Short-finned Eel, Anguilla australis 2011

Summary

Artist Statement I fell in love with an eel. I purchased this live wild-caught ‘Anguilla australis’ from a seafood company in ‘Little Saigon’, Richmond, for the exhibition ‘Crepuscular’. People perceive eels to be slippery, slimy, unpleasant creatures, but over four weeks of accommodating this native Short-finned Eel in my bathtub, my anxiety was replaced with an admiration for his gentle nature, silky-soft tail and ability to change colour from silvery-grey to pitch black in the time it took me to brush my teeth. Close observations of this intimacy enabled me to paint a genuine representative. ‘Mr Seaweed’ was released back into the wild to continue his fascinating journey, swimming from a freshwater creek to the salty Coral Sea. Mali Moir This work was created for ‘Crepuscular’, curated by John Kean and held at the City Gallery between May and July 2011. It was one of a number of newly commissioned artworks that illustrated and interpreted the science of the exhibition, which focused on Melbourne’s natural history at the point at which day collapses into night. Moir has painted her subject, Mr Seaweed, in oil on a panel of lead, employing this unusual surface to embody and reflect some of the qualities of her remarkable freshwater fish: its uneven and changing grey colour, the uncommon coolness of its skin, and the undulations that are second-nature to its long, slinky body. The Short-finned Eel is one of many species that becomes energised and predatory in its search for tucker in the low light of dusk. It is also extraordinary for its Godzillian migration, which brings it to freshwater courses in Australia’s east and south-east from the Coral Sea (near New Guinea) at the beginning of its long lifecycle and sees it return to spawn at the end of its life, by which time it will be 20 or more. By the end of its arduous return to the Coral Sea, the eel is apparently ‘little more than a skeleton with gonads’, equipped to reproduce before shuffling off its mortal coil.