Priceless
This black and white printed barcode across the world is a powerful representational image. The image represents Earth's biodiversity at risk from human activities that put profit over our planet. Highlighting the relationship between the natural environment and humans and the need for activism to halt the decline.
The most familiar of items, the barcode, is itself ubiquitous, daily in most of our lives used to buy and sell. The black lines of the bar and the white stripes or code are used to encode data and store it to be read when scanned.
In this composition of the barcode overlaid across the globe, our eyes scan the information presented here for us to decode.
Inspired by the Artist’s awareness that nearly half of the world’s 230,000 marine species are in decline, Priceless is part of a wider exhibition Sidmouth On Sea – Save Our Seas Winter Lights Festival '24.
The artwork is a response to the loss of marine biodiversity and risk of mass extinctions that human activities cause; consumption, overuse of natural resources, pollution, plastics and the pursuit of profit.
“Priceless" has been created as a response to the artist’s belief that the world is now seen merely as a commodity to be consumed and traded for mankind's’ own personal gain."eARTh Vader is a collective of like minded artists who anonymously create artwork whose narratives centre around our socio-economic relationship with the natural world.
Priceless by eARTh Vader at Sidmouth Wallspace, photographer Sarah Hall