The ants go marching

Triptych of drawings. Willow charcoal and pastel on Arches 300gsm watercolour paper, gesso, craft glue, collaged printed matter
56 x 200cm, 2020-2023.
Finalist, Ravenswood Women’s Art Prize, 2023

This work explores possible future scenarios relating to human-induced global warming in Australia. It features the critically endangered South Australian Nothomyrmecia, or dinosaur ant, that can only hunt when the night-time temperature falls to just above zero Celsius. In a reversal of their current prospects of extinction, these ants are shown thriving many millennia into the future once humans are gone. The detritus of human life is represented in the background collage of advertising and other print media, progressively flattened by the ants as they forage over our left-overs. Charcoal as a medium is a reminder that all life is made from and returns to carbon. The first drawing depicts little of nature except for the ants, with evidence of past human activity underfoot. In the subsequent drawings the ants continue to evolve and prosper with their natural environment, growing in size and walking on two legs. Only small plastic tokens of human existence remain.