Counting One to Four: Nature morte (2015)





Researchers: Dr Debbie Symons

AEGIS UN Sustainable Development Goals 11, 12, 13, 14 & 15

In 1972, 114 nations attended the first Earth Summit in Stockholm, Sweden, to discuss the environment. Since this date, 21 additional Earth Summits have occurred across the globe. Despite these talks, the global mean temperature continues to rise. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is now 395 parts per million, approximately 100 parts per million higher than the maximal values seen over the past 740,000 years.

Counting One to Four: Nature morte visualises the predicted consequences of our warming atmosphere on the entirety of the Earth’s biodiversity through the use of percentage formulas. Referencing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2014 business-as-usual RCP 8.5 model allows the work to move beyond a simplistic representation of ‘damaged nature’, to a multifaceted analysis of cause and effect, with projections of up to 52% of all terrestrial mammals, reptiles, marine species, amphibians and insects committed to extinction by 2100.

Counting One to Four: Nature morte was exhibited as part of the Art + Climate = Change 2015 festival in Melbourne and as part of  ARTCOP21 in Paris at Galerie Prodromus, Federation Square, Melbourne and in New York.


Acknowledgement of Country


AEGIS acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we work. We respectfully acknowledge their Elders, past and present. We also acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands and waters across Australia and its Dreaming.