Following my article below on the Unidentified Jellyfish in the Gippsland Lakes (7.6) I thought it opportune to give the series by Inverloch artist Ray Dahlstrom on acid oceans a plug. Ray’s “Jellyfish & Chips” series ran in the Chapel off Chapel Gallery last year and comprised of 24 disturbing images.
Ray and his family were burnt out during the Black Saturday bushfires. His home at Steeles Creek and more than 100 paintings were destroyed. After resettling in Inverloch he began a number of climate related works on “Black Saturday” and “Your Carbon Footprint” before beginning his “acid ocean series”. Ray thinks that his “art should have something to say about the effect of climate change on the environment. It’s OK to create pretty pictures, but it’s more important to me now to get people thinking about the big issues which affect all of our futures.”
The “jellyfish & chips” paintings depict an ocean increasingly dominated by the jellyfish family with other species disappearing. Whilst the skeletal images of fish carcases may not be scientifically accurate they depict and predict the extinction of fish species. Some of these images have been printed on T shirts and can be purchased at Ray’s Gallery called Studio 40. http://www.studio40.net.au/page.php?url=generic.html