1000 Finches Project in the news!
Updated: Aug 2, 2019
As I wrote in a previous blog post, Homage to the Black-throated Finch, I contributed a painting to the 1000 Finches project in which hundreds of artists across Australia have mailed more than 1,400 artworks of the endangered Black-throated Finch to key politicians to protest the Adani mine's approval and express their grief at the now likely extinction of the little bird, one of hundreds of thousands of species facing a certain death in a global mass extinction crisis.
And now the 1000 Finches project has made the news! First the project was listed on Junkee.com. And the next day it was featured on the ABC News website. Whilst I was disappointed with the generic response from the politicians, at least some of the artworks have been kept. One day, long after the demise of the finch, someone will unearth all these artworks from the archives and see that we did try, it was just the government wouldn't listen to the people's concerns.
As Charlotte Watson, the organiser of the project states: "...it's a symbol of a greater mass extinction going on right now and it's happening under our watch..."
Check out the hashtags #1000finches and #blackfinchproject to see some of the art that has been generously created and sent to politicians – the Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Environment Minister Susan Ley, Qld Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, QLD Minister for Environment and the Arts Leeanne Enoch, Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington and Senator Matt Canavan.
UPDATE: The 1000 Finches Project (or Black Finch Project as it is also called) has been featured in The Guardian and The Conversation.
