Extinction Events & Dawn Chorus screen print (Crash Ensemble Series)

Title: “Extinction Events & Dawn Chorus”
Medium: 2-colour screen print
Dimensions: 79.4 x 57.6cm
Edition: 20

***Exhibited at National Concert Hall, Dublin, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Kilkenny; New Music Dublin, Dublin; Sounds From A Safe Harbour, Cork.***

Description: This screen print is based upon the music “Extinction Events & Dawn Chorus” by Australian composer Liza Lim, a 2018 work which “confronts us with the catastrophic reality of the world as it is”, and can be found on the Kairos label.

The starting point for the screen print is the image of the now-extinct Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird from the islands of Hawaiʻi. Lim’s “Extinction Events” features the recording of the mating call of the now-extinct bird (the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō is the last member of the ʻōʻō (Moho) genus within the Mohoidae family of birds from the islands of Hawaiʻi). The vector artwork of the bird is done in as simple and refined a fashion as possible allowing for the many areas of overprint. Positioning the bird so it’s head was loosely at the circle of one of the plastic rings alludes to threat posed by plastic in our waters to all life there.

“Anthropogenic Debris” is the opening movement of “Extinction Events”, the “debris” in question is the vast quantities of plastic that have ended up in the world’s oceans. To represent this, I drew a six-pack plastic beer ring and positioned this centrally in the print (to convey the ocean, I rearranged multiple poured india ink scans on paper on the blue layer). I liked how the circular ring forms also allude to the idea of currents, and how plastic is gathered by circulatory currents (known as gyres) into giant, swirling patches of rubbish and pollutants.

The red layer - as well as the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird - features scans of paint as well as a STEM image of a plastic face covering. The latter was chosen to allude to pollution in general but also the notion of an worldwide emergency.

Part of a print series for Crash Ensemble’s 25th anniversary weekend at National Concert Hall, Dublin during December 2022, and exhibited throughout 2023.