Seeing Red..Overdrawn
The writing is on the wall. Yet the text is printed faintly. Members of the public and conservationists connected with the David Attenborough Building were invited, one at a time, to make their mark by overwriting the name of one of the listed species, drawing attention to it, and bringing it to visibility.
A section of the large-scale participatory artwork, Seeing Red..Overdrawn, is framed here. Taking inspiration from IUCN’s Global Red List of Threatened Species, the full work depicted a total of 4,734 species that has been assessed as Critically Endangered – those at most serious risk of extinction – on 22 October 2015. Widely recognized as the most comprehensive, objective approach for evaluating the conservation status of plant and animal species, the Red List is the world standard.
Seeing Red..Overdrawn was first commissioned for the opening of the David Attenborough Building in 2016, as part of the Conflicted Seeds + Spirit exhibition. For each species, the participant donned cotton gloves and overwrote both the common and scientific name, and shared stories about their choice which often related to lifelong concern for, and research on, a particular species.
Revisited in 2018, and now archived, this section (taken from the original 7m wide work) showcases species overwritten by CCI colleagues past and present including Sir David Attenborough, Hussein Ahmed, Ros Aveling, Andrew Balmford, Ashton Berry, Katie Bolt, Isobel Cohen, Nikita Ellis, David Gibbons, Dan Harvey, Rosalind Helfand, Alison Johnston, Ashleigh Jugian, Michelle Moeller, Zurina Moktar, Naomi Sadoff, Judith Scheicher, Piotr Slaby, Lizzie Sparrow, David Thomas, Ben Walbanke-Taylor, Katy Walker, Vicky Wilkins, and Julie Zoehringer.
