We were recently contacted by two Australian artists who learned about Tacugama through a documentary called “Chimps under Fire” from Animal Planet. They’ve been moved to create a series of works that will be exhibited in October at Monarto Zoo in South Australia.

Leigh Rust and Patrick Hedges are not only helping to raise the profile of Tacugama, they’re also donating a large portion of the profits from their works to Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary and the Monarto Zoo to help conservation efforts for our amazing chimpanzees. Their exhibition will coincide with the official opening of Monarto Zoo’s new chimp habitat.

We’re extremely grateful to Leigh and Patrick and we’ll let you all know how the exhibition goes. In the meantime we’re providing photos of the Tacugama families for the guys to use as source materials for their work. Here’s a couple of tasters for you…

…. from Leigh
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…. from Patrick
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And here’s a link to more information and images from the project directly from the artists http://leighrust.com/tacugama.html

We’re also very happy to report that our three new arrivals, Tombo, Urgent and Mac are doing well. Tombo has learned to use her hammock, Urgent was anaesthetised today for her full health check and Dr Rosa is now analysing the results, and Tombo has become a banana monster, eating hard to try and catch up with Gaura! More about them and the rest of the chimps on our next post.