World Species Market

World Species Market co-opts a share market board and replaces the customary financial data with threatened species data sourced from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Red List of Threatened Species. The work was first exhibition on World Environment Day June 5^th, 2009 at Federation Square’s Urban Screen, Melbourne. During my PhD candidature World Species Market was updated with each new annual survey released by the IUCN and exhibited.

The work presents the politics of the environmental crisis within a publicaly known financial medium. It communicates the precarious position of thousands of threatened species by western society’s capitalistic growth.

The 2014 version exhibited as part of the Linden Art Prize exhibition, incorporated 13 years of statistical data sourced from the IUCN Red List within a share market board, linking the effects of financial growth with species demise. The work clearly communicated how capitalistic venture has consequences, that being the wealth of earth’s species. World Species Market argues that as each country strives to improve their financial wealth, their profit, we stand to lose more species and wild environments. It opposes the social and political norm and utilises the language of the financial markets to critique.

Exhibition history for World Species Market  

Linden Art Prize, Linden New Art, 26 Acland St, St Kilda VIC 3182. Dates 21st February –  30th March, 2014 (Version 4, 2013 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species data)

Us and Them –Umwelten, RMIT Project Space Spare Room, 23-27 Cardigan Street, Carlton 3053. Dates May 11^th – June 7^th, 2012 (Version 3, 2011 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species data)

Williamstown Festival Contemporary Art Prize, The Substation, 1 Market Street, Newport, 3015 Dates: March 4^th to the 28^th, 2010

World Species Market, International Urban Screens, Global Dates 16^th November – 16^th December, 2009 (Version 2, 2009 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species data) International Urban Screen Association media release – World Species Market, 2009

World Species Market, Urban Screen Federation Square, corner of Swanston and Flinders Street, Melbourne, 3000 Dates- 5^th June – 10^th July, 2009. (Version 1 2008 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species data

World Species Market, 2009 (Version 2) was assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.