Tracing Wind
Overwintering Project
06/06/2024
The Overwintering Project exhibition, Wall of Wings is at the Glyph Gallery, Port Fairy, Victoria. The exhibition runs from the 6th of June until the 29th of June 2024.
The Overwintering Project: Mapping Sanctuary seeks to raise awareness for our migratory shorebirds and their habitat by inviting artists to help make them visible.
To make Tracing Wind #0, I superimposed the outline of a Latham’s Snipe in flight over a Japanese wartime chart of the D’Entrecasteaux Channel in southern Tasmania. (This chart came to light in 1945 when it was found on a Japanese coastal vessel in Borneo.) Latham’s Snipe is a migratory bird that makes a five-day flight across the Pacific twice each year, travelling between its breeding grounds in Japan and the east coast of Australia, as far south as Tasmania, where it returns to feed and rebuild its strength.
Through times of war and peace, Latham’s Snipe have been following this migratory pathway. However, their journey is increasingly impacted and their survival threatened by the ongoing environmental devastation of the wetlands where the birds nest and feed.
Tracing Wind #0, 2024
28x28cm, Carbon print on a digital print