Rachel Verity Foster

These artworks represent an ongoing exploration in response to the decline in wildlife populations worldwide, a trend propelled by human activities including habitat fragmentation, agriculture, and resource extraction. Using biological elements like mammal skulls, sonograms, textiles, and plants, I aim to construct an immersive ecological narrative to bring attention to human-caused species decline.

We are experiencing the 6th mass extinction. Three billion birds have been lost in North America since the 70’s. Wetlands – refuges of diversity and carbon storage - are being pillaged for development. But there is still so much left to fight for.

Each sonogram within ‘Silent Chorus’ represents a distinct species, tentatively grouped according to family. Among them are woodpeckers, hawks, eagles, cranes, sparrows, warblers, and shorebirds. Exploring the plasticity and elegance of sonogram structure across the spectrum of avian diversity, this piece also scrutinizes loss under the lens of preservation and scientific documentation. With climate change causing earlier springs, birds migrating long distances to breed find difficulty in timing their arrival. Sudden cold snaps, peaks in insect harassment, and irruptions of invasive species - all issues exacerbated by unpredictable climate – cause harm to food sources and nest cover. This upset in balance puts pressure on declining bird populations, especially those with more specialized needs, and is emptying our skies of their songs.

I also embody broader ecosystem processes in my work. ‘Salmon Song’ interweaves two cyanotypes; one made on the banks of a glacial river, the other made on the beach by the ocean tide, reflecting the relationship between salmon and their migration from sea to river. ‘Lodgepole Stand’ is a canvas of weather patterns and coniferous branches, exposed in a pine stand on a Yukon mountainside.  In 'Wolf in Sagebrush', I explore the intricate relationship between predators and prey through the interplay between wolves and pronghorns in Yellowstone National Park. The presence of healthy wolf populations, which help control coyote numbers, significantly influences the survival of pronghorn, which rely on sagebrush for sustenance, illustrating the interconnectedness of species within their environment. However, pronghorn’s ancestral migratory pathways have been severed and fragmented by roads and fences, and global warming-induced heat and drought patterns are depleting sagebrush and encouraging the colonisation of grasses and invasive plants, rapidly transforming the sagebrush steppes into grassland.

In ‘Silent Lands’, I used skull specimens from the Beaty Biodiversity Museum at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, to create fabric photographic tapestries highlighting mammal decline. Using the provincial government’s conservation status classification system, I compare ‘endangered’ and ‘vulnerable’ land-based mammal species (the left tapestry) in British Columbia with ‘secure’ species (the right) to encourage wildlife coexistence. Like bird populations, the worrying trend of declining large wild mammal populations across the globe is gaining momentum due to the combined pressure of human-caused activities. This piece aims to show the significant roles larger mammals interweave into BC’s landscapes, and that their loss will be a blow for diversity.