encounters with homelessness and city life, and by repurposing these poles—symbols of the city’s daily parking fees—the installation invites a new kind of transaction. Passersby can pause and leave a small offering in the shallow dish atop each bust, turning a routine commute into a direct contribution to people without homes.
Inspired by the bootstrapped momentum of 90 Minutes in Te Komititanga Square and heeding David E Thomas’s advice to start small, this pilot gathers the technical know-how and public feedback needed for the full 100-bust installation How Many Times Have You Walked Past Me? It also forms the core of my upcoming creative arts funding application.
Cost of Passage carries a double meaning: it highlights both the literal expense of moving through the city and the far greater human cost borne by its most vulnerable. The downhill journey—from K Road’s eclectic energy to Britomart’s transit hub—threads through spaces where homelessness is most visible, testing a model of guerrilla, grassroots public art that sparks empathy and directly addresses a pressing social issue in the very streets that define our urban life.