Hybrid I, 2020

These sculptures are based on the artist's correspondence with Professor Madeleine van Oppen at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), who has been developing hybrid coral species that can withstand growing temperatures and acidity using IVF. The baby corals were grown in an ocean simulator for seven months to study how they coped under predicted future ocean conditions before being recently introduced to experimental field conditions on the Great Barrier Reef, to see if they can also thrive in the wild.

'We are speeding up evolution to help them adapt', says Professor van Oppen, who shared various images of the emerging hybrids grown in the lab under UV light, with the artist, to demonstrate their progress. Dawood took the tenuis loripes hybrid, and digitally animated it, before 3D printing it, hand-finishing the resulting prototype ready to be recast in bronze, and then each edition is painstakingly hand-painted to reflect the UV conditions in the lab, as well as ocean phosphorescence (please note the work glows in the dark after being charged with enough natural or artificial light).