It looks like the most wonderful of the Seven Wonders and the only living thing visible from space (thanks, year nine geography), Northern Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef, has had an Art Attack, with local artist BJ Price exhibiting six single-edition prints in an undersea art exhibition called the Undersea Art Exhibition.
The champagne isn’t flowing quite so freely as it tends to at inner-city land-based art exhibition openings, partly because the bubbles confuse the fish, but mainly because the sub-aquatic art (aluminium prints on weighted easels) requires art lovers to don scuba gear, or at the the very least a snorkel, and dive down to the ocean floor to appreciate the artworks in all their soggy glory. Price calls the exhibition “a celebration of the world’s greatest marine wonderland”, and told the ABC that he hopes the exhibition will encourage conservation efforts – “When people come up and see it and experience the reef I’m hoping they’ll fall in love with it. I think that when you fall in love with something you naturally want to protect it.”
The underwater location for the exhibition is marked by a huge inflatable black and white turtle which Price calls the “alpha turtle” – not quite as artistic a name as Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo or Raphael, but still pretty cool for a turtle. Price, who is described on his website as “an abstract artist and underwater explorer” (dual job titles that we can only hope to one day attain) says “The reef speaks through my art”. Deep.
The Underwater Art Exhibition runs from today until December 13 through Reef Magic Cruises.
Via BJPriceArt.com. Lead image via Facebook.
