Entertainment
12 February, 2025
Astonishing Reef display
IN a perfect mash up of science and art, the exhibition ‘Sex-change, Screens, and the Secret Signals of the Scarini’ by local visual artist and researcher Michelle Brayshaw is bringing to the surface the underwater world of parrotfishes.
The CQUniversity Master of Research candidate and visual artist from Caravonica has made her research on parrotfish approachable to non-academics through a visually stunning exhibition full of colour and an in-depth study of the different species of parrotfish that inhabit the reef.
The exhibition, which features 53 photographs and paintings, is now open to the public at the Tanks Arts Centre – Tank 4 gallery and will be on display until February 22.
“My research began with my love of going out to the Reef and taking photographs of parrotfish and what I found is that there’s 30 species of parrotfish in the Great Barrier Reef and out of Cairns and Port Douglas I managed to find 24 of these species which I’ve been photographing,” Ms Brayshaw said.
“As I observed and did my field work, I was looking for two main areas of their life cycles which divides into juvenile, initial and terminal and, while I was observing and discovering, I came across some transitioning species as well – transition between male and female – which is really cool because their colour also changes.
“Just like octopuses, parrotfishes change colour through chromatophores and they use it for camouflage or in the mating season. There’s even a chameleon parrotfish.
“What I wanted to do with this idea was to create this immersive experience for viewers above water of these phenomena and colour transitions that everyday people don’t know about.
“Often these scientific findings get lost in transcript and, because I’m a visual artist, I wanted to translate these scientific understandings visually so that everybody can see it, experience it and understand these things that sometimes we don’t in scientific journals.”
The exhibition is the culmination of over 200 hours of observation and photography and two years of work for her masters which started in 2022.
“It’s been two and a half years to get it all together,” Ms Brayshaw said.
For more information, visit https://bit.ly/42H5cQg
