Little Pied Cormorant, 2025

Little Pied Cormorant centers on the act of painting as a form of preservation, observation, and defiance. While the surrounding still life is constructed through photography, the bird itself is meticulously hand-painted and displayed in such a way that follows museum diorama scenes. This contrast allows the cormorant to stand apart from its environment, occupying a space and inviting the viewer to delve deeper into the surrounding scene. Its position atop a human skull draws from the tradition and my love of vanitas and baroque still life painting, drawing on the hidden meaning in objects to bring themes of mortality, extinction, and ecological fragility into a contemporary framework. The inclusion of semi dried banksia flowers and seed pods, creates the link on how important each flora and fauna species plays in creating a healthy natural environment, the loss of one creates the loss of the other. This continues a recurring focus in my practice: exploring the uneasy tension between beauty, loss, and human impact on the natural world. The inclusion of scientific and historical references, situates the work within a broader environmental context where the history of collection and categorisation of the natural world and how the ownership of nature has seen the divide of human civilisation from the natural world. These elements reflect the legacy of classification and control, while also acknowledging the contemporary reality of biodiversity loss in the age of the Capitalocene.

My practice is situated in the relationship between the destabilising effects of industrialisation then with the following effects of human advancement in the age of the Capitalcene, and the natural world within fragile ecosystems. Much of my work begins with site-specific environments and my direct encounters in these spaces with the species that inhabit them. Working across photography and painting, I use photography as a foundation to construct environments that asks the viewer to reflect on their behaviors and relationship with the natural world. I then return to painting as a more deliberate act of preservation and observation placing subjects into these constructed environments where they would not normally appear. This process creates spaces that feel both unnatural and deeply considered, highlighting the tension between constructed views of nature and the ways in which natural environments are continually reshaped and maintained to the point where they could not be considered “wild”.

My background in museums, entomological collections, and regenerated green zones has influenced how I think about the staging and ownership of nature. I draw on the history of natural history dioramas and display practices, particularly where bird taxidermy and entomological species are displayed and categorised in a way for the viewer to not fully grasp the initial underlying issues or history of how, and where these species where collected. In my own work, this becomes a way of reflecting on how “natural environments” are fabricated, both within institutions and in urban greenspaces, often as a way to please or reassure the viewer, even as the habitats or species themselves remain under threat or could not survive without human intervention.