05 Are we the Baddies?

The same year (2018) the format was expanded for another show called Works on Paper. It included A1 sized sheets of watercolour paper (840 x 590mm) which allowed for a greater scale of work than the limited size of an A6 postcard. 30 artists were each given 2 sheets of A1 Hahnemule watercolour paper to create their works upon. I had the idea of creating a Star Trek landing party bravely beaming down onto a strange new world. The initial sketches depicted native New Zealand birds dressed as the crew of the starship Enterprise (pictured) and I played with various scenario’s of the concept… but nothing would consolidate into a composition I was happy with and I couldn't comprehend why.

Then I realized - I had it backwards! The endeavors of the Starship Enterprise, boldly going where no-one has gone before could be interpreted, in the concept that I had devised, as a metaphor for the colonisation of the world by the European empires and the initiation of connections with species that decimated the local inhabitants and habitations. Once the roles of the away team were exchanged for introduced predators and the inhabitants of the undiscovered world became New Zealand’s native birdlife - it all fell into place.

The crew of the Starship beaming down to a strange new world became the possum, rat and stoat. These 3 have each done irreparable damage to the biodiversity of our islands and the initial meeting between the away team and the curious natives come to investigate is captured in The Landing Party (below).

I dressed the crew in the same red shirt of the security detail uniform in a forewarning of their future fate (a hopeful prediction of the battle we have yet to win)

Our existence relies completely upon the biodiversity of our earth, we live directly from it - it nourishes us with the food that we eat, the air that we breathe and the water we drink. We are of the earth, a part of the biodiversity of all living things; inextricably interconnected. I believe that we are moving to a societal perspective that realises the importance of our biodiversity for our own subsistence, as much as for the lives of the animals we face with extinction - we are the problem which also means that we are the solution and I think we can find the answers.