Studio 29B- Anna Russell, Anthea Boesenberg & Rhonda Nelson

Until the 1980’s coal miners used canaries as an early warning system to detect gases like carbon dioxide and methane in the mine. Canaries need twice the amount of oxygen as humans. In mines, their death signalled urgent action was necessary to save human lives.
Today we have significant measures of atmospheric and environmental decline which are still being addressed too slowly, largely because action is a threat to vested interests.
The cages with their sad cargo of dead birds, speak of the urgency with which we need to move. The shadows cast by the cages convey the threat, looming but perhaps not yet tangible - and suggest the traps we are creating for ourselves by continuing business as usual.
Hand building the cages was a steady meaningful process, expressing our conviction that there is still time to avert disaster by each of us taking what action we can while demanding that governments enable real change immediately.
Meanwhile, here’s the present in clear focus. It looks real and the canary is already dead. The future is imminent, looming behind, shifting and unpredictable until we act effectively to change it.