Slowly But Surely

Ruth Douglas, Big Picture, Hobart City High School

In collaboration with Francisco Albergoli
Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, UTAS

Artist’s Statement

This art piece was made in collaboration with Fran from IMAS who is looking into how we can save the Red Handfish’s habitat, and in return, how we can save the Red Handfish.

When I went on the lab visit to the IMAS aquaculture facility in Taroona, I asked a lot of questions about how their environment affects their extinction and how they can go extinct if we don’t act now. I wanted to create an art piece that shows how quickly a species can go extinct and the slippery slope of how a critically endangered species can go unnoticed until it’s too late.

I wanted to do something that used my photography skills (photo editing, taking photos etc.) and create something that was different to “normal”. I wanted people to look at the artwork at first and ask, “What is going on here?”, and then as the art progresses it makes more sense.

I was inspired by Lucienne Rickard’s art project Extinction Studies (2019-2023) to create something that disappears. I found the idea of something disappearing quite fitting for what I was wanting to create, and it seemed really fun to try.

The way I created my artwork was with 3 different thicknesses of pens and a lot of patience to get up, take the photo and then write another “Red Handfish”. I decided to write the words “Red handfish” 250 times to represent the 250 Red handfish left in the wild. I was initially going to do it digitally but then realised “hm, hands are pretty important to these little guys, I’ll do it by hand”. I then started to work on it by hand, and I really enjoyed the process.

I hope that my artwork gets people thinking about endangered species and what we as a community can do to help save them.