Charcoal onto gallery wall

This is the seventh in an occasional series of artworks dating back to 2007. Collectively entitled, ’The Writing On The Wall’ they have been drawn directly onto walls of galleries, historic buildings, universities and a visitor centre, in Luneburg, Stuttgart, Tamshui, Liverpool, Knowsley and Manchester.

Each poetic text addresses the issues of climate change and allude to Rembrandt’s painting of ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’ (1635), that depicts the moment of the ‘writing on the wall’ in the Book of Daniel. The prophetic phenomenon foresaw the demise of the King, the split and the fall of Babylon. This commonly used phrase generated the primary metaphor to consider our contemporary transformative challenges.
There are many seagulls in Barrow and they view things differently from most people. Despite the mass extinction of species, they are surviving quite well; proving to be self-determined, and ecologically resilient they are adapting to change. A dialogue with seagulls may offer us the timely potential to learn these things for ourselves.