TEAM AOTEARCTIC
COUNTRY: NEW ZEALAND/CANADA

A fish skull lies abandoned in the underbrush, a discarded scrap from a meal long past. Yet the keen eye of a rodent never fails. The woodrats feast on the forgotten fish head, their tiny paws deftly stripping the skeleton of its precious morsels and looting the bones of their abundance.

As they savor their lavish banquet of overlooked remnants, we are reminded that even in a landscape of abundance, true satisfaction lies in appreciating the overlooked and repurposing the forgotten. The woodrats turn what others might discard into a veritable feast.

Sated, they celebrate a timeless truth: one man’s trash is another creature’s treasure.

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Whakatāne and Yellowknife, while worlds apart, both share a common geographical element - a coastline. Fish have fed, and will continue to feed, people in these places since time immemorial. The power of water has been a binding theme of our team since the outset. This piece is an hommage to the life that brings life, the bounty of the water- the one thing that binds us the world over. We are all scavengers in hunt of home and health.

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The bushy-tailed woodrat is the original "pack rat", the species in which the trading habit is most pronounced. It has a strong preference for shiny objects and will drop whatever it may be carrying in favor of a coin or a spoon.