Environmental artists are preparing to create a series of murals in Tower Hamlets as part of an awareness raising project to highlight the plight of endangered animals around the world.
Organised as a collaboration between popular artist Louis Masai and environmental art collective Human Nature the event will see a series of artists descend upon Tower Hamlets to paint murals in the railway arches of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park.
According to Masai each railway arch will depict a different endangered species with each animal having a story behind it. ” I often get asked by my followers what can they do to help the animal that I am painting about”. The opportunity will come afterwards with further information being made available after the event depending on which endangered species the artist choose to depict.
“As an artist that’s focused on environmental issues with my work, I like the idea of collecting like minded artists together to utilise the energy that they already have invested into similar issues but also allow other artists an opportunity to explore the concept for perhaps the first time” says Masai.
The collaboration with Human Nature is an important one for Masai “their focus on communicating environmental issues through art and interest in what they do is growing every day from artists, organisations and people all over the world”. This time the key area is highlighting the mass extinction facing many species.
“Each artist has been assigned an endangered species, some are critically endangered and some are vulnerable but decreasing in numbers” he says. “We want the audience to recognise not that it’s a shame a fluffy or pretty animal is almost gone, but that a treasure of this planet is threatened and with each individual a knock on effect is imminent.”
One of Masai’s best known projects, that to save the bees, saw a series of murals painted around London and garnered a lot of attention. “It would be extreme naivety to believe that each species that is wiped from the face of his planet forever won’t have a direct knock on effect for humans” he told us, “the bees especially, highlight this”.
The artists involved in the project are, in the main, people Masai has worked with before and ones he has a respect for. “I feel that as a group our collective energies will be powerful.” He may well be right and the arches of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park will be all the better for it.
Endangered will be a live painting event taking place on 10 April 2016 at Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park. Open to the public from midday to 7pm the event is free and can be found at Ackroyd Drive, Tower Hamlets, E3 4JY. All photos in this post are courtesy of Human Nature and Louis Masai.
Endangered artist gallery
We’ve featured a number of the artists featured in Endangered before here on Inspiring City. To read some more of those have a look here:
Carrie Reichardt Zulu taxi project
Louis Masai and Jim Vision save the bees project
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