Homeless Joey
How often do you drive through the countryside and see roadkill on the side of the road, and not think twice? Did you know that there's a real problem with wildlife being run over right here in the heart of Casey and Cardinia? We are encroaching on the land of these kangaroos, and they have nowhere to go.
I used to live in Emerald. And at dusk, we'd need to be really careful to watch out for kangaroos as we drove down the main road. It's difficult because the speed limit allows you to drive at 80 kilometers per hour. How can you avoid a kangaroo that jumps out in front of you?
You can't swerve
What do you do when you hit a Kangaroo
Do you keep driving?
Do you stop?
Do you check if there's a joey in the pouch of it's mother?
Or if the kangaroo is so injured, that it needs to be put down?
So many of us don't know what to do, who to phone.
Sarah from WISH, and other people just like her are out there helping local wildlife every day.
They receive calls in the middle of the night, that a kangaroo has been hit.
They get up out of their beds.
And they go and attend, sometimes needing to put down the injured wildlife.
Often they need to take a joey back with them and foster it, so that eventually it can be returned to the wild.
The artwork that I created for WISH was intended to tell this story, but in a way that is not as confronting as some of the imagery that you've seen online of injured and dead wildlife.
Ultimately, I wanted this piece to soften hearts to connect with every day everyday people that may not have thought about the consequences of driving fast, or leaving an injured Kangaroo on the side of the road.
I worked with Sarah to come up with a strategy that would impact people after they had some time to take in the message.
A soft, cute and cuddly picture that at first glance you may miss the message, but as you read into it further, it hits you.
As You look a little closer, You see the dead mother.
You see the crow.
As you look a little bit closer, you realise this Joey has no home.
And it hits you.
And it moves you.
This piece is intended to be used on a billboards, on posters, in print on the web. To highlight the importance of driving slowly, of checking for wildlife, of calling someone if you happen to hit a kangaroo or native wildlife.
The piece is child safe, it's children friendly.
But It also teaches the children of the importance of looking after our native wildlife.
This artwork is the first in a series of artworks that will tell the story of our native Australian wildlife and how we can better look after them.
VISIT WISH: https://www.facebook.com/WISHwildlifeshelter/
