Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Have you heard of the "Paper Penguin" site?

The Paper Penguin project site was created in 1999 to document and record the travels and experiences of Dennis and his brothers and sisters.
Dennis was the first of the family to get itchy feet (not Athlete's Foot) and soon realised that the urge to travel in him was very strong.
Since Dennis left the country his brothers and sisters all expressed the need to travel great distances in search of some kind of reason for their existence.
Dennis is currently assisting Dave Houston, a ranger for the Department of Conservation in New Zealand, and has been there since October '99 and shows no sign of wanting to come home.

The family are all made of newspaper (not papier mache), these are then sent to people around the world or country.

The strongest issue seems to be one of communication. Each penguin is made of text and stories; each penguin is sent by post; each penguin is received by another person; the other person contacts me and a dialogue is established.
There have been numerous penguin adventures including Hong Kong, New York, Canada, Bristol Zoo and the North Pole. All these ‘residencies’ have been compiled and presented on the website that I created specifically for this work in 1999. I was even interviewed by John Peel about the project in 2003.

Each penguin has a brief biography but they do tend to try and make themselves far more interesting than they actually are. I don't know whether this is a trait in all penguins but it certainly seems to be in mine!

I have recently decided to reinvigorate the project and hopefully take it to a higher level and I now have a dedicated domain name. My intentions were, and still are, to look at the issues that can be found within the work such as conservation, education and the environment. I have approached them using humour, not with a wagging finger, as I believe that humour is far more effective especially with children. I have been contacted by a number of kindergarten schools regarding the work and the issues involved.
I would like to establish a network of ‘paper penguin’ residencies (not necessarily permanent) around the world in locations of conservation, ecological or educational interest, that will send back documentation and photographs. The information of each penguin's experiences of the culture and lifestyle of their location can then be published on this website and hopefully used for educational purposes.

My intention has always been to make this site fun and educational as well as being environmentally informative. The family of Paper Penguins give an insight into different cultures and lifestyles around the world and will hopefully stir interest and awareness of the many issues that a project like this can potentially raise.
As far as I know, when this project was started, this artwork was unique and I think it still is. Hopefully it has great potential.

Please feel free to send me any ideas or suggestions for the website or any ‘travels’ you might think would be worthy of one of my paper ‘birds’!
  
Check out their website HERE!

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