The snipe, barn owl and great bustard have appeared on walls around the capital. Caspar Henderson talks to the artist who is capturing the birds that are vanishing from Britain
Caspar Henderson
The Guardian, Saturday 22 March 2014
More than a few artists have been moved to produce work that speaks to a long history of humans as the "overkillers" of other species – a record that appears to be culminating in a mass-extinction event at least as great as the one that killed the dinosaurs. Maya Lin's remarkable ongoing project What is Missing? allows anyone with an internet connection to view the abundance of rich and strange life forms that once existed in places where now there are concrete, cars and monoculture, and to reimagine the lives of strange and wonderful animals, from the dodo and steller's sea cow to the passenger pigeon and the Tasmanian wolf. A volume titled Ghosts of Gone Birds reproduces paintings by well-known artists of the diverse and astonishing birds that humans have eliminated in the last few centuries, from the red-moustached fruit dove and the snail-eating coua to the laughing owl.
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