Exhibition dates: 5th March – 2nd April 2022
Installation view of the exhibition Birdlike by Anne Ferran at Sutton Gallery, Melbourne showing at left, Ground dweller 4, 2020-2021 (see below)
© the artist and Sutton Gallery
A quick text today as I am very sick with bronchitis and not feeling very well.
I have always liked Ferran’s performative creations starting with her body of work titled Box of Birds (2013) followed by Align (2015); Flying Colour (2016); Open Book (2018); White Against Red (2018); and now her most recent series, Birdlike (2020-2022)
While conceptually based (as with much contemporary photography), her bodies of work have an elemental quality to them that keeps them grounded and present even as they reference a historical past, a “felt” (pardon the pun since Ferran uses felt material) response to a present day conundrum.
The new work Birdlike “continues the artist’s practice of photographing female performers as they improvise with lengths of coloured felt … [which] allows for complex and nuanced interpretations” in response to the initial proposition, in this case Ferran’s wish “to summon the return of a small ground-dwelling bird, the Plains wanderer, Pedionomus torquatus, to a place that it vanished from long ago.”
These birds “are surprisingly distinct from any other species on the planet, they are the last family on their evolutionary line,” the only representative of family Pedionomidae and genus Pedionomus. They are threatened by agricultural practices such as cropping and grazing, and so they are at risk of habitat loss, as well as other threats such as flooding, feral predators, pesticide use and their small population size. With their ground-nesting habits, poor flying ability, and the tendency to run rather than fly from predators, the birds become easy prey for the fox. Now listed as a critically endangered species the bird makes a haunting return, a form of speculative reappearance as Ferran puts it, to a place in which it was once common – that of Wiradjuri country, near Narrandera NSW.
These beautiful, conceptual, improvised photographs are not only about the here and now, but are about present and past (a longing for a quixotic past?), about presence and absence… and about death and loss. Every thing contemporary photography is good at – that is, unpicking the threads of history and reassembling them – is here grounded “in the flatness of the landscape, the vastness of the sky and the colours of the lengths of felt the performer is manipulating.” In other words, grounded in light, colour and the red soil of the Australian landscape these re-imagined birds are captured in a fantastical performance / sublime dance (of death).
I love these photographs. They possess a sublime mystery that makes me stop and question how little the human race has learnt and how much we have lost. With species extinction, climate change and ocean pollution ongoing, this is only the beginning of the desecration of Mother Earth.
Omnia mutantur nos et mutamur in illis (all things change, and we change with them).
But not necessarily for the better.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Sutton Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. All images © the artist and Sutton Gallery. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Installation view of the exhibition Birdlike by Anne Ferran at Sutton Gallery, Melbourne showing at left, Ground dweller 4, 2020-2021 (see below)
© the artist and Sutton Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition Birdlike by Anne Ferran at Sutton Gallery, Melbourne showing at left, Plains wanderer 1; and at right, Plains wanderer 3 both 2020-2021 (see below)
© the artist and Sutton Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition Birdlike by Anne Ferran at Sutton Gallery, Melbourne showing at left, Field haunter 1, Field haunter 3, and Field haunter 2 all 2020-2021 (see below); and at right, Hiding 1 2020-2021 (see below)
© the artist and Sutton Gallery
Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Field haunter 1
2020-2021
Pigment print on cotton rag paper
© the artist and Sutton Gallery
Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Field haunter 2
2020-2021
Pigment print on cotton rag paper
© the artist and Sutton Gallery
Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Field haunter 3
2020-2021
Pigment print on cotton rag paper
© the artist and Sutton Gallery
In Birdlike I aimed to summon the return of a small ground-dwelling bird, the Plains wanderer, Pedionomus torquatus, to a place that it vanished from long ago. Once common over vast areas of southern NSW and Victoria, its existence is now threatened, and birdwatchers like me will go to great lengths to see it just once in their lives. In these photographs, made on Wiradjuri country, near Narrandera NSW, the Plains wanderer makes a form of speculative reappearance, via signs as indirect as the flatness of the landscape, the vastness of the sky and the colours of the lengths of felt the performer is manipulating.
I came to this way of working a few years ago. Its two key components are my collaboration with a performer – here it is Kirsten Packham – and her improvisations with lengths of dyed and painted felt. I choose the performer carefully, as so much depends on her sensitivity to her surroundings and her ability to transmit it through her physical body. With its inherent density, softness and weight, the felt can amplify and enhance her movements and gestures, while exerting a strong presence of its own. I never know what will emerge from these sessions, only that it will be something new, arising out of that moment, that performance and that situation.
Until now I have preferred to work in the familiar environment of a photographic studio. Decamping to the landscape introduced many small and some not-so-small considerations: the texture of the ground underfoot, the ever-changing effects of early morning or late afternoon light, whether it was hot, cold or blowing a gale at any one moment. Small trees crept into the frame and started acting like performers themselves. As the photographs began to accumulate, I thought I could see an out-of-place, almost alien quality emerging. This was unexpected, but on reflection it seems consistent with the displacements that have already happened in this place, as well as with those others that may come in the future.
~ Anne Ferran, 2022
Each image is available in two sizes: 65 x 50cm Ed. of 5 + 2APs and 144 x 104cm Ed. of 3 + 2APs
Performer: Kirsten Packham
Lighting: Frances Mocnik
Assistant: Brittany Hefren
This project is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW, and the Cad Factory, Narrandera.
Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Ground dweller 1
2020-2021
Pigment print on cotton rag paper
© the artist and Sutton Gallery
Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Ground dweller 2
2020-2021
Pigment print on cotton rag paper
© the artist and Sutton Gallery
Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Ground dweller 3
2020-2021
Pigment print on cotton rag paper
© the artist and Sutton Gallery
Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Ground dweller 4
2020-2021
Pigment print on cotton rag paper
© the artist and Sutton Gallery
Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Hiding 1
2020-2021
Pigment print on cotton rag paper
© the artist and Sutton Gallery
Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Hiding 2
2020-2021
Pigment print on cotton rag paper
© the artist and Sutton Gallery
Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Hiding 3
2020-2021
Pigment print on cotton rag paper
© the artist and Sutton Gallery
Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Plains wanderer 1
2020-2021
Pigment print on cotton rag paper
© the artist and Sutton Gallery
Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Plains wanderer 2
2020-2021
Pigment print on cotton rag paper
© the artist and Sutton Gallery
Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Plains wanderer 3
2020-2021
Pigment print on cotton rag paper
© the artist and Sutton Gallery
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Fitzroy 3065
Victoria, Australia
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