I love Turtles! A Visual art practice-based exploration of the emergent endangered sea turtles of the KwaZulu-Natal Coast

Abstract

The study aims to explore and portray awareness of the endangered sea turtles on the east coast of southern Africa. The approach proceeds by way of considering environmental contexts, both societal and artistic, against which I place my own paintings, together with my reflection on the motif of the sea turtle. I explore salient points of the social context, which may be broadly classified as the ‘Anthropocene’ debate. The discussion of the Anthropocene and the selective examination of activist ecological artworks may be described as qualitative in their assessment and evaluation of the academic literature in the field. Similarly, qualitative is the description of my field work in the intervention of scientists and practitioners in the lives of the east coast turtles. When I turn to my own paintings, the method is that of practice-based research: as a way of artistic production of an aesthetic object, the production accompanied by my placing of the paintings within a broad ‘history’ of the genre while, at the same time, I reflect upon my practice. How might my paintings question, or even attempt to bridge, an ontological division between the human and the non-human world, as associated with the Anthropocene?