Advocating for the end of climate change is a tough task, and we have yet to develop the appropriate verbal language to encourage environmental awareness. In 2021, it is clear that empty words and promises do not spur us into action. (To quote Greta Thunberg: “Blah blah blah”.) In Still (FFS), Mandy Barker offers us a photographic language that visualises the fatal consequences of this crisis and fosters dialogue around its immediate impact on life on Earth.
Using hints of colour, the artist manifests the blue seas and skies which a once-living Shearwater would have inhabited. Yet, gradually, the photographs shift to an all-consuming red, ultimately revealing the murder ‘weapon’: plastic found inside the bird during its autopsy. As the colours change from blue to red, the photographs’ faded backdrops become traces of living presence that has been taken from the now-lifeless Shearwater.