Projections

Created during an artist residency, this small series emerged from an artist residency and forms the start of a larger project now in production. It explores the mounting extinction crisis in British Columbia, Canada through four species that share our urban spaces. Photographs were made at dusk recording digital light projections of the endangered animals and plants, within their native habitats, in the Capital Regional District of Victoria. The primary cause of the crisis is loss of pristine habitat, much of it through urban development, industrial resource extraction and the loss of farmland. With the population of southern Vancouver Island projected to increase by almost 90,000 people by 2038 it seems likely this decline of wild spaces will continue unabated. The province as a whole reflects a similar trajectory (again reflected globally) with over 1,300 species currently at risk of extinction. Long known as “Super Natural”, the province of British Columbia has been recognized as a destination where access to wild, untamed space was always close by. With anthropogenic development of these environments, and further impacts of climate breakdown and pollution, the public is now awakening to the fact that this is no longer so.