World & Audience

Native Wirelife is based in Ku-ring-gai, the traditional home of the Darug people. 

Despite housing around 120,000 people, more than a third of Ku-ring-gai is dense bushland – including remnants of endangered ecological communities such as turpentine forest – providing vital habitat for native animals.

The close proximity of Ku-ring-gai to the Sydney CBD helps to ensure that threats of bushfires are responded to quickly, though several fires have swept through. Such protection means that the urban-bushland areas of Ku-ring-gai are important refuge sites and wildlife corridors for species such as the short-beaked echidna and eastern pigmy-possum.

Urbanisation and increasingly severe weather events, however, are profoundly effecting the diversity and concentration of native fauna found in suburban areas. Worryingly, such changes may go unnoticed when our observations of the world occur through digital screens. 

It is perhaps more important now than ever that we learn how to share our built environment with native wildlife.

Native Wirelife aims to encourage people living in suburban areas to (re)engage with the natural world. It is intended that these artworks are viewed actively. Consistent with this objective, Native Wirelife has only a minimal online presence, and no associated social media accounts, relying instead on word-of-mouth.

When a member of the community unexpectedly spots a Native Wirelife artwork, it provokes that innate sense of awe that we all have for animals. If I can convince one person, even just for a brief moment, that what they’ve just spotted is a real animal, causing them to look around for more, then my work is done.