Old Neighbours, New Habitats

The 3-channel projection Old Neighbours, New Habitats is displayed across three suspended acrylic sheets with accompanying audio. This video work aims to reject perceptions of the White Ibis as pests in urban spaces. The artwork responds to notions realised through future scoping exercises, concluding that an abundance of wetlands within urban centres would provide more suitable places to house growing ibis populations as a method that would allow them to co-exist with humans in busy cities. This artwork uses multi-layered video techniques to impose footage of wetlands onto imagery of buildings within Brisbane’s CBD. Imagery of white ibises in their natural wetland habitats is inserted within the architecture of these buildings in an act of erasure of constructed human habitats. This gesture aims to equalise the space occupied by humans and white ibises in city areas, to advocate for ibis-human co-existence.