Rod McRae

Are you my mother? Gilcee print

ARTIST STATEMENT
Are you my mother? from the children’s book of the same name by P.D. Eastman about a fledging that falls from its nest and goes in search of its kind. This work attempts to question the roll of hunting and culling in wild animal communities.

Go to www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/08elephant.html to see the alarming and unforeseen effects of culling older individuals in Elephant communities.

Whenever humans play god in nature we inevitably end up making a mess of it!

THE ARTIST
Sculptor and installation artist, children’s book author and illustrator, taxidermist, designer, photographer and the Head Teacher of Events, Design and Illustration at Design Centre Enmore, Sydney Institute TAFE.

Rod has been a finalist in the Wynne Prize for Australian landscape/figurative sculpture, Art Gallery of NSW in 2007 & 2010, the Blake Prize for Religious Art in 2005 & 2006, the Fishers Ghost Art Prize in 2007 & 2009 and Sculpture by the Sea (Bondi) in 2008 and again this year.

In 2011 he was invited to join 20 prominent Australian Artists in a residency program at Taronga Zoo to make art to auction to raise funds for animal conservation projects around the world.

McRae is soon to undertake a MFA at the College of Fine Arts (COFA), University of NSW,  researching how art can effect the climate change message.

VISIT  www.rodmcrae.com.au