This installation came out of a research trip I undertook in 2012 to the Angela Marmont Center for UK Biodiversity in London, England. This piece looks at the plight of Indicator Species. Moths are widely spread and found in many diverse habitats and so play a vital role in biodiversity and as such are a fragile marker of the health of our ecosystems.

 The tile “The Growth Imperative-Swarm” comes from an economic term that places importance on financial markets relentless pressure to grow and keep growing faster and faster. The environmental fallout of this pursuit of growth at all costs has created what some scientists believe to be the beginning of a new geological era, the Anthropocene. The affects of climate change and that of Humankind’s activity on the earth has turned the idea that we are subject to the forces of nature around. Humans are now the determining forces of nature.

 The work references Victorian ideas of collections of the Natural World, the specimens appear to be resting on a wall and look as though they have been captured mid flight. Their growth perhaps arrested, or conversely a trapped uncontrolled infestation. On a symbolic level moths can be seen to represent transformation, otherworldliness and impulsiveness, the latter being a suggestion of our inability to control urges and consumer desires at our own peril.