‍What: 

Chris Parks, an artist with a reputation for creating vast expansive worlds and impossible to film visuals, without digital enhancement  and known for his iconic works for Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life and Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain as well as his groundbreaking 3D supervision on films such as Gravity, Fantastic Beasts and where to find them and Edge of Tomorrow is teaming up with explorer, social entrepreneur and ocean advocate Philippe Cousteau, Jr. to auction off a series of Parks’s original fluid painting NFTs (Non-fungible Tokens). The proceeds will benefit the ocean conservation work of Cousteau’s environmental education nonprofit EarthEcho International. The auction begins with a live Clubhouse conversation featuring Parks and Cousteau discussing their families’ histories with ocean exploration. The first piece of art to be auctioned can be viewed here.

When & Where: 

• The series kicks off Monday, June 28th at 7pm BST. Two additional fluid paintings will be auctioned throughout the week and will be announced at Monday’s event.
• Clubhouse event link: https://www.clubhouse.com/event/xLrQK32K
• Auctioned pieces: https://foundation.app/@ChrisParks
• To learn more about NFTs and the auction process please go here

About the Artwork

Chris Parks’s 'Unknown' Series is inspired by the oft quoted fact that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the depths of the oceans—there are whole ecosystems that we know almost nothing about and there are larval forms and life stages of large oceans creatures that remain a mystery to us.

The three pieces are created using the same optics and equipment as was created to film flows of plankton for documentaries such as the BBC's Blue Planet. It utilizes the most up to date lighting controller systems and cameras, combined with 200-year-old Victorian microscope optics, and hi resolution digital cameras together with control systems built in the 1800's. All of it was brought together initially to capture some of the smallest organisms in the oceans, but now also used for creating artworks that are meant to inspire in others the love of the oceans that the artist discovered 44 years ago.

Parks had an early introduction to the oceans through his father Peter Parks, who has spent most of his life filming life in the oceans and particularly the alien world of plankton. Chris travelled with his father as a boy and, after completing a masters at the Royal College of Art in London, joined forces with him to bring these creatures to the giant IMAX screen in 3D. It was the techniques and hardware that Chris and Peter developed for filming marine plankton that Chris latterly has turned to creating his art.